Fantasy Book Club discussion
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Is fantasy getting darker?
I would guess also a lot of people perhaps are more used to the more graphic violence and sex in books and movies. I definitely agree there is often a thin line between the good guys and the bad guys now, look at the movies - Iron Man, Batman, Spiderman. They may not necessarily kill but they use illegal, rough and violent means but that is Ok they are the good guys...Not that I am complaining as I love those films but the point is often now there are no clear lines between the good side and the bad side. Even something like Starwars... all those grunts on the Deathstar, I bet there were servants and common folk just getting on with it, not evil. How many people cheered when the deathstar was destroyed?
Alexandra wrote: "Kevan wrote: "I've read 7 highly rated books this year as a part of 2013 fantasy challenge. The common thing is the darkness - Mistborn, Kingkiller Chronicle, Farseer, Drizzt, Way of Shadows. There..."Yes, that's so.
That the reader gets to spend some time - perhaps a few pages, perhaps more - in relatively salubrious environments (Shire, Rivendell) makes a difference (at least to me). It is different from a 800 page novel where all 800 pages are in misery-filled settings.
Fantasy is overwhelmingly dark, I agree. As, perhaps, is most adult fiction. A small dose of cheer improves the flavour for me :-)
Heck even Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe it is eternal winter:)
In my opinion the quality of both fantasy writing and the storyline used to be poor and one dimentional. But that has changed a lot during the last decade. In todays modern fantesy novels you won`t find a quest or a task who easily divide good from bad, there are no maidens and no chivalry. The prose is very good, the dialouge is "not forced" and the characters are whole humans. As I see it authors like Abercrombie and Rothfuss are among the best authors regardless of genre. And with that the stories get darker, because they become more realistic. And thats why i read them.
Is fantasy getting darker, in my opinion it has always been dark - sword and sorcery, witches and wizards, knights and assassins, are all violent character creations. It is you the reader who are finishing the tome (side note has any one commented on just how big some books are getting) who decides the depth of the said darkness of the book. Terry P's Discworld books taken in a different light are quite violent, Smaug is destruction incarnate and Gimli a killing machine, my point is all are dark.
In my opinion the quality of both fantasy writing and the storyline used to be poor and one dimentional. But that has changed a lot during the last decade. In todays modern fantesy novels you won`t find a quest or a task who easily divide good from bad, there are no maidens and no chivalry. The prose is very good, the dialouge is "not forced" and the characters are whole humans. As I see it authors like Abercrombie and Rothfuss are among the best authors regardless of genre. And with that the stories get darker, because they become more realistic. And thats why i read them.Bravo! Hans Erik. I agree with most of it, less with the last part, about Rothfuss being the one among the best authors. I didn´t find his Name of the Wind above average. and The prose is very good, the dialouge is "not forced" is something we could discuss, too.
I'm with Lára, Hans Erik's opinions mirror my own.
Game of Thrones, the Black Company, the Dark Tower, there's a lot of dark fantasy examples, it's true. Lamentation by Ken Scholes enchanted me right away with the description of the characters (esp. the wandering gypsy-like king), and horrified me right away with the deadly spell that, for all intents and purposes, was a magically-fuelled nuclear explosion.Even Mercedes Lackey's stories are filled with dark men - as she says herself in the song Oathbreakers, "Give him wide berth and his company shun, for darkness devours the dark mage" - even while she introduces us to the wonderful Companions. (Come to think of it, near-nuclear strike in those stories, too.)
Dark fantasy, however, for me, is best when it involves perserverence and the struggle to keep one's honor or principles when all the antagonists are doing their evil and nasty best to destroy the protaganists. There should be hope, which is one of the things that make Game of Thrones difficult for me - if there's hope, I have trouble seeing it.
Gritty's okay; hardships and heartaches are okay. Grinding everything down to the bones, not so much.
But David you hit on the problem with today's dark fantasy: seldom is there any hope. How can I as a reader find any hope, anyone to cheer for, or anyone to want to be vanquished/defeated/destroyed if I hate all the characters equally?
I can't.
Honestly, I stopped reading Game of Thrones because all that seemed to happen in each book was that another "good" guy got killed, and whenever I transferred my affection to another character, I knew it was only a matter of time before he got the axe as well.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for grit and realism, but when it gets to the point the writer villainizes every character in the name of realism, I am just done. There is no point in reading a book where I don't care who wins the war/battle/struggle because I hate everyone.
Last thing I wanted to mention, just because The Black Company has been mentioned several times in this thread and I am a huge Glen Cook fan from way back, is that I personally don't consider The Black Company a dark fantasy. The main reason is Croaker, who does allude to doing horrible things when he was younger and is capable of still doing them, but is always the guy trying to walk the straight and narrow road between good and bad without going too far. Croaker even makes comments throughout his annals about Lady being capable of doing just about anything to anyone, which he finds upsetting even though he adores her. That is why The Black Company worked: because Croaker - though flawed and capable of doing evil - never goes too far and turns into a true bad guy. The same can be said of the other annalists except Lady, who quite frankly would have been boring to have read about because we would have known she was going to do the most horrendous thing possible in any situation. Where would the suspense have been in that?
Well said, Wendell! That's the point I was trying to make, in fact, but you did a much better job.When I was young and read Charlotte's Web, I couldn't believe she died at the end, and I was inconsolable about it. But her death gave meaning to her life, and while it was a rough ride for my younger self, the story had hope.
An author - a good author - might murder main characters, even well-beloved main characters, and certainly could leave the protagonist at a point where the reader might think all hope is lost, but when fantasy becomes "too dark" for me is when all hope is actually lost.
Don't necessarily agree the Lady would always do the most horrendous thing possible in any situation. She was capable of it, certainly, no doubt - utter ruthlessness was her stock in trade - but she had redeeming qualities, too.
I agree Lady had redeeming qualities, but I suppose what I meant was that Croaker tended to chose the lesser of the two evils. He even did this when his choice might not completely solve his problem. Lady however tended to live by the motto "the end justifies the means" no matter how bloody or ruthless that was. Of course, Lady's first husband was much worse according to her statements in the books, so I suppose to Lady even her "ruthlessness" was not as bad as the Dominators.
There should be hope, which is one of the things that make Game of Thrones difficult for me - if there's hope, I have trouble seeing it. Gritty's okay; hardships and heartaches are okay. Grinding everything down to the bones, not so much.An author - a good author - might murder main characters, even well-beloved main characters, and certainly could leave the protagonist at a point where the reader might think all hope is lost, but when fantasy becomes "too dark" for me is when all hope is actually lost.
I'm right with you both. Conflict, hardships, these drive the drama but you need (a) people you like and (b) they need to rise above adversity.
They don't have to win all the time - but they have to have some victories and most importantly they need to keep a moral compass. At least that is the type of fantasy I enjoy the most.
Interesting discussion.For me, the violence should not be merely gratuitous--particularly the violence against women. I want characters I like and can cheer for. Adversity helps to create those characters and violence can be instrumental in creating that adversity--but it should not be the story itself. For example, I found the violence of Terry Goodkind's Sword of the Truth series to be significant, but necessary--it was used to establish the darkness--to show the thing to be met and conquered. By contrast, I found most of the violence in the Game of Thrones not as moving the story to create characters and to establish the conflict, but as the story itself. Consequently, well written or no, I simply didn't care about the characters. As there was no one to root for, I lost interest early on. . . .
I actually had the opposite reaction from you Patricia. I found the violence in the Sword Of Truth series to be gratuitous and puerile - quite over-the-top. By contrast, I thought the violence in ASOIAF to have real and lasting consequences on the lives of the characters, just like real-life violence. Goodkind's Richard has no problem massacring scores of opponents guiltlessly or kicking a young girl in the jaw so hard that she bites her own tongue off. Martin's characters bear the marks of violence both physically and mentally long after the violence has happened - again, the same way real-life violence leaves its marks.
Isn't that interesting, Bryan! Maybe then I have found violence to be gratuitous when I didn't like the character and not to be so when I did! Or, perhaps I was able to or allowed myself to look beyond it when I thought it was done in an effort to seek some greater good or to overcome some greater evil, but I did not do the same when I did not make such a connection with it? Or. . . .? Hmmmm. You certainly have given me some food for thought! Thank you!
I don't find the violence in GoT to be gratuitous at all, and certainly Martin has thought through the consequences of the violence that is visited on his characters.I also think that Martin has thought through the consequences of the violence on us, his readers, and that what bothers me about GoT is that I feel that part of his motivation as the author is to inflict pain on the reader for pain's sake.
If I'm doing my job right, at some point in the story arc, I'm going to kill someone off that people like in a way that will affect them. I want an emotional reaction! I want readers to cry when sorrows come, and to weep for joy when the protagonists overcome a hardship. I want the audience to be worried about the character and to be unpredictable enough that they didn't see the events coming before they got to that point.
But that's so they're invested in the characters, in the story! What bothers me most about Martin is that I feel like Charlie Brown and the football. "Oh, you like that guy? He's dead for some pointless reason." "Oh, you like those characters? Sorry, we wiped them out last week." I feel cheated for having invested myself in what appeared to be the main characters, only to learn that it wasn't them at all. Then again. Then again.
But that only actually happens twice. In one case there's half a book of warning. (and in the second case, I have to say I thought it was obvious they weren't the main characters all along!)
First of all I don't think that fantasy has really gotten darker in theme over time. Fantasy aimed at a "mature" audience has often turned to misery and pain to create an engaging story.The difference these days is that there is a growing obsession with explicit and detailed looks at violence and sexuality. Graphic depictions of rape, torture, murder, etc. are all to common these days.
Frankly I think it has more to do with pandering to the misanthropic man-child (or woman-child) in all of us, than it does with making a good story.
I think this is because authors have kind of forgotten that you can make something that is fun. Not every work has to roil our guts and make us cringe to engage us. Just having a story where cool things happen in fun ways is more than enough.
Good children media embraces this in a way that adult media doesn't. Look at Avatar the Last Airbender for example (I know, not a book). The show is all about dealing with themes of loss, failure, redemption, abuse, genocide, the horrors of war. It explores all of these themes very well without ever becoming to dark for children. It never stops being fun.
GoT is very popular, more so with the success of the TV show, personally I really like the brutality of the world depicted, the backstabbing politics and the stupidity of the noble knights in the face of reality. Its what I imagined how the medieval period was like but with dragons and wights.
I think "darkness" is cyclic... sure, there is a lot of fairly dark stuff out there today..... but if you want dark..... I mean really dark.... read "Red Nails" by Robert E. Howard.... it goes back to 1936
It's kind of funny.... when I first sat down to write my first book, I intended to write a dark, gritty tale myself.... not sure what happened, but the story ripped control away from me, and most of the reviews say it is things like "fun" and "lighthearted"... oh well...
J.W. wrote: "It's kind of funny.... when I first sat down to write my first book, I intended to write a dark, gritty tale myself.... not sure what happened, but the story ripped control away from me, and most o..."Be careful about mentioning your own books. Read the group rules, please. And the post for authors to read.
certainly wasn't intended as a "plug".... just sharing something I found funny .... apologies if it came off that way
I don't think fantasy as a whole is getting darker. But I do think darker fantasy series are getting more exposure in the media than they have in previous times. Fantasy will always have its lighter and darker sides, just like science fiction will always have its softer and harder forms.
With regards to the brutality of the past compared to that of today. I would argue that present day dictatorships (or at least those of the twentieth century onward) are responsible for far more deaths and a great deal more suffering. Compare the number of dead due to the inquisition to those in modern conflicts (e.g., the Rwandan civil war or the genocide in Cambodia). The numbers are, sadly, vastly worse for the more recent conflicts. Manufacturing wasn't the only thing that got more efficient in the modern age. We've become depressingly good at killing and hurting each other.
For me it really isn't a question of light vs dark in fantasy. As has been said, there have always been darkness in fantasy. As they say, there can be no lightness without darkness, or, no good without evil. Many of my favorite authors write what may be considered dark fantasy. But I need more than that. Show me that there's light at the end of the dark as Tolkien did. Give me hope where there is none as Sanderson does. Show me that there can be goodness where we least expected it as Rowling showed me. But most of all the thing I want from any book I read is to feel. Something. Anything. If I laugh, cry, get angry, I know the author did something right. Especially when I do all three. The worst thing a book, and author, can do is make me feel nothing. It does seem to me as though fantasy has become darker in recent years, however. Or, rather, I would say that fantasy is becoming more based on realism. I'm not saying I don't like dark fantasy. I do. I'm not saying I don't like G.R.R. Martin. I do. But I want something more too.
Dark and Gritty's in at the moment. I can only imagine how A Song of Ice and Fire's popularity is reinforcing this trend. Thats not to say all Fantasy is getting darker though, I mean YA's Fantasy is getting all romantic and lovey dovey.
What is Dark Fantasy is my question.The Dark Fantasy category fits under Horror on Amazon.
If you look up the definition on Wikipedia it'll tell you that it has dark and gloomy aspects.
That's what I like more in fantasy, not vampire stories. Looking at the latest Top 100 chart it looks like there's a pretty good mix.
I despise "GrimDark" fantasy.I saw a lot of people try to compare Tolkien to today's fantasy and it's just not the same. Tolkien believed that a thread of sadness was what made beauty and light so much better. So Tolkien distributed both darkness and light in his works.
Most of today's GrimDark fantasy seems to lovingly describe every single detail of the worst of torture, despair, rape and destruction. The lightness, the beauty...it's no longer there. Instead we end up with the point that "Life sucks and then you die. If you're not lucky you die in slow and painful ways."
No thanks. I'll pass.
I am an adult and I've lived a pretty good set of years. I know life sucks and then you die. I've seen that in life...so why would I waste my valuable free time to be depressed? After reading Amberombie's series...one of my friends was depressed for months. My husband read it and was like, "this is the most depressing bullshit I've read in my entire life."
Seriously? This is what I'm supposed to spend my money on?? If I want to be depressed, I turn on the news.
Bah! It's why I don't get into the popular series and books now. I dislike depression, torture, rape, disembowelment...
MrsJoseph (taking back my data & giving GR the middle finger) wrote: "I despise "GrimDark" fantasy.I saw a lot of people try to compare Tolkien to today's fantasy and it's just not the same. Tolkien believed that a thread of sadness was what made beauty and light ..."
Yay!! Me, too.
I remember the torture scenes in Wizard's First Rule, how it took up like 150 pages or something.I thought those were good, but many hated them. Perhaps a little too dark.
I guess I'm just surprised fantasy hasn't gotten darker since the economic times in which we live in are so dark for so many.
Are there books that reflect this? Boy, it's been 5 years, fantasy authors should have addressed this, or should they have?
Should fantasy deal with dark issues that have bearing on our own world? Now would be a great time for those books, but I'm just not seeing any.
Wizard's First Rule
Greg wrote: "I remember the torture scenes in Wizard's First Rule, how it took up like 150 pages or something.I thought those were good, but many hated them. Perhaps a little too dark.
I guess I'm just surp..."
lol, And I totally hated that series.
Couldn't get through The Blade Itself, either.
MrsJoseph (taking back my data & giving GR the middle finger) wrote: "I despise "GrimDark" fantasy.I saw a lot of people try to compare Tolkien to today's fantasy and it's just not the same. Tolkien believed that a thread of sadness was what made beauty and light ..."
Amen!
I think that life is dark and grim. More so for some than others. Yep we all die. So why not show reality within fantasy? I personally love The Blade Itself and all Abercrombies books. I also love LOTR and quite enjoyed Wizards first rule.
Not sure why people read all the YA cuddly teenage nonsense but I totally get why people want to read dark fantasy but not why adults want to read happy clappy fantasy.
Bev wrote: "I think that life is dark and grim. More so for some than others. Yep we all die. So why not show reality within fantasy? I personally love The Blade Itself and all Abercrombies books. I also love..."
This made me smile because a lot of what I like about Goodreads are the different opinions and mine couldn't be more different than yours...
Life if fun and happy - reading is entertainment and escapism - why would anyone want to spend their free time reading something dark and depressing?
I've read Abercrombie and Goodkind but they are dreadful and dark and depressing and not something that I want to spend me time with.
But
Everyone is different...
MrsJoseph (taking back my data & giving GR the middle finger) wrote: "I despise "GrimDark" fantasy.I saw a lot of people try to compare Tolkien to today's fantasy and it's just not the same. Tolkien believed that a thread of sadness was what made beauty and light ..."
I think the pendulum of readers' tastes will swing again within the next four years. We're reaching that critical mass now where the anti-hero story is beginning to sound too familiar, as happened with love-lorn heroines pining after vampires in leather jackets, or orphans discovering they have magical powers while thrust into a quest by a wizard. It's actually really hard to write a light fantasy novel these days, as readers demand a certain element of grit and realism to their worlds and the bad guys; it was a lot easier to write when evil was expected to be pure evil, and good was just really good (LOR, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander). Can you imagine giving Aragorn a drug habit? Or endowing Sauron with a speech impediment and a deep unrequited love for Galdriel or something, to make him more human? Me, neither, but that's the sort of moral grey-scale stuff readers expect now (that said, this moral ambiguity was what made Gollum so amazing).
Just to throw other works that ushered in the dark fantasy movement: Conan is the grand-daddy of it all, with Elric just behind. Conan was more interesting, although I loved Elric as a kid. Gene Wolf's Shadow of the Torturer had a pretty big ripple effect in the 80s, too.
And I hugely agree that while they are reacting to readers' tastes, publishers play a big role in what is publicized and published.
Speaking of LOR, think about how incredibly gritty the movie was. That was what made fantasy cool, perhaps for the first time gaining mass appeal in history.
The offshoot of gritty, popular TV is that a new kind of fan is perusing the fantasy aisle, expanding its appeal but in the "dark fantasy" direction. The GOT TV series' effect on popularizing fantasy will be large enough to some day merit a documentary. Even so, at some point people will look to fantasy for lighter, happier heroes.
Bev wrote: "I think that life is dark and grim. More so for some than others. Yep we all die. So why not show reality within fantasy?I personally love The Blade Itself and all Abercrombies books. I also love LOTR and quite enjoyed Wizards first rule.
Not sure why people read all the YA cuddly teenage nonsense but I totally get why people want to read dark fantasy but not why adults want to read happy clappy fantasy. "
Because I hate being depressed.
Because I have seen torture and abuse in real life.
Because life sucks and then you die - why litter my time here with additional depression?
Because I love being happy. Happy is good. Happy is stress-free. Happy lessens the amount of grey hair and wrinkles we pick up in this thing called life.
We all have our differences. I think that it's possible that the more difficult (or "realistic") your real life is...the less you look around for a substitute for life drama. I've lived...a lot.
I can get "this shit is fucked up" any time and any place...but to find something that makes me happy? That makes me smile until my cheeks hurt? That can take my mind away from all the troubles in my life? THAT is a story that I will grab and hold with all my might.
Y'all can have all the dark and depressing stories, I'll take two tickets to enjoying myself, please.
My biggest draw to fantasy was sense of wonder and the chance to let my imagination run really wild. Grimdark replaces sense of wonder with ...well, grimness; not an acceptable substitute.
Evgeny wrote: "My biggest draw to fantasy was ... the chance to let my imagination run really wild."Totally agree on the imagination bit. Its a even bigger draw for a writer - a chance to create as you explore a world.
I'm totally right there with you MrsJoseph. Reality is real enough for me too.
See, I thought The Blade Itself and that series was a bit dark, but it was balanced by this dark and dry humor as well. It worked well, but for some reason I've never read anything else by that author.I do think a clear divide between traditional fantasy and fantasy bringing in modern devices or ills is a good idea.
The Blade Itself
Greg wrote: "See, I thought The Blade Itself and that series was a bit dark, but it was balanced by this dark and dry humor as well. It worked well, but for some reason I've never read anything else by that au..."My husband read this series. He say that the series was about, "How good people die in horrible ways, bad guys almost always and life is hopeless."
After reading it he needed a palate cleanser.
But he said they are very well written with very interesting - if disgusting - characters.
I think the modern move into darkness is fundamentally about modern authors (not all of them, of course) writing from a nihilist perspective. They fixate and focus on disembowelment and rape and graphic violence because that makes sense from the perspective of their world view: that life has no meaning and it's a brutish, nasty life while it lasts. If that's how you interpret life, meaning and purpose, then you're probably going to write like that. The older fantasists like Tolkien and Lewis wrote from a christian or theist perspective, operating from the assumption that life and truth and beauty contained real meaning of lasting quality--things bigger and grander than our puny selves. That's why their depictions of evil and sorrow only served to make the light and joy in their stories brighter and more poignant (I think MrsJoseph pointed that out in somewhat different words earlier on).
I would be very curious to see someone like George Martin tackle a rewrite of the Lord of the Rings. I doubt it would turn out well. On the same page, I wonder if a writer such as Rothfuss consistently gets lost in the weeds of Kvothe's petty preoccupations with money and standing and relationships because his worldview doesn't extend much farther than those sorts of mundanities.
Christopher wrote: "l. On the same page, I wonder if a writer such as Rothfuss consistently gets lost in the weeds of Kvothe's petty preoccupations with money and standing and relationships because his worldview doesn't extend much farther than those sorts of mundanities. "You may know this, but Ruthfuss actually raises something like a half million for charity every year. I would say he rises above his own mundane life. THat said, sometimes Kvothe's problems are very petty.
I did not know that about Rothfuss. Good to hear. However, the development of Kvothe's character is just plain odd. Writing tends to reflect its creator.
Christopher wrote: "I think the modern move into darkness is fundamentally about modern authors (not all of them, of course) writing from a nihilist perspective. They fixate and focus on disembowelment and rape and gr..."This is a very good insight. Thanks for that. I hadn't thought of it in those terms exactly, but I think you could develop that theme even further and suggest that since there are more authors and readers now who lean towards nihilism than there were in the past, then it follows that those sensibilities will be more widely explored by writers and readers.
I do think that in the past, works of fiction were supposed to fill some higher purpose, and be in some way or other, aspirational. The same went for TV and movies. That's considered naive these days, although I still like a good Steven Spielberg movie or a Harry Potter book that I know will provide some hope for the future. Much as I loved the first 3 G.O.T books, the fundamental nihilism of it does get to be laborious by Dance with Dragons. I think that if/once that series shifts towards something involving hope and meaning for the people of those worlds (presumably at the tender hands of the Mother of Dragons), it'll mark that shift back towards a less nihilistic trend.
Eliot, that thought with GRRM's books, is what I have been looking for.Had to stop reading them....you give me hope.
Brenda ╰☆╮ wrote: "Eliot, that thought with GRRM's books, is what I have been looking for.Had to stop reading them....you give me hope."
I'm happy to give hope. Just hope there's hope in being hopeful ;-) I feel like that series has become so powerful in conditioning people's fantasy expectations. It also goes so far into nihilistic bummer-land that even the most cynical reader, at some point, has to say, "What's the point?" Martin has always said that Danny was the real portal and tie to Westeros for his creative vision, and everything she represents seems to indicate that eventually a measure of logic and justice and hope will be brought that dark, awful place. Also, reading into the history of the 100 years war might help illuminate whether things ever settle down and get hopeful.
Yes, but just wait until that TV series ends, GRRM dies, or the books are finished.There will be a huge hole in fantasy lovers' lives, and if you write that stuff, oh boy, gravy train!
Eliot, hope is an interesting lens through which to examine writing. That's an apt word to use, as it quickly focuses the discussion and adds clarity. I wonder what would happen if you analyzed trends in literature over the past 100 years for issues such as author world view, character world view, etc. It would be difficult to quantify, but it would make for a great doctoral thesis.There are a lot of reasons to write and read stories, but providing hope (encouragement, reasons to live and/or choose well, etc) is arguably in the top list.
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Yes but the Shire gets scourged, and Middle Earth gets quite a beating. I think with some of the older fantasy things start off all nice and the the midden hits the windmill, whereas the newer stuff it is dark to begin with. The bad stuff has already happened and it is striving towards a better time. Or stopping the darkness:)