It's been a big month for the stars of Crave and HBO Max's runaway success Heated Rivalry, but we never imagined how quickly the hit series would overlap with the romantasy genre.
Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, the breakout stars of the hockey romance series based on the books by Rachel Reid, continue their sizzling on-screen chemistry by taking their talents to the audio booth. The actors teamed up for Quinn's audio erotica series Ember & Ice, a three-episode queer fae romantasy saga written by Colleen Scriven and directed by Rob Valentine.
Ember & Ice dropped its first two episodes on Dec. 30 and was so immediately popular that Quinn crashed for a few hours as Storrie and Williams fans swarmed the app as soon as the series premiered. That led to the pair of debut episodes attracting over 573k plays in less than 24 hours, which far outplayed other audios featured in the app's trending section.
All told, the Heated Rivalry stars have kept their hot streak alive with Ember & Ice sizzling up a staggering almost 2 million cumulative plays within the first week of release. As of Jan. 6, the first episode has 776,882 plays, the second episode has 669,750 plays, and the third and final episode has 228,908 plays for a total of 1,675,540 and counting. So, what makes this series so special?
Why romantasy fans should tune into Ember & Ice
It's currently unclear if Ember & Ice has set some sort of viewership record for Quinn, but the numbers are no doubt unprecedented. You could say that's the power of romantasy and good storytelling, but much of the success of this particular audio series has to do with the world's collective obsession and fascination with two rising stars who are deserving of their breakthrough.
Storrie and Williams further capitalize on their incredible creative connection and real-life friendship to bring an intensely sensual story to life, this time in a non-visual format. As Quinn describes the series in the official episode 1 synopsis, "When Finn (Williams), the dutiful heir to the Lunare throne, is forced into close quarters with Dane (Storrie), a reckless Solari prince, their long-standing rivalry begins to blur into a dangerous attraction."
Clearly, the setup isn't too far removed from that of Heated Rivalry. There's a rigid divide between the main characters with baked-in tension and opposing forces keeping their star-crossed attraction from blossoming beyond closed doors. Rather than professional hockey players, Storrie and Williams don wings as fairy princes in a war-torn land with dueling families.
Being an audio erotica series, it's particularly explicit and descriptive regarding the sexual nature of Finn and Dane's story, which differs from how most readers engage with romantasy books and audiobooks. It's probably par for the course for some fans of the genre, but even apart from the inherent sexuality, the story features enchantingly fantastical geopolitical twists that hook you.
Ember & Ice certainly leaves you satisfied with the love story (as if that's a spoiler to reveal), but the overarching storyline leaves you wanting more of this fantasy world of the Lunare and Solari. The series lends itself to a sequel series, but the descriptive world built within our minds could also become one hell of movie. Now that would almost definitely be a first for an audio erotica series.