Grimdark Fantasy
Posted by Meg
Phillip posted a recommended reading list for grimdark fans on his blog Grimdark Reader. It’s a great list with a lot of contemporary fantasy books on there and new releases. At the top of his list are books like The Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence and The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.
At the end he noted the Demon Cycle as a series with some elements of grimdark, along with two others (the Night Angel series by Brent Weeks and the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch).
What do you think? Is the Demon Cycle grimdark? What do you consider grimdark and what do you think about the term?
I’ve only read Warded Man as of yet but I would call it dark fantasy. You have a setting where humanity is slowly being driven to extinction by the Corelings. Even when means to fight the Corelings is found humanity is divided.
The term is overused, misused, and overreacted against. And grimdark is older than most of its readers and proponents think.
That said…a humanity on the brink of extermination due to demons coming out of the ground every night? A humanity that can’t get its act together, even when given the opportunity to do so?
I guess that is all the hallmarks of Grimdark, although you do have some protagonists trying to do the right thing rather than being utter bastards.
I love your books, Peat, but they are NOT sweetness and light. 🙂
Dark but not grimdark.
One of the best features of your books, to me at least, is the element of hope that pervades them.
That saves if from being grim, it looks bleak but not hopeless.
I guess I don’t understand the definition of grimdark if Arlen in the Demon Cycle who is very likeable and set on saving mankind is put in the same catagory as Jorg in Prince of Thorns who before the age of puberity is leading a band of murauding bandits who pillage, rape, torture and murder.
Thinking about it, maybe Jardir qualifies The Demon Cycle as a grimdark series.
Hi Peat!
Lawrence and Abercrombie are two of my absolute favorite writers, Lawrence being sooooo grimdark that it’s taken me a while to allow Jorg to get under my skin, but I ended up adoring the series and recommending it to everyone. Abercrombie is fantastically sarcastic and hilarious and that coated the incredibly violent and bloody narrative with a velvet (red) smoothness that was a lot easier to swallow.
I think the difference for me between Lawrence and Abercrombie and you Peat, is that I really liked yours and Abercrombie’s characters, even the bad or wrong and twisted ones, and wanted them to pull it off, while I was terrified of every single one of Jorg’s moves and for most of the series wanted him to fail.
Arlen is very sweet and good and I get a strong sense of hope from the books that don’t allow it to be labelled as grimdark. Not to me anyway.
The Demon Cycle grimdark?? Hell no. It lacks many of the hallmarks of what I consider to be grimdark. For starters there’s actually hope, real hope not false hope. Second too many characters are friendly and nice, in grimdark people like that get tred on or suffer nasty fates. Third what the heroes are trying to build is a good thing, good things do not get built or survive in grimdark.
But then again I read a lot of 40k, which is pure grimdark, so my standards for what constitutes grimdark are likely quite extreme.
Greetings Peat,
I just finished reading the second of your books and I think it is a bit less dystopian than the first one. Your series definitely has a very dark and kind of depressing setting, but it also has a lot of positive elements, like the people’s hope and the changes in their behavior.
Your second book slightly reminded me of the “Dragonriders of Pern” series. I loved to read them when I came to like books at all and they also feature a world that is threatened by an unknown or barley known force. I wouldn’t consider them as grimdark – so I don’t consider your books as grimdark.
Still they are the most exiting ones I’ve read for very long time.