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[Recommend] High/dark fantasy fiction
cj iwakura
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
So I'm rereading Game of Thrones again, and I really haven't read many books of the type at all.
Aside from the obvious LotR recommendations, hit me up, H/A. Bonus points for political intrigue.
(kind of a sucker for romantic subplots too)
I've read the Witcher book(The Last Wish) and loved it, so there's another good example.
Aside from the obvious LotR recommendations, hit me up, H/A. Bonus points for political intrigue.
(kind of a sucker for romantic subplots too)
I've read the Witcher book(The Last Wish) and loved it, so there's another good example.
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political intrigue, very much. (main character is the bastard son of a line of royalty that have a the-force kind of spirtual power).
The setting is high middle ages with the addition of 2 types of magic.
excellent writing, and interesting change from the standard sword's and sorcery fantasy.
Romantic subplot is important but not too dominant or awkward. More of a driving force...
the follow-up books are also very good (living ships, Fool's trilogy..)
I almost recommended the Farseer Trilogy, but I didn't know if it fit the dark part of the fantasy. I guess lots of bad things happen to and around Fitz. I read all 3 trilogies in that series and it was enjoyable.
I see these threads pop up now and again, and I am always the one pushing Robin Hobb. I can't reccomend these enough. They are not as grand in scale as Martin's books, but they don't need to be. The Farseer trilogy which starts with "Assassins Apprentice" are a little simpler, and smaller in scale, but the trade off is a deeper immersion with the main character. I found this series to be gritty and compelling, and rarely have I cared more for the protaganist.
Patrick Rothfuss is a rising star. I have not yet read the second book, but I read the first one twice within a month because I loved it so much.
EDIT: Oh and the Black Company Books are indeed awesome. Definitely my choice for when I feel like a straight-up military fantasy. I think I've read the first six books... You might look into some of his other series too. I remember almost buying the first Instrumentalities of the Night book but going for C.S. Friedman's Black Sun Rising instead (which was disappointing... I don't recommend it)
FYI, though, "high fantasy" means lots of elves and dragons and magic everywhere.
Wheel of Time.
Read Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, it starts off slow but once it hits its stride it's awesome. Blood spattered and very dark, with enough humour to prevent it from being soul crushing.
Also, don't read the Name of the Wind if you want dark, it is the opposite of dark.
I found the Covenant series to be a bit childish in feel, though I liked what it was trying to do.
I highly recommended The Coldfire Trilogy By Friedman. A bit low on the romantic sub-plots, but an awesomely conceived series.
I Second Wheel of Time, even though apparently everyone on here (minus one or two) hate it, though it isn't really all that dark.
Have you read The Dark Tower by Stephen King? Not fully...fantasy? But it can't really decide what it is. I wouldn't call it Sci-Fi, either, but it's somewhere deep in those two genres, it just isn't sure which. And of course it's dark, and one whole book of the 7 is dedicated to a love story (and there's another love-story between two of the nearly-main characters).
The Axis Trilogy (I always called it the "Wayfarer Redemption Trilogy) Gets pretty dark, especially in the...second trilogy? Or at least books 4, 5, and 6 of the "Trilogy". You should read the first books first, though...and it's still pretty dark, just not nearly *as* dark.
I hate to ask it, but have you read the Harry Potter series? While the first books aren't dark, the entire series gets progressively darker as it goes on (with, I think, a small respite at book 6) as well as progressively more mature. I have a slight problem with her somewhat predictable (at times) writing style, but her stories (overarchingly) are quite good.
Okay, that's all I can think of for now that hasn't been mentioned.
I just finished reading "Best Served Cold" by him. It was good, not as good as the First Law trilogy, but good.
The ending of that trilogy really disappointed me.
Retch. That's reader abuse, IMHO... I don't appreciate spending a dozen hours reading three long and quite enjoyable books just to have the author shit all over me in book 3's last two chapters. I guess you could call that "dark", but I call it betrayal.
Blah.
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I really couldn't care less about that, since the best character in the book got the best ending
And it was pretty much clear that there wasn't gonna be a big happy end.
I actually liked The Heroes by Abercrombie a lot, definitely better than Best Served Cold, which was still entertaining.
Gene Wolfe: The Knight and The Wizard. Two book series, probably some of his most accessible works and pretty dark in places and just completely fantastic in every way.
Ghormengast by Mervyn Peake is a classic and fits the bill.
I also suggest The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
It's a standalone story, have not yet read the second book, cause it felt a bit slow, will keep it on hold till Lynch has hopefully recovered from his troubles and finished the third one.
I still have not managed to read any of it, but maybe some Fritz Leiber?
I agree about Conan and Elric, though Elric is like the blueprint for every emo hero out there now and it might feel a bit dated, I still enjoyed it a lot when I first read it.
China Mieville if you want something really depressing.
Jeff Vandermeer's Shriek is pretty unique.
I also agree that Patrick Rothfuss is the opposite of dark, plus I just can't get myself to finish Wise Man's Fear as it just plods on and on and feels pretty pointless and I am not even at the part where Mary Sue gets all his superpowers.
I am about 400 pages in and put it away and read 2 other books since then.
Did The Heroes abuse its readers as much as First Law trilogy? Those books were great right up until the end. Kind of like "A Walk in the Woods", which was amazing until the kick-in-the-balls miserable ending.
With Hobb I could never get past his naming scheme, it's like getting clubbed over the head repeatedly by Captain Obvious. His writing is fine and the story is fine, it's just the names.
The Heroes and his other book, Best Served Cold, are extremely similar to the series and given the reason you don't like the series I don't think you'd like either as they follow a pretty similar pattern. I don't know if you were just looking for a happy ending, but I'm kind of surprised that you complain about only the end given that the entire series is filled with people being miserable and manipulated. I do think that all of this books definitely fit the dark theme that the OP asked for.
I think that the ending to The Heroes is a lot more satisfying, definitely not as negative for anyone involved, some characters even seem to learn something and change.
I couldn't make it through the first book of Malazan either. I keep meaning to go back and give it another try though.
The Black Company series is quite good.
interesting fact: Hobb's a woman.
Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council by China Mieville
I just read The Warded Man and the Desert Spear by Peter Brett and they're pretty damn promising
Oh and Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Stover. (these are technically sci-fi but most of their action takes place on another planet with a fantasy tech level)
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And Mary Gentle. Almost anything she's done really, but especially Ash, Ilario and 1610.
A second for Mieville, whose books can be bone crushingly dark, and Abercrombie - if, as noted above, you're serious about the 'dark' part. Happy endings for every..er..no-one, abound.
Chris Wooding's 'Retribution Falls' is less dark, but it has its moments.
Richard Morgan 'The Steel Remains'
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Thanks for the warning, heh. Sure, the series is filled with bad stuff happening to the protagonists, must 95% of that was not between themselves... they hung together as a group until the end, when everything fell apart in the most disastrous ways possible.
I wasn't exactly looking for a happy ending, but I was hoping for some resolution. The end of the First Law trilogy can basically be summed up with:
Besides, what's wrong with a happy ending? Anyhow, First Law is certainly dark, but I maintain that the "resolution" is reader abuse. There's a difference between "dark fantasy" and "miserable disappointment". It leaves me thinking there should be an axiom here:
Ambercrombie Axiom: Whatever you do, don't root for the characters! It's basically hopeless.
Its a new setting for him - the prose is a little more awkward than in, say, his later Kovacs novels. On the other hand, the setting is well done, and the characters are enjoyably grey throughout. On the other hand, there are even more sex scenes - if you didn't enjoy them the first two or three times around, this isn't going to make them any better (and may, without descending into the spoilerrific, be even worse).
Still, worth picking up The Steel Remains for the plot and characters, especially since you can apparently get it used off Amazon for $6.00
(OT: Turns out that one of his books is called 'Thirteen' there..how interesting)
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You don't have the good wizard gathering a handful of heroes and fighting the bad wizard and the entire empire he puppeteers from behind the imperial throne.
You just have two bad wizards using different means to fight each other, not caring in the slightest for the little people once they've served their purpose as tools.
Richard Morgan's Thirteen is actually called Black Man, but for reasons unknown got renamed to Thirteen for the later US release.
I actually read The Steel Remains just before starting a re-read of The First Law, and it felt like I just jumped from one book in a series to another. Both books have that "clever barbarian" archetype - Abercrombie's Logen Ninefingers and Morgan's Egar Dragonbane.
R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series, which starts with The Darkness That Comes Before ; each book is very thick, very intricate, very clever, and reaches 'do not let your children/grandparents read' levels of graphic very quickly. It is also, most assuredly, 'Dark Fantasy'
As an aside it's interesting that a lot of these recommendations (Lynch, Abercrombie, Hobb, Glen Cooks The Black Company) are low fantasy, that is, settings where typical genre tropes don't play an integral role. I'm not sure why that is, but it seemed worth noting.
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