Sarah J Maas sets UK record for fastest-selling adult fantasy novel, 188,914 copies in five days as bookshops open at midnight

Sarah J Maas's "A Court of Splintered Harmony" sold 188,914 copies in the UK in its first five days on sale, making it the fastest-selling adult fantasy novel since accurate records began in 1998, according to NielsenIQ BookData. The sixth book in her "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series, and her first return to it in more than five years, went straight to number one in the overall UK chart — her third time at the top.

The record it broke was less than two years old. Rebecca Yarros's "Onyx Storm" held the adult fantasy mark with 155,141 copies in its opening week in January 2025; the last time Maas topped the chart, "House of Flame and Shadow" in January 2024, opened on 44,761. According to Bloomsbury, Maas's publisher, the week was the biggest for any adult fiction title since Harper Lee's "Go Set a Watchman" in 2015, and the fastest-selling hardback since Dan Brown's "Inferno" — 229,000 copies in its first week in 2013. Globally, preorders and first-day sales reached 1.7 million copies across English-language print and ebook editions in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, a count that excludes audiobooks and translations. Maas's English-language sales across all her series now exceed 100 million copies.

The audience was assembled somewhere other than the review pages. Romantasy — the romance-fantasy blend in which Maas is the most prominent writer — draws readers who are largely young women, and the genre's growth has played out on TikTok, where hashtags tied to Maas carry more than 14 billion combined views. Bookshops across the UK hosted release parties and opened past midnight, and tickets for a related Maas event sold out within 13 minutes. Strong sales of romance and fantasy pushed UK fiction revenue past £1 billion for the first time in 2024.

Philip Stone of NielsenIQ noted that Harry Potter still holds the highest-ever weekly sale for a fantasy novel. The adult record sits on a separate shelf, and it now belongs to a series that began as a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast."

The book is the first part of a four-part story. The next two parts arrive on 12 January, eleven weeks after the first. Waterstones hosted 60 midnight launches for part one.