Spellcaster

Spellcaster blends two popular sub-genres of fantasy, romantasy and dark academia. Romantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy popular with readers and on social media. It combines fantasy settings and magical elements, such as witches, demons, and monsters, with common romance genre tropes. Romantasy novels are often, but not always, set in secondary fantasy worlds—that is, invented worlds entirely separate from the reader’s reality—such as in A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, one of the most beloved series in the genre, and the similarly popular Blood and Ash series by Jennifer L. Armentrout. Additionally, romantasy primarily centers female protagonists and their journeys of self-discovery and power. They are typified by a number of recognizable tropes, such as the morally ambivalent hero or love interest, and the ever-popular enemies-to-lovers romantic plot trope, as in the Plated Prisoner series by Raven Kennedy.

The book also bears many of the hallmarks of the sub-genre known as dark academia, which employs the settings of educational institutions, usually boarding schools or colleges, as the centralized location of a protagonist's journey of self-discovery. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) is often seen as an initial inspiration for the sub-genre, though far older books, such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) are sometimes retrospectively included. Recent, influential novels in the subgenre include If We Were Villains, by M. L. Rio and two novels by R. F. Kuang—Babel (2022) and Katabasis (2025). Spellcaster’s Weatherstone College, with its Gothic architecture and competitive atmosphere, fits squarely within this tradition. Dark academia settings often function as microcosms of the broader society, reflecting and reinforcing its values to highlight the elitist systems underpinning the novel. In Spellcaster, magical ability dictates social standing, a system institutionalized by the college itself, which becomes an important aspect of Paisley's emotional journey. Dark academia is often combined with fantasy elements, as in the case of Spellcaster. Such a blending of fantasy and dark academia tropes is popular in romantasy, including Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.