#grimdark fantasy

[writingwolverina]

IN PERPETUUM

Hellraiser x Dark Souls

Local man can’t die and he’s going to make it everyone else’s problem

🫀 Transmasc Protag

🫀 Grimdark Fantasy

🫀 Medical Horror

🫀 Serial Killer x Man Who Can’t Be Killed

🫀 Lots of Monster Fights

🫀 Lots of Guts & Blood

Read the first 15k words here or listen to it on audiobook here

[a-novel-venture-blog]

“You'll be a rumor. A whisper. The thought that wakes the bastards of this world sweating in the nevernight. The last thing you will ever be, girl, is someone's hero.”

[diamond-star]

Gods, I wish I had friends as obsessed with (grim dark fantasy) books like I am.

Like this love needs to be shared!

[ladzwriting]

Art by @t-hornapple

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED This is the funniest outcome

The Fealty of Monsters is out now in paperback and ebook

[lolbatty]

So I just finished The Poppy War series..

While reading, I started binge eating from the stress, couldn't get to sleep and horrific scenes from the books were haunting me during my breath work meditations.

I don't think I'm built for this genre, personally.

But if you enjoy being stressed, traumatized by your own imagination and horrified/frustrated consistently, I'd highly recommend it! It's well written, compelling and absolutely devastating! It will give you nightmares. Maybe in a good way, if you like that sort of thing.

This is the last time I take booktok recommendations without reading a summary..

[masterhallmark]

Trying so hard to get more people to check out this series.

Nottingham as published by Mad Cave Studios

Source

[sleeveofaces]

Ref Sheets for the main characters of my grimdark fantasy story, Three of Swords.

✖️Laszló—better known as ‘the thing that lurks in the woods’, and Evander—a paladin-turned-fugitive desperate to regain his title and prove his worth to Providence.

In case it’s not obvious, this story will indeed be MLM, and I’ve got a lot of fun art and updates to come. The first few chapters will be up on Wattpad and Ao3 within the next month (if the goblin that lives in my head and makes my serotonin is merciful).

[mumblingsage]

Recently finished and enjoyed: Christopher Buehlman's dark fantasy/horror/historical fiction, Between Two Fires, is the perfect read for Easter.

I'm not being sarcastic; this story of a disgraced knight, Thomas*, trying to survive in wake of the Black Death and teaming up with a girl, Delphine, who sees angels while demons walk the Earth is very seasonal! The Harrowing of Hell is more than merely name-dropped!

(*The Doubting Thomas reference must be deliberate but didn't occur to me until I typed his name just now.)

I blogged about Buehlman's Blacktongue Thief a few months ago and said it was also fantastic, with a compulsively readable voice. Between Two Fires doesn't have quite so entertaining a narrator--it's in third person rather than first person--but it's still very well-written, not ornate but fast-paced, often clever and snappy--

"No town is named Town." "Mine was. Townville-sur-Cunting-Town. What did your papa do again?" "He was a lawyer." "it shows. Now shut up."

--and rich in historical details.

Like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, you'll probably get the most out of this book if you have some interest in or at least tolerance of Christianity. But there's definitely a point in the climax where the most annoying Christians would pull their hair out over the blasphemy/heresy/sheer cheek. Plus all the cute little blasphemies along the way.

The demons and Hell are two-thirds medieval horrors with a healthy leavening of tentacles. Indeed there are some sword-vs-tentacle fights that bring me back to my days reading the sword and sorcery tales that birthed as many elder gods as Lovecraft did. (This is praise! It was fun!) There are also some scenes that hit me in the same way the Exorcist did, not through the blasphemy (that part was also fun!) but because it struck at a modern person's values the way I guess blasphemy would hit the medieval, and that's a content warning for threatened CSA (it wasn't fun, but then I did pick up a horror novel expecting to be horrified. Also, it won't spoil the book to say it's not followed through on.). Other content warnings for disease (mostly but not only the Black Death), violence, medieval-level homophobia and antisemitism (both condemned by narrative context in ways that aren't particularly subtle, but which also avoid feeling like modern PSAs), descriptions of injuries and corpses, and possibly others that I'm not recalling at the moment. That list should give a flavor; if you have particular content concerns, StoryGraph has some more details in its reviews. Also a review of this book that beats mine--"5.0 Stars this book made me wish i believed in god".

I've seen Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief advertised as the newest wave of grimdark fantasy, which I guess it is--it's not a fantasy world we'd enjoy visiting--though it had too much a sense of humor to feel really grim to me. And heart. This book also has both humor (not so much as Blacktongue Thief, and neither of them are fucking Terry Pratchettt, but the kind of dry comic relief that goes naturally with dire circumstances) and heart. My favorite character was probably the gay priest they adopt along the way. It goes onto the pile alongside The Black Company novels and Richard K. Morgan's Land Fit for Heroes* as evidence that grimdark fantasy is a genre profoundly interested in human decency, whether revealed by the lack of it or its perseverance through the most unexpected circumstances.

Minor gripe about the last seventy-five pages or so, probably too cryptic to be a spoiler: Personally I think the story was a bit too easy on the Pope--sure, some of it can be blamed on the demons, but he was also clearly corrupt in a human and unpleasant way (not least by making Robert a "gift" to the cardinal) before the demons showed up, and that doesn't seem to impact his spiritual power. But 1) arguably the guy went through a sort of purgatory before then, and some of his power might actually come from Delphine and 2) the cosmos of this world has room for redemptive grace, the big version, so he may well be an example.

No ending spoilers, but throughout the book I had some good cathartic cries, both for grief and for relief and, okay, because the grace on both human and cosmic levels touched me, I think it's beautiful that we can choose to forgive others and be better ourselves than we were yesterday and even in the darkest times hope fucking perseveres, okay??

The least interesting analysis/critique of this book is that Delphine is a Mary Sue. (It helps a great deal that she's also a realistically, caringly depicted human preteen who can be silly, caring, clever, brave, and annoying--not to the reader but to the characters around her--in turns.) The most misleading analysis of this book is that it's a stellar example of the Found Family trope (in that many people who love the trope might not be prepared for the tone, and people who dislike the tone of most stories advertised as Found Family could still enjoy the book). The most interesting, but probably still misleading, way to approach the book is to debate whether Delphine is more inspired by Joan of Arc, Julian of Norwich, The Last Unicorn, or some other medieval saint and/or fantasy character. Come to think of it, she's pretty clearly a sister to the Infanta in Blacktongue Thief, though both the Infanta and Delphine might be surprised to hear it.

*I'm rereading the LFFH trilogy to get back in touch with my teenage self who first read it, but I don't necessarily recommend it, not least because Morgan's taken a transphobic turn (I will say I don't think you could have predicted it from the books, in fact that makes the turn all the more appalling and disappointing), also because it is extremely grim and its fascination with human decency doesn't really make up for how monotonous it gets by like the 200th page of torments and horrors. I enjoy horror fiction and gobble angst like candy and it's gotten too angsty for me. Between Two Fires was a nice break from it!

[fullibooked]

Soldiers, and Witches, and Thieves, oh my! Corvids, and Goblins, and Giants, Oh my! Horses, and Owlets, and Luck, Oh My!! I dip into the realm of grimdark infrequently, but this one is such fun. The magic is interesting, the goblins are nasty, the sass is real, and the tattoos, ooo the tattoos. Deadlegs creeped me out a bit, not gonna lie, (think of the smell!) but nothing could have spoiled the time I had with this book. The characters are all chaotic, especially the title character, and since it's his pov, it gets hilarious quickly. My corvid is not as large as some, but I had to have little Stranger poking her head in for Dalgatha's sake. And me poking my tongue out for Kinch's sake. Though I must say, Christopher Buehlman perhaps underestimates how hard it would be to hide ones black tongue when one is talking, because it's very noticeable. Even after a couple of hours when the temporary black tongue has nothing left but a bit of stain… still so noticeable. Nonetheless Buehlman's wit and writing is sharp as a crow's beak and I look forward to more.

[caffeinated-in-spirit]

"Thinking back on that moment, I wonder at how easily we are taken in by the desire to see things the way we would wish them, and how wilfully we ignore the reality of what only becomes obvious with the benefit of hindsight."

-Graham McNeill, "The Colonel's Monogram" from The Harrowed Paths

[foundintheforgotten]

Our Kickstarter campaign was HERE!

If you're interested in a sapphic, grimdark fantasy comic series featuring romance and horror, and older lady love interests, please consider checking our page out and preordering! If you are unable to, you can still help by spreading the word and reblogging!

PREORDER now at our shop HERE!

[gollancz]

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!

To celebrate the most wicked time of year, we’re unleashing one super limited edition proof of THE DEVILS by Joe Abercrombie 😈 The first opportunity for a non-bookseller, journalist or author to get their hands on the full book 😈 Exclusive teal colourway 😈 Gold foil 😈 Spot UV To be in with a chance of winning, head over to our instagram, be sure to LIKE the post, TAG a fellow devil, and FOLLOW Gollancz!! Entries close midnight on Sunday 3 November. UK only and must be 18+. Full T&Cs here.

[diamond-star]

People underestimate how much I love books.

I NEED them. I ADORE them.

They are my babies!

[ladzwriting]

I am GENUINELY unsure if I can post this one to instagram lmfao

thanks @ghostpoetics for the worst use of this prompt :3

[terralavee]

The Feast of Pigs

A Grimdark Tale about an experience Terra Lavee had in her own universe while dealing with another domain.

Based on a nightmare I had a long time ago, I've been waiting a long time to write it out and I finally managed to do so... for RP reasons.

Still It's a piece that symbolically and literally shows how Lavee operates herself when dealing with treachery and depravity within her own universe and shows why some other Domains are out to get her.

Text version down below

“There was a time long ago where I had sought to infiltrate a wealthy domain to whisk off their wealth to those newer rulers who were struggling. Hordes of gold, but especially troves and troves of food from fertile fields that filled their gluttonous stomachs. More than enough to share, enough of a reason to take matters into my own hands.”

“Only when we got there my followers and I came to find a domain bleak and barren. Her citizens clothed in rags and little spoils to their name. Pantries and grocers empty. Completely unlike the stories of opulence and a gilded city I had been told of.”

“My curiosity took over as Farol and I inquired to the townsfolk what had happened to their once mighty home. We were told stories of the royals having found some sort of ‘delicious secret’ that would make them even richer and stomachs fuller.”

“At first they required all of the wealth of their citizens. Which they obliged. Then all of their crops… Lastly, all children of school-age be taken to the castle so that they could be “trained” and this would be the key to unlocking the ‘secret,’ which they would share to everyone.” “Before they knew it, the royals had bunkered themselves up in their castle with no word in ages. Fertile fields sucked dry with no returns. Their citizens soon became malnourished, neglected, and forgotten as not a single child remained within their numbers.” “Something was wrong. Anyone’s alarm bells would be going off. So naturally I snooped more.”

“The castle was more like a fortress, locked up like a prison, but of course we snuck our way inside. There we saw what we had initially expected, glistening and lustrous excess, coated from floor to ceiling that would make even Versallies blush.” “The deeper we went the more we found storeroom after storeroom of fresh food. No expense spared to preserve and prepare it. Kitchens lined with cookbooks and tools ready to prepare any kind of meal imaginable. From the surface, one could see that they were greedily hoarding all the food for themselves. Leaving their people to suffer and starve… but that wasn’t the true source of their sudden withdrawal from their subjects.”

“No words can describe the horror that befell us both as we discovered the largest and most expensive butchery we had ever seen. Within was meat unlike any I had seen. It did not take long for me to realize what it was.” “Not pork, nor poultry, nor beef, nor seafood, nor venison, nor rabbit, nor lamb…” “They had been slaughtering their own kin and consuming them.”

“So gluttonous and mad in the minds of a gourmand that they became addicted to the fresh meat and bone of their young. A taboo and morally bankrupt delicacy so out of control evidence suggested they were considering tricking other domains into sending their children for the slaughter.”

“Oh… Had I not felt such a pit in my stomach in a good long time… and I was going to make them pay. In the only way I sought fit.”

“I hurried back to Libertalia to make preparations for the coming morning. This time I paraded to the foot of their castle with my followers, offering a hand of peace and trade in a “time of need.” My offering? A vast and expansive feast fit for only the most ravenous king. Their souls practically watering over the dishes only a witch of my kind could create.” “They rushed inside in hopes of no peasant watching. They did not even make it to their own banquet halls before tearing into the meal. Despite their expanded stomachs and stained bibs prior to my arrival they ate like they had been starved of even the smallest of crumbs.”

“Together Farol, my followers, and I simply watched as they devoured entree after entree. So entranced in their animalistic feeding that they did not even notice as their bodies began to contort and take new shape. The food was a trap, enchanted with true polymorph. Every last royal, from the domain ruler to his court, slowly took the form of the swine they truly were, and by the time they realized what had happened our own knives were upon them.”

“Much later I returned to their people and delivered the bitter, yet honest news. Those fortunate children spared from slaughter were returned to their waiting parents. Yet I opened my arms to the now orphaned people, their tormentors were gone, and I offered them a gift to ensure my sincerity.”

“A feast. Even grander than the first to fill the starving mouths of the people betrayed by the ones who were supposed to protect and nurture them. Now jubilantly dined on the finest pork they had ever tasted. Many wept for the first good meal they had eaten in ages. None the wiser to the fact they were now the ones who finished off their traitorous royals.”

“For the lowest form of depravity one can be driven to by gluttony, no greater punishment was there than to be torn apart and feasted upon by the ones they had stolen from and betrayed. Thus I came to call it ‘The Feast for Pigs.’”