Sarah J. Maas's New Novel Becomes UK's Fastest-Selling Adult Fantasy Book
A Court of Splintered Harmony, the new novel by Sarah J. Maas, has become the fastest-selling adult fantasy novel in the UK since accurate records began in 1998, according to The Guardian. The book was published on 27 October. It sold 188,914 copies in the UK between that day and 31 October, according to NielsenIQ BookData, a service that tracks book sales.
The publisher, Bloomsbury, said the book recorded the biggest single week of sales for any adult fiction title in the UK since Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman in 2015. It is also the fastest-selling hardback since Dan Brown's Inferno, which sold 229,000 copies in its first week in 2013. The previous record for adult fantasy was held by Rebecca Yarros's Onyx Storm, which sold 155,141 copies in its opening week in January 2025.
Bloomsbury also said the novel sold 1.7 million copies globally in preorders and first-day sales. That figure covers English-language print and ebook editions in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia. It does not include audiobooks or translations.
The book went straight to No. 1 in the UK's overall book chart, the third time an Maas title has reached the top. It is the sixth book in her A Court of Thorns and Roses series, known as Acotar, and her first return to the series in more than five years. The series centres on a young woman named Feyre and is a loose reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, according to The New York Times.
Maas's earlier release House of Flame and Shadow sold 44,761 copies in its opening week in January 2024. Her global English-language sales across all her series now exceed 100 million copies, according to the Guardian report.
Demand was visible before publication. Waterstones hosted 60 midnight launches and 80 early openings and release-day parties for the book. In an earlier Guardian report from 28 October, bookshop co-founder Ali Maynard James said that tickets for an event sold out within 13 minutes and that the shop's website crashed as soon as the tickets went on sale.
