Megan Bannen Books

Megan Bannen wrote young adult historical fiction before she found the thing she is now known for, which is a weird and completely charming corner of fantasy that nobody else is occupying. The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy arrived in 2022 and did something the market did not expect: it took a frontier western setting, added gods, undead, and a postal service, and used all of it to build a middle-aged epistolary romance between two people who cannot stand each other in person.

The premise is worth stating plainly because it sounds implausible and works perfectly. Hart Ralston is a marshal who patrols Tanria, a decommissioned prison for old gods where the dead reanimate, and he brings the bodies in. Mercy Birdsall runs her family's failing funeral parlour and receives them. They have a professional relationship consisting entirely of hostility. Hart, lonely, writes an anonymous letter addressed to whoever finds it and posts it into the void. Mercy answers. Neither knows who the other is. It is You've Got Mail with reanimated corpses, and Bannen plays the dramatic irony for every laugh and every ache it will produce.

What defines her writing is generosity. Bannen's characters are adults with jobs, obligations and accumulated disappointment, and the books take their tiredness seriously. Nobody is chosen. The stakes are a family business, a work partnership, and whether two guarded people can risk being known. The grumpy sunshine dynamic is real rather than cosmetic, because Hart's grumpiness is grief and Mercy's brightness is labour. She is also very funny, in a dry register that never undercuts the emotion.

The Tanria books continue with The Undermining of Twyla and Frank in 2024, which shifts focus to two side characters from the first book, both of them older, one of them a mother of teenagers, and delivers a second-chance romance for people well past the usual romantasy age bracket. The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam continues the sequence. Each book stands reasonably well alone but the shared setting and recurring cast reward reading in order.

Heat level: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy sits at about a 3 on our spice scale, with open-door scenes that arrive in the back half and are written with the same warmth as the rest of the book. Nothing here is dark or punishing. If you have been reading at the 4 to 5 end of the genre this will feel gentle; if you have been reading closed-door, this is a comfortable step up rather than a leap.

Why she matters to a romantasy audience: Bannen is the standard recommendation for two specific gaps. The first is romantasy with adult protagonists who are not twenty-two, which the genre produces far less of than its readership actually wants. The second is fantasy romance that is funny on purpose, as opposed to fantasy romance with a quippy narrator. She is also the best available palate cleanser after a run of dark, high-stakes reading, because the books are structurally kind without being low-stakes.

Where to start: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, no question, then The Undermining of Twyla and Frank. If the cosy-with-substance register is what appeals, Legends and Lattes sits on the same shelf, and our collections gather more of the warm end of the genre in one place. One practical note before you start: the first book's opening chapters are deliberately abrasive, because Hart and Mercy genuinely dislike each other and Bannen does not soften it for the reader's comfort. Several readers report almost putting it down before the letters begin. Give it fifty pages. Once the correspondence starts, the structure locks in and the rest of the book runs on its own momentum.