Fantasy Aficionados discussion

Dark fantasy stories are enjoyed by many, look no farther than A Song of Ice and Fire. I list a dark fantasy as a fantasy where the hero dies in the end, and/or the antagonistic situation perseveres at the end.

"Winter is coming and... Oh, it's come, would you look at that?"

My question though is at what point does the hopelessness and death become too dark? When does a dark fantasy just make you feel depressed rather than exuberant at the wrenching of your emotions?

Where does it cross the line for you?

Personally, I don't think I have a threshold for dark or depressing.
I read some very bleak novels. I read Steven Erikson and he really tests your limits in some regards. There's scenes that won't leave you.
But dark and depressing often makes for a more entertaining read for me, as happy and heroic.
I like both, but I put down the occasional novel, due to it being to heroic and cheesy, but never put one down, because it was too dark.

And maybe sometimes the darkest circumstances bring out the best qualities in characters...and sometimes the worst.
I find it rather interesting how characters react to despair. Strangely I think it helps me to be a more stable person, if this makes sense.

I definitely have the opposite threshold as well; many fantasy stories become too happy and cheesy.

Thomas wrote: "I list a dark fantasy as a fantasy where the hero dies in the end, and/or the antagonistic situation perseveres at the end."
The classical definition of such a narrative form would be called "tragedy" (though the heroe's death isn't necessary).

I leave my comfort zone when there is too much splatter involved, like in Prince of Thorns: Descriptions of rape and brutality against children crosses that line.

^Ditto, and that's the only one that came to mind with the topic.

Yes, a dark fantasy for me is a tragedy, otherwise its just grim and gritty. I want to draw that distinction.

When I started reading fantasy, I first got into Dragonlance and of course, the Lord of the Rings. So I started of with a lot of High Fantasy.

But the first character I really connected with was the really tragic Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock. And something in his despair was way more intriguing to me than Dwarves, Heroes and Happy Endings.

I think that influence stuck and made me come back to that darker ambiente time and again over the years.

It depends, I've rarely had a problem with darkness in fantasy books, except when it's combined with bad writing, but I have huge problems with it in contemporary books. I'm not sure if it's because the kinds of writers who write fantasy books, are very different from the ones that write "social realism*"? Any thoughts?

*(I will not read a book, where the characters live in a bad neighbourhood, dad drinks, brother steals and does drugs, mum is depressed and sister is bullied at school and has an eating disorder)

Is that what dark fantasy means to people? To a lot of us it means giving the forces of entropy a fair shot and doing their Moments justice, not guaranteeing that they'll win.

(To me, Ice & Fire has become Exhibit A lately, because there's so little of the story now that isn't made up of What Went Wrong Next. Martin's got an incredible eye for how many ways people and fate can be ungenerous... but thousands of pages of just one thing after another?)

I'm all in favor of there being stories where the bad guy wins in the end, let alone how many let him or his heirs stay in business. But where does the balance have to be to be "dark"?

To me the darkness in a book means that the overall atmosphere/tone of the book is sinister/unsafe/twisted - it moves you a little out of your comfort zone.

A series about vampirehunters or ghostly hauntings isn't necessarily dark, but authors like Marcus Sedgwick or Neil Gaiman tend to write dark stories.

I haven't read the George R. Martin books, only watched the tv-series, which is good, but there's a danger that if too many characters that I like leave the story/die - I'll loose interest. I agree that a bit of uncertainty is good (I like the Dresden files by Jim Butcher, but when you know that you're reading book 6 out of 14, you're not that worried about Harry getting into any real danger!:-)
But not too much bleakness! There has to be a balance in the story.

I was surprised that some reviewers complained that Phoenix Rising was too dark, to me it's a perfect blend of suspense, fun and seriousness.

What constitutes dark fantasy (forgive the seeming ignorance of this question but stay with me)? Is 'dark' an atmosphere? or is it events? is 'dark' part of your/the character development? as a writer (and former 'dark' comedy playwright) I'm genuinely interested.
Answers on a dark postcard to Steve 123 Darksvile!

I guess it's atmosphere, characters that have more dark and depraved traits/sides of their personality and dark elements like torture, death, more detailed depictions of battle etc

My limits are much alike Carol and Andreas' - and I don't like detailed descriptions of torture aka gore for gores sake (I didn't like American Psycho)

Andreas wrote: "Thomas wrote: "I list a dark fantasy as a fantasy where the hero dies in the end, and/or the antagonistic situation perseveres at the end."
The classical definition of such a narrative form would b..."

@Andreas - Brent Weeks had some similar themes in
The Night Angel Trilogy

And yeah -- scenes where children are abused are horrific.

Dark & gritty with blood, gore, grime and overall pungent nastiness (think Glokta, et al in The Blade Itself) are fine by me. But involve the young ones and I'm turned off.

I don't think I have a line. If something gets too intense or depressing, I put it down for awhile and come back to it later. There are certainly books that twisted me up, bent me for awhile. I was literally sick to my stomach when the little boy was hit by the truck in Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Rosemary's Baby was utterly baffling to me at the age I read it. The cognitive dissonance was disturbing. And I wrestled with the reality of gray morality when Thomas Covenant (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever) raped the mother of his child. However, these dark books pushed me to expand my thinking and open my mind. Life ain't all rainbows and lollipops after all.

Thomas wrote: "I definitely have the opposite threshold as well; many fantasy stories become too happy and cheesy."

I totally agree with Thomas. I don't think it can get too dark for me, but spare me the Pollyanna.

The older I get, the quicker my line on dark/depressing has been drawn. I am a very character-driven reader and my favorite books are books I enjoy re-reading ... visiting favorite characters/friends again, so to speak. For this reason I definitely don't deal well with noir and dead major characters ... I suspect it is because at this stage in my life, I already have had many good friends that are no longer here. For me, reading is an escape ... more death/depression is not escape reading ... or entertainment ... for me.

I'm also old enough (and rational enough) to know that happy-ever-after is not guaranteed in life ... but that's one reason it's called fantasy.

I agree with Sharon. I think an author being willing to kill off a major character can be interesting in certain situations but I think it can be overdone (GRRM). I also hate when I read a fantasy novel where there's not really a character that I can cheer for. I mean I'm all for dark and brooding but at least have Some redeeming qualities.

To me, there's different kinds of "dark".

I sort of prefer the version of dark fantasy which lives in the weird greyland between horror and fantasy. This, I believe, was the original usage of the term - though, of course, I may be wrong about that. The main difference, to me, between horror and dark fantasy of this variety is in whether the dark/horror elements are used to horrify/terrify or whether they are merely parts of a more fantasy-based story.

The other kind of dark fantasy I enjoy is more of an ambience thing - like gothic romances and mysteries and the sort, but with fantastical and supernatural elements.

And, lastly, I can get behind a good anti-hero with a certain amount of grit and cynicsm and whatnot, but which, ultimately, have a sort of, well, if not happy then at least bittersweet kind of ending.

What seems to being discussed here the most is what I would call Grimdark consisting of Crapsack Worlds. I'm not really a fan of this particular type of story. As others have sad, I read for entertainment, and while I know that shit happens irl, I don't read to be depressed.

Which isn't to say I can't enjoy a good tear-jerker now and again but, even still, the tear-jerker and similar type stories I prefer have some kind of lighter element or higher moral. For instance, my husband doesn't understand how I love Les Miserables (the musical - I've never read the book), when I don't, generally, like sad stories. But, to me, while Les Mis is sad, the ultimate theme is about love and redemption...

Anyway -

While I'm certainly not going to suggest that such stories shouldn't exist, which I've seen some people do, one thing does bug me. I kind of get a bit irritated when Crapsack stories get sold as being "realistic", as a counterpoint to the more "pollyanna-ish" types of stories. For one, I'm not a fan of the false dichotomy and, for another, I don't find either to be particularly realistic. I like more balanced kinds of stories... but, then, that's just me.

Colleen, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of what is "dark" fantasy. Fantasy with horror elements that don't necessarily scare.

Great answers. I see a wide variety of tolerances and desires.

For me, I need to see the fire of something good in the heart of the main character, even if it is buried deep. If that's not there, and the character is truly amoral or downright despicable, then I am just reading a treatment for a villain.

As far as tragedy goes, where the hero dies at the end, I can handle that as long as there is something within them that has resolved or fulfilled. This is a narrow line. In some cases, WOOL 1 for example, this is a very thin line indeed.

I have a fairly high threshold for dark stories. I love Prince of Thorns and The Black Jewels Trilogy: Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, Queen of the Darkness because the authors pushed the boundaries of what's considered acceptable behavior.

That being said, I don't like tragedies. I can deal with a major character dying, Harry Potter is still my favorite series, but I'd rather they didn't. A character doesn't need to die for the story to be dark. For me, darkness in a story isn't about how many characters die. It's about what each character had to go through. We know Harry Potter doesn't die, but from book 4-7 he suffered... a lot and that's what made the stories dark.

I love anti-heroes. This character type is one of the things that defines a dark fantasy for me- when a story focuses on someone with questionable morals. However, there should be some redeeming quality about them or at least something about them that I like.

So... I haven't read much horror over the years, despite that being my genre of choice for writing and movie watching... would Brian Lumley's Necroscope (Vampire) series count as Dark Fantasy, or as straight up horror? I think it's like 30 years old now...

My usual definition of horror is, not only are the dangers scary, the hero's not just Defying The Odds but close to inherently outmatched ("He's got a scary 'gun,' you've got a set of antlers.") So Necroscope would be dark fantasy, with all the powers the hero has.

I agree, "dark" shouldn't have to go to the level of Doomed or Crapsack. It could be even-odds fantasy adventure that uses dark imagery like vampires-- but I'd call it cheesy to use the d-word if the plot didn't give *some* respect to how dangerous those threats are supposed to be.

(I know, invading armies aren't supposed to be harmless either. But, the armies are supposed to show up where you can put your own army out--sooner or later, anyway, so they could be dark or "just" epic. Vampires are supposed to sneak into society and suck you dry where you can barely fight back at all; that *has* to be dark.)

Colleen, I hadn't previously seen this website. Thanks for sharing. It's great.

C.E. wrote: "So... I haven't read much horror over the years, despite that being my genre of choice for writing and movie watching... would Brian Lumley's Necroscope (Vampire) series count as Dark Fantasy, or ..."

I shelved it on my horrors-eque shelf, but it's not really scary and could easily be dark fantasy.


@Kimberly - Welcome. Just don't get sucked in too much. It can be addicting. ;)

I have to pretty much agree with Sharon. I want to be entertained, not depressed by the books I read.

Now, a nicely evil villain, a brutal set of circumstances the protagonist must endure, those are great, but I don't need the ongoing thousands of pages of letdown when I see characters I love crushed forever beneath the wheels of fate.

I'd say a lot of it's pacing, and purity. The more total the despair is and the longer it runs, the less I think it's worth reading. It's the hints that something just might be salvaged that keep it going.

(Neil Gaiman once got his hero out of Hell with the line “What power would hell have if those imprisoned here would not be able to dream of heaven?”)

I'm not sure I consider A Song Of Fire And Ice to be Dark Fantasy. I'm more likely to call it realistic Fantasy.
It's a Fantasy setting based on our own Medieval world and it simply shows what life was like back then. And it he doesn't deal in absolutes of good and evil either.

To me Dark Fantasy has to be much darker in terms of setting too. A world where the Dark Lord won. And the protagonist isn't going to overthrow him, he's just trying to survive.

Working towards a definition:
You know how there's always a simple and easily-defined Goal for the characters in the novel? Ring into volcano, say. Or Happily Ever After. The Bennett girls must marry.
So, in a Dark work, this central goal is =not= achieved. Lizzie, Jane and Mary die single in penury; the couple does not marry and live happily ever after. Other side goals can work out well to ameliorate the failure of the central goal (the Bennett girls become pirates, let us say, and support the entire family on the plunder, or the romance-novel couple finds other partners for love) but the main target of the entire plot is a fail.
Does this make sense?

I'm good with "Dark". I'm good with "Splatterpunk Horror". I'm good with "gritty realism".

...With the GIANT caveat that it must serve a purpose in the narrative.

@Kimbery used the example of the child getting hit by a truck in King's Pet Sematary - I'm good with that scene. The tragedy drove the main character to perform an act that he never would have done otherwise. The book is about the consequences of the actions you choose and the sinister power of grief. The death was not trivialized or gratuitous.

On the other hand, I'm having a horrible time enjoying
Prince of Thorns. I do feel that the atrocities Jorg commits are gratuitous and unwarranted in the narrative. They are committed by characters I do not care about on characters I do not care about for reasons I do not care about.

but, that's just my opinion...ymmv.

Well, the non-gratuitous requirement should apply to everything, not just violent acts. No conversation should be filler, no sex scene should be just there for the porny value, every character in the cast should bear some narrative weight. Everything in the work should drive plot and character. Or, to put it another way, everything that can be cut should be cut. A story should be lean and taut, like a supermodel, not fat and sloppy like Donald Trump.

I disagree Brenda. You're describing a personal preference, not a requirement. There are plenty of people that enjoy rambling exposition or fluff. Not every novel needs to be a streamlined work of art. Sometimes you need brain candy. Then again I enjoy bad B movies and campy things in general.

@Brenda: Exactly!

I can even live with "Rubenesque" prose, provided it is, like Rubens' paintings, colorful, sensual, and opulent in a pleasing way.

I would say dark has to do with a view of human nature. Maybe it is realistic that people will be selfish and cruel, especially when survival is at stake. But it's possible to have serious, frightening and deadly events, yet have human dignity and compassion. Waiting for the last Harry Potter, I so hoped he would win but not by killing, and indeed the strongest force turned out to be love. I would say that is not dark in spite of all the suffering and loss.

Kind of funny that I can stand a lot more violence and cruelty in fantasy than I can in literary fiction, or non-fiction. If the actions in Game of Thrones had been in Nazi Germany, or current day Sudan, I would have quit after a few pages. There's more remove with a fantasy world. However, there are also personal sensitivities. Some people can't read about cruelty to animals or children in peril. I can't read about torture. I was enjoying Wizard's First Rule till it got to a scene set up to maximize pain and humiliation. I couldn't easily skip ahead to avoid it as it wen ton and on, so I just stopped,

Depends on the story. With a good story to give context and justification for the darkness, I personally think anything is fair game.

For me what makes a book depressing enough that I don't want to read it depends a lot on how the characters react to their circumstances and not as much the circumstances themselves. For instance, I don't mind that much when a favorite character dies, in fact I almost like being sad over it.
But when a character despairs or feels like nothing they do will matter or just gives up... I find that a lot more depressing. Also a character basically has to be fundamentally good. Like, they have shades of grey and dark in them and they may fumble a little at doing the right thing, but at the end of the day they do do the right thing.
Basically, I don't like books that leave me with the feeling that 'life is nasty, brutish and short' and that there is basically no point in continuing on. (Why I can't stand John Steinbeck).

My preferences definitely go to the darker side. My favorite reading is horror and dark fantasy. I like to explore the darker side of human nature or the monsters out there among us.

Personally I think we are darker than I would like in fantasy - it seems to be all about showing how anti-hero we can make the characters, and worse yet the worlds aren't an escape to somewhere we want to spend time, but rather a place that I feel like I need to pop a few Prozac before setting in.

So...I'm always on the lookout for more optimistic fantasy. I'm not talking shiny paladins here, but I do want a world that isn't all doom and gloom and where there can be triumphs and not all is lost. So does anyone have recommendations for me? I'd love to find some "less dark" fantasy to explore.

Happiness and Hero's are fine and dandy but hardship and heartache are much more interesting as far as story lines go , so yeah blacker the better for mine

Sharon wrote: "The older I get, the quicker my line on dark/depressing has been drawn. I am a very character-driven reader and my favorite books are books I enjoy re-reading ... visiting favorite characters/friends again, so to speak. For this reason I definitely don't deal well with noir and dead major characters ... I suspect it is because at this stage in my life, I already have had many good friends that are no longer here. For me, reading is an escape ... more death/depression is not escape reading ... or entertainment ... for me."

/like

She hit my feelings perfectly.

I really don't have a line for "too dark", but like other people have mentioned, I hate gratuitous torture when it's just for the sake of shock. If it's a torturer who is using it to get info (ie. Glokta), then I don't mind. But I don't like reading 20 pages of someone getting tortured just because the characters gets his jollies off on it. It's pointless and doesn't progress the story.

Wow, it seems that a lot of people have the sense that books where you don't know if the main characters are safe are considered 'dark'. I never really thought that, I always considered them more 'real' then 'dark'.

I remember when I first read A Game of Thrones. It was the first book to really, truly broke the childhood sense of 'main characters don't die'. They might suffer, but they never die- and on rare occasions when they do, it's for some great and noble purpose like in Salamandastron. GRRM's books were the first I'd ever encountered where the author was perfectly willing to kill off his characters, and by god, don't get attached to anyone! I loved the Red Wedding even though I absolutely stunned after having read it- it's just so memorable. His characters are never safe, and that's why his books are so engaging to me.

For me, a lot of fantasy books are like Star Trek. Don't get me wrong, I'm a hard core trekkie. But you've always got the feeling that everyone's gonna be just fine, because they are. There are only a few, very specific and very contained instances a character dies- every other time, no matter how dire the situation, everyone's good. It's fun, but it isn't real.

But I never considered death and despair to necessarily be dark... Dark to me always seemed like something bordering on horror, something spooky, or something emotionally disturbing. And that kind of book I don't have a lot of experience with as I don't like stories that come to close to horror!

Dragonsteel wrote: "For me what makes a book depressing enough that I don't want to read it depends a lot on how the characters react to their circumstances and not as much the circumstances themselves. For instance, ..."

A fellow Steinbeck hater! I so agree with you. Ever read The Pearl? If you haven't, don't. I'm just sayin'.

I agree that it's more a world view of darkness that I don't like than an issue of violence or dark themes. While I probably won't enjoy gratuitous violence for violence's sake (I didn't even get through the first chapter of Prince of Thorns), what really turns me off is being depressed after I'm done reading a book. I couldn't get through the Thomas the Covenant series due to that.

I'm still on the fence about whether I'll enjoy GRRM, so it helps to hear what others have to say. That's an awful lot of commitment for something that I may not like.

I want to add that I love Stephen King. His books can be a little dark, but there's just enough hope in them to keep things interesting.

I don't mind dark but I do mind crude/vulgar. I personally detested GRRM's writing in A Dance of Dragons and his crude usage of the c##t word.

Well, there's dark and there's lightless. At the tail end of 'The Road Warrior', a lot of characters we'd come to know and like got killed. One was the 'Warrior Woman', who, based on my experience with American films, was going to be the title character's love interest by the end of the movie. When she was killed, I sat up in my seat, thinking: Whoa. NOBODY is safe in this story! Now I don't know what will happen next!
And then there are any number of bad zombie movies, many of which were run over and over again on cable during October. In the really bad ones, a few survivors manage to escape, but then during the closing credits they all get killed. That's lightless. It's the opposite of all the main characters surviving. And if I'm convinced that everyone will be dead, or undead, at the end of the movie, I can't bring myself to care about any of the characters, or even watch the film.

I have to admit, I read for pleasure. I want my emotions manipulated, but so that I feel good. Now, bad things can happen, but there should be some hope or triumph or vindication, or it's just depressing.

Look at the film Braveheart. Let's divorce it from historical fact, just look at it as a story. Terrible things happen to the protagonist. His people are oppressed, his wife is murdered, he is betrayed and tortured and dies a pretty horrible death. But he has his revenge on the fictional version of King Edward and his minions (so evil is punished) and his example and sacrifice inspire Robert the Bruce to lead the Scots to victory and throw off the shackles of English oppression (so good comes of his sacrifice.)

Yes, the history major in me had some issues with the nice, tidy way it was presented, and the facts that were racked, hanged, drawn, and quartered in the process, but as a story it works. It's plenty dark, the hero endures great hardship, but in the end, all that pain and struggle has some reward.

In a hypothetical GRRM screenplay version, the queen's infidelity would be discovered, she and the baby would die horribly, Scotland would be overrun with fire and the sword and the earth sown with salt, and cyanide capsule would have been sold with the popcorn for viewers who just didn't see any point in going on living after that.

I want my sense of justice and hope to get its treat for enduring the injustices it has to sit through.

I just quit reading Perdido Street Station about halfway through even though the writing is brilliant, the world incredibly detailed and the story original. But every scene involved descriptions of things, places and people that were broken, decrepit, diseased, brutish, etc. When I got the idea of making a list of all the synonyms for those words, I figured it was time to stop reading. I even looked ahead to the end, which I "never" do, and that didn't look a bit better. 700 pages of no variety was too much for me. But I'd still recommend that book if someone isn't put off by that type of world.

Judy wrote: " what really turns me off is being depressed after I'm done reading a book"

My words exactly! :-)

Robin and Patrick - great input (i almost spilled my coffee giggling when I read about the synonym list and the cyanide capsules :-)

For me there is no "too dark."
But there is frivolously dark.

The dark needs to be either horrifying, disturbing, or somehow strangely seductive in a sick way, or some mixture of the three.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a bleak story-- a bleak story says something honest about the world, as any good story does... but occasionally you get people who throw in bleak endings just for cheap shock, and it's no more real than a tacked-on happy ending.

Cheap shock is the mindkiller, I think. Disturbing imagery loses its power when it exists for its own sake. The disturbance should be about something real. Possibly exaggerated for effect. But there's a fine line between that and schlock.

Robb wrote: "For me there is no "too dark."
But there is frivolously dark.

That line's a keeper.

"Dark" ought to be a part of the story: have a reason, show its consequences, have the right fit or contrast with the rest of the story. (So true, endings are where some people tack on the worst misfits.)

And then you have the story where the point is "life sucks." I guess some of those could work, or be the right thing to read at the right moments... but I keep thinking people write them because the story's moral is "So all that matters is that you give up, and then write about it so other people can give up too."