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"Grimdark"
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Checked to see what Goodreads lists include - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3...Apparently The Lies of Locke Lamora is grimdark???? I wouldn't have include Wexler's The Thousand Names either. Lord Foul's Bane only because the main character is such a horrible person that it certain makes things grim and dark but given it's such a close match to LotR one wonders if LotR needs to be included under grimdark too (it's got a dark fallen angel-like villain, elves being converted to orcs, massive battles with vast amount of death, giant spiders, the Sam/Frodo storyline is very psychologically dark, armies of the dead, spectral evil kings that are super creepy, warped wizards and even the ending isn't exactly happy). Frankly the only thing missing is the descriptive gore.
However, if the definition is really - "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only WAR." then maybe ASoIaF counts, as does LotR and The Thousand Names, and even Codex Alera (by the last book it's about a grim and dark and hopeless a state of affairs I've ever read in the book)
However if it must also be " particularly dystopian, amoral, or violent" as per that list, then LotR, ASoIaF, Thousand Names (who is even amoral in this one?? I don't think demons should count...), Codex Alera are out of the category.
I don't find ASoIaF dystopian/violent/amoral on the whole, as pointed out there are twisted characters sure, but the world is more or less your standard medieval setting.
I still can't wrap my head around Locke Lamora through, sure the main character is a thief but neither he nor his world is gratuitously violent, dystopic nor even amoral (Locke isn't Robin Hood but neither is he the Godfather)! I've only read the first book but still...
That's avery interesting list. Thank you for pointing it out.I have read 5 Joe Abercrombie books from this list and there are several more on my TBR pile.
Looking at that list it is clear I have absolutely no idea what Grimdark entails. I always imagine it is raining all the time in grim dark books for some reason.
I tried reading Priest of Bones by Peter McLean, but I think I lasted for only about 20 pages. Way too rapey and disgusting for me. However I like the series starting with Blackwing by Ed McDonald.
I agree with Andrea. I guess I always equated grimdark with, well, a severe grimness in the tale. By that I mean that there is nary a ray of sunshine, the story contains gratuitous violence and rapine, and a lack of good old-fashioned hope. I know there was plenty of violence in the Gentleman Bastards, but I wouldn't have considered it grimdark, either. I think the humor and Gene's moral fortitude balanced out the dark very well. Heck, even Locke had his unselfish motives once in a while!
I don't know much from the list but some of the descriptions seem good to me. The comments say people were trying to put Harry Potter on there lol.LOTR is straight good defeating evil.
In sci-fi I think the Revelation Space universe would qualify.
Maybe H. P. Lovecraft. And the World of Darkness world. That was a roleplaying setting but there are some books and it's pretty horror themed but there are a lot of fantasy elements too.
I've always thought of Grimdark as books where most of the characters have few redeeming qualities, or if they do have faith, hope, goodness in them, it is slowly ground away by the end of the book. I also haven't been all that happy with most of the endings of the Grimdark books I've read. My definition definitely wouldn't include LotR. I think Joe Abercrombie's book definitely fit the bill, and while I enjoyed "The Blade Itself" and its sequels. I HATED some of his other books. I've stopped reading most books that are described as Grimdark.
I want characters that I can root for, and when I finish a book I want to feel good. Everyone doesn't have to survive and all the loose ends don't have to be neatly tied up, but I want to feel some level of satisfaction with the story.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion but in my opinion I consider grimdark to mostly be a meaningless marketing term used to sell books following the popularity of the Game of Thrones tv show. It's best not to pay attention to what is classified as "grimdark" for the sake of your own sanity...at least if you're like me and these things annoy you lolThe popularity of the term is very much linked to the rise of the GoT show specifically. Publishers then market other books by association, whether that association is stretched or otherwise. The term really has no clear measurable definition imo.
People also start playing an annoying historical revisionist game claiming Elric of Melnibone or other classics as "proto-grimdark" without seeming to recognise that one of the characteristics of sword & sorcery (vs heroic fantasy despite their close similarities) is having a morally grey protagonist or one who tends towards the antihero. The other thing is that there has been violence and hopelessness and dystopian societies in fantasy long before the term came into popular use. I've become quite a fan of Warhammer's Horus Heresy books myself and even though the term grimdark is a Warhammer reference, the way violence and dystopia are treated in the books hardly match the way it's used to describe supposedly "grimdark" books today.
I've literally heard everything from the Realm of the Elderlings to ASoIaF to Lies of Lock Lamora and described as grimdark. I thought LoLL and RotE being described that way especially funny because it essentially means anything that isn't always 100% sunshine and lollipops is now "grimdark". Heck for some "grimdark fans" any fantasy book they enjoy that even remotely makes them sad or shows a bit of bloodshed is now "grimdark"...this sounds like an exaggeration and yet it really isn't based on some of the books I've seen described this way. Don't even get me started on the definition of it being that it is more "gritty and realistic" than most fantasy which is laughable if anything. It's a term that I hope, after the popularity of GoT dies down over a few years, will eventually go the way of the dodo bird.
And yes one of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy/books generally is the creation of supposedly "new sub-genres" that so transparently have very little measurable meaning while matching large corporate marketing campaigns (grimdark and YA being the biggest offenders imo)...definitely "grinds my gears" lol
I find YA still has a place as a term, it's books aimed at teenagers, so they have some themes in common, particularly teenage protagonists. They'll tend to be less explicitly violent and sexual than an adult book can be, while more so than say a middle grade book. The problems characters will deal with are related to fitting in at school, rather than getting fired from your job. And the reading level will also tend to be somewhere in the middle (I always find YA to be fast reads, you don't get the dense stuff like Dune or LotR). I've seen in one used bookstore that they consistently put Charlaine Harris' True Blood series in the YA/Middle Grade section which I think is wrong. Yes, there are definitely teenagers out there who are quite fine reading these books but they are still adult books with explicit sex and blood and gore, and all adult themes & characters.
However I disagree with it being used as a label to say "only for teenagers" since I've read some amazing YA (some amazing middle grade too) even though I'm an adult. It's a categorization of target audience, but not the allowed audience and like any category, will have fuzzy edges and depends on the individual. So I'm allowed to browse the YA section as much as a teenager is free to browser the adult section. But I do expect to find books that read a bit differently depending on where I picked them up.
The label I have most trouble with is Steampunk actually. While the label itself seems clear, people put just about anything that has a Victorian setting and the glimpse of one steam driven machine as Steampunk. So while it's a very valid genre (as opposed to grimdark), it's very abused.
I agree Andrea. When I was managing a bookshop, I would never have put the True Blood series in YA and likewise, I was always uncomfortable selling Fifty Shades to schoolgirls - although I certainly couldn't refuse to sell it to them.A lot of the rise in popularity of YA came from Harry Potter and the huge adult audience that it had, so publishers pumped out more YA, requiring more shelf space. We used to keep copies of HP in both the SFF section and the YA, and a lot of publishers started to print copies of their popular YA titles with "adult" covers.
As for grimdark, I think it's a valid genre, but much smaller than marketing people would indicate - it's the latest buzzword, and they seem to be trying to put large amounts of what is really epic fantasy into it. There is no way that LotR is grimdark, and I would argue that the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant aren't either - the ultimate triumph of good in both of those shows that. I don't think SoIaF is either, but it's closer than most epic fantasy.
Tony wrote: "the ultimate triumph of good in both of those shows that"In a grimdark book...you wouldn't expect good to win in the end? It is definitely a rare story where good doesn't ultimately triumph even if there was a whole lot of rape/blood/torture along the way. Or maybe you mean a more subtle case where maybe good still wins but the bad guys aren't punished/fully defeated?
No, in a grimdark book, I don't necessarily expect the triumph of good and, in fact, in what is the prototype grimdark world - the Warhammer 40K universe - it could almost be argued that there are no forces of good. Certainly the forces of humanity under the Emperor and led by the Space Marines, wouldn't count as good although perhaps some of the other races such as the Elves or the Tau might.Also, in what I understand by grimdark, a victory for good is more of a temporary respite rather than an enduring triumph.
Ok lots here.Sure it doesn't mean much in the end, I do think it's become an overused trendy term.
In grimdark good never wins. Usually there's not even really any good guys. In Warhammer the Eldar are the closest thing to good guys but they're a dying race.
With the definition that we'd not expect to have any good guys, and that good doesn't necessarily win, then for ASoIaF we'll have to wait to see how it ends :) A lot of the good guys are getting killed off, while a lot of the bad guys are still running around. But bad guys are getting their just deserts and there are still some good guys trying to do good. So too early to tell if the dark prevails or not.
I’d consider Locke Lamora grimdark – there are no good guys, and the violence is gritty.I’m not a fan of grimdark. I need to have a character to root for, and I need good to win.
I dunno, Locke risked himself at the end of the first book to save everyone, he could have just bailed. So not only did he have redeeming features it had an essentially happy ending with the bad guys getting what they deserved. Note that I've not read the other books, just the first one so maybe it gets more grim as it goes along.
Most of Locke’s friends got killed, and he had to run away from home at the end, and he’s still a bastard, so it hits a lot of grimdark requirements while still being light-hearted at times. Kind of a squishy genre boundary.
I would definitely consider ASOIAF as Grimdark, as it doesn't try to hide the harsher aspects of life. And not only that, these harsher aspects are at the forefront of the book. A Game of Thrones without characters dying left and right wouldn't be the same at all. The brutality of the war, the deaths of all these characters, all of these try to bring the world of Westeros into a more grounded level, something more realistic, which is what I think Grimdark tries to do.The archetypal Grimdark novel for me would be either The Black Company by Glenn Cook or The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.
Others would be:
The Grim Company by Luke Scull
The Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Saul the Heir of Isauldur wrote: "I would definitely consider ASOIAF as Grimdark, as it doesn't try to hide the harsher aspects of life. And not only that, these harsher aspects are at the forefront of the book. A Game of Thrones w..."But it's realistic except for the fantasy elements, not an exaggerated universe of evil and suffering with no hope.
Book Nerd wrote: "Saul the Heir of Isauldur wrote: "I would definitely consider ASOIAF as Grimdark, as it doesn't try to hide the harsher aspects of life. And not only that, these harsher aspects are at the forefron..."Which brings any book that has big battles in it, like LotR to be grimdark, (there was a lot of harsh, dark stuff in LotR, lots of death, and even ambiguous characters with Boromir's lust of the Ring), while in ASoIaF while there are a few characters that are well and truly twisted and evil, others, say Jaime, get some redeeming features as we go along. At this point I still have hope that Westeros will come out in the end, whether it will be Daenerys swooping in with her dragons to fry the white walkers, or John Snow and Arya working together and restoring Winterfell as the capital or whatnot, I still suspect that good will triumph at the end (assuming we ever get there).
In fact, it would imply that just about any book that portrayed war or villainous characters would considered grimdark...but any books that didn't have realistic portrayal would just have two-dimensional characters. Even good guys should be flawed, and a villain is rarely convincing is he doesn't have something positive going for him, or at least a good sob story to explain why he's so evil (unless he's a secondary character, as some ASoIaF characters are, note that we don't get POV chapters from the really twisted ones, now that would be grimdark). Back to my LotR example, Frodo didn't actually save the day, in the end he succumbed, that's pretty grimdarkish again even though I agree LotR isn't grimdark. He's our protagonist and frankly, he didn't even get a happy ending.
Yeah, but there's a huge difference in tone between LoTR, where most of the main characters are good, noble, have good intentions, and are trying to save the world and Grimdark stories which usually feature evil or less than pleasant characters who are mostly after their own benefit. Whether they grow to have some redeeming qualities or not over a huge long series doesn't really change the fact that they're bad people who do pretty horrible things to other people. And then the Grimdark stories tend to have suffering and misery kind of at the forefront with little hope shown.
Both types of stories might deal with war, battles, and suffering, but the approach they take to it is very different in my opinion. Grimdark seems to see evil and suffering as inevitable or a normal part of life whereas the more traditional high fantasy stories like LoTR see it as something that's there to struggle against.
I don't think Frodo getting a happy ending is relevant, what is relevant is that he tried very hard to do the right thing, and even though he kind of succumbed to the ring's power he still struggled against it - with a lot of help from those around him. He was just a regular hobbit in the end. If he was an assassin or a thief or some unpleasant character who did it for his own ends then maybe that would make it a bit grimdarkish, but as it stands I don't think LoTR is at all within that subgenre.
Lord of the Rings is a very clear struggle to defeat evil, while I see grimdark as no clear good vs. bad; more every man for himself.
Noor wrote: "Yeah, but there's a huge difference in tone between LoTR, where most of the main characters are good, noble, have good intentions, and are trying to save the world and Grimdark stories which usuall..."Don't get me wrong, I wasn't implying that LotR was grimdark, but I use it to poke holes in other arguments saying that ASofIaF is grimdark by providing similar examples in something we already agree is not. And to get a clear picture in my head what should fall under the category.
Sauron, Saruman, etc are are all pure evil, just as some of the characters in ASoIaF, they never redeem themselves, why are these evil characters not pushing LotR to grimdark which the evil characters in ASoIaF do? Is the difference simply that they are not human so are allowed to be evil without tainting the genre?
And while say Jofrrey is a particularly vile character, you have people fighting against him, not just resigning themselves to their hopeless fate...or are you suggesting Robb was just as evil and Westeros would have been doomed no matter who won (well, given the White Walkers maybe that's so...)? Or like Jamie, another vile character who starts to show redeeming qualities...it doesn't wipe out his past crimes but does that not give one hope that the world can improve?
And in my mind...it's always every man for himself...because ultimately all of us only sacrifice ourselves because we couldn't live with ourselves otherwise. So whether it be out of a feeling of duty, or because they want to be the hero, they always do it because they chose to do it for themselves (yeah, kinda cynical but I think it's true). There is of course a difference from the person that goes out there and say "well here's an opportunity for ME to be king instead", but in the end it's always for yourself even if it's "I don't want to live in this ugly world" or "I don't want to watch other people suffer"...there's still an "I" in there.
The feeling I get is that in LotR because the villains are literally incarnations of evil, while characters such as Gandalf are literally incarnations of good, whereas in ASoIaF everyone is just human, the latter seems grimmer even though aspects of one can be found in the other? Also in ASoIaF there isn't the bad side and the good side...there are a bunch of factions involved so it's more complicated, perhaps that blurs the good vs evil aspect. Maybe when the White Walkers come over the Wall and everyone has to work together against them it will be less fuzzy as to who is good and how is evil (or maybe the WW's are good guys after all....)? :)
Audrey wrote: "Lord of the Rings is a very clear struggle to defeat evil, while I see grimdark as no clear good vs. bad; more every man for himself."You said it so concisely!
Andrea wrote: "Sauron, Saruman, etc are are all pure evil, just as some of the characters in ASoIaF, they never redeem themselves, why are these evil characters not pushing LotR to grimdark which the evil characters in ASoIaF do? Is the difference simply that they are not human so are allowed to be evil without tainting the genre?"
I think it has to do with how the evil characters are written. Again, my experience with ASoIaF was very minimal as I just can't handle grimdark, but from what I saw the evil characters are given so much airtime that it seems like what they're doing is normal in the context of the world and it gets to a point where they become people's favourite characters and such.
Or like Jamie, another vile character who starts to show redeeming qualities...it doesn't wipe out his past crimes but does that not give one hope that the world can improve?
Does it actually improve, though? Ever? Or are there just more bloodbaths and such? That's the vibe I get from seeing people's reactions to the show and the books. Just more misery and killing.
I think it's also how the main good characters are treated as well. Doesn't the main good guy get killed right from the start? Aside from the shock factor, what does this say about the world? Is it sending the message that good guys are naive, stupid, incapable of survival in this world, doomed? Again, this was the vibe I got and it's the same kind of vibe I get from a lot of grimdark I try to read. Like the world is for the evil characters to play their little games in and if you're a regular person you're pretty much done for. Whereas in high fantasy like LoTR the regular guys can do a lot. The Hobbits, including Merry, Pippin and Sam, not just Frodo, all play big roles.
Also in ASoIaF there isn't the bad side and the good side...there are a bunch of factions involved so it's more complicated, perhaps that blurs the good vs evil aspect.
I think you hit on one of the main distinctions for me between grimdark and other fantasy. That blurring is pretty extreme in books that I would consider grimdark. Like, some dude's an assassin, but I'm still supposed to care about his adventures and his backstory or someone's pillaged some farms, but they had a tragic childhood and so they're supposed to be "interesting" main characters. Grimdark kind of looks past the characters' horrific actions or turns it into just a mood-setting tool to make the character seem edgy or whatever...
I think that's enough rambling from me for now. Interesting discussion for sure.
I just finished R.F. Kuang's The Dragon Republic, sequel to her The Poppy War. While the first book only went dark towards the end, book 2 is full-on grimdark. Got me wondering how many other female authors are into writing in this sub-sub-genre.
Read an interview with her in Locus where she talked about the hard parts taking her weeks to write cause of the content!
I'm a little late to the party it seems, but to me, grim dark is less about misery or bleakness than it is about dread. Less the actual things that happen than the idea that no one is safe and that the "bad guys" can win. In that sense, I can kinda see why Game of Thrones is considered grim dark since there is always the dread that a character you are invested in could die a gruesome death or that, for example, the Boltons or the Lanisters or the white walkers could win.
Liam wrote: "I'm a little late to the party it seems, but to me, grim dark is less about misery or bleakness than it is about dread. Less the actual things that happen than the idea that no one is safe and that..."Not sure that exactly applies, I mean yes, for the most part we assume the good guys in our books will win and the bad guys lose, but don't you lose all suspense and interest in the conflict if you don't feel at some level that the characters may not win? Sorry to use LotR again, but we see Boromir and Gandalf die in the first book, so we have to assume others of the Fellowship are no more safe than they. Maybe Frodo would have have to jump into Mount Doom to destroy the ring (although yes, I would still go on the assumption somehow the ring would ultimately get destroyed, I never feared Sauron would win). And sure Gandalf came back, but when he falls off the bridge in Moria, you don't know that. Boromir is unlikely anyone's favorite but I believe Gandalf won our March Madness :)
If a book has no risk to favorite characters, and a guaranteed ending, I'd say it's kinda boring book :) Though of course there are levels at which you question the assumption as to whether the good guys will win & survive depending on the type and tone of book you are reading.
Wonder if the grim part is that you actually end up "expecting" the bad guys to win and your favorites to die, as opposed to not being quite sure how things will turn out but it would still be considered a twist ending if your favorite had to kick the bucket?
Because ultimately, I kind of expect George R.R. Martin to wrap up his series in some satisfying way. I think it would be a brave author indeed to let the White Walkers win so as a reader I'm pretty sure that won't happen. However will he kill off all but one positive character? Yeah, maybe. But then I've always felt that more realistic than dark, since why should only the peasants and "canon fodder" be killed off, in fact your chances of dying increase if you are a significant character involved in the main events :)
It's like in Star Trek, get a "redshirt" to sit in front of a panel and it will blow up and he'll die. Have a main character do the same and they might burn their hands. But in the real world, the panel doesn't care who is using it and will treat either character equally.
But then one could argue the real world is kinda grimdark...
The first time I read LotR (I was probably around 14) I was so distressed when Gandalf fell into the darkness that I stopped reading it for a week or two. I certainly didn't have the same reaction when Boromir was killed :)As for however Martin is going to finish SoIaF, honestly, I don't think he will. Even after Winds of Winter, I expect there will be at least two, maybe three more books - and at the rate he is currently writing them I don't think there is any chance that he will live long enough to complete them - hopefully he will leave comprehensive notes for whoever his estate brings in to ghost-write them. Although, with the story having been wrapped up by the HBO series, I wonder if there will be sufficient interest for that to happen.
Tony wrote: "The first time I read LotR (I was probably around 14) I was so distressed when Gandalf fell into the darkness that I stopped reading it for a week or two. ..."
Me, too, though I was a few years older (freshman at college.)
Not that I think a character death makes the work "grimdark".
Me, too, though I was a few years older (freshman at college.)
Not that I think a character death makes the work "grimdark".
G33z3r wrote: "Not that I think a character death makes the work "grimdark". Yeah, that was my point, even when it's a favorite or major character (though technically he's not the protagonist)
Interesting discussion thread.I've always considered Grimdark to mean a world in which the odds are invariably stacked against the good guys or the little people, there is no clear lines between good and evil, and most (but not all) of the main characters are capable of committing atrocities (whether justified or not) against their fellow men (and women).
There will always be some characters who stay true to their moral compass. But these characters rarely survive in Grimdark novels.
I usually don't think or care much about labels and subgenres, especially those that seem to be a marketing thing. I probably wouldn't label aSoIAF grimdark but I can see the case for it. I definitely don't think LotR or Locke Lamora are grimdark. In fact, when I hear grimdark I mostly think about Abercrombie's books: a terrible world, relentless dread, pessimism, wars and deaths, and when the best thing you can say for the protagonist is that they're not as bad as that other character who's a mass murderer.
@Andrea, While I somewhat take your point, I also don't entirely agree. For one thing, I was a little sad that Gandalf died, but Inever really worried about any of the other characters. Boromir was kind of a bad guy and though sad, his death was a bit too obvious of a red herring to make me worried about anyone else and as soon as gandalf returned, I had no doubts that the story would basically be the good guys win with few actual consequences. A similar example is the Wheel of Time series. I'm currently on book 7 and though the series has dark/sad moments, as soon as it introduced the idea of the pattern and in particular the idea of Tavereen, I immediately lost any sense of suspense that the book could have anything other than a good ending. Sure things like having (view spoiler) was surprising but (view spoiler).
Contrast this with Game of Thrones where Rob Stark is betrayed and killed along with much of his army by the Boltons, the Lanisters and the Freys. To a lot of people this came out of left field even with the hints and the set up because in LotR and WoT he would have been the main good guy character and even though the Starks aren't entirely out of the picture this event does have a major impact on the Game of Thrones world and is not just something that the other Starks can simply just undo. When I first saw that on the show, I felt physically sick and gave up watching the series for a couple years because I was just so full of despair that a character and faction I had become rather attached to had been so unexpectedly killed off and in such a devastating fashion. As such, even though, yes, the ending is not likely to be that the White Walkers overrun Westeros, I am not entirely confident that it will end with John and Daenerys married and ruling the continent together either. Hell, for all we know both John and Daenerys might both die (permanently) before the ending and for all we know, it might be Little Finger, or Stannis or one of the other less than ideal options that are still alive by the end who are running things, or heck the 7 Kingdoms might just revert to being 7 kingdoms or some other less than perfect ending compared to what you might expect from the likes of WoT or LotR.
That is the difference in my mind between the two
Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy
Books mentioned in this topic
The Dragon Republic (other topics)The Poppy War (other topics)
Priest of Bones (other topics)
Blackwing (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Peter McLean (other topics)Ed McDonald (other topics)
Joe Abercrombie (other topics)
It comes from the Warhammer 40000 books. "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war."
A universe where aliens and demons are endlessly trying to wipe out humanity and humans are ruled by a brutal totalitarian government that basically is willing to sacrifice 95% of the population so the other 5% can go on living in misery.
People are always calling A Song of Ice and Fire grimdark but I don't agree. There's a lot of war and palace intrigue but aside from a couple of psychos like Qyburn and Ramsey Bolton most people have realistic motivations and are morally ambivalent.