Why Am I Reading Grimdark?
Recently I decided, for reasons that will become clear later this summer (how’s that for a teaser?), to explore the grimdark fantasy genre.
This may surprise some of you who have followed me for a while. I have, after all, gone on record saying we should avoid grimdark fantasy altogether because of its tendency toward nihilism.
So why am I reading it now, and what do I make of it?
Honestly, I haven’t read a lot of fantasy lately. The reason is simple: there just isn’t much good fantasy being written today. For me, Tolkien, Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, and others are far superior to almost all recently-published fantasy, and looking for the rare gems can be exhausting.
“The Blade Itself” by Joe Abercrombie
Recently, however, I picked up Joe Abercrombie’s “The Blade Itself”. For those of you who may not know, Abercrombie–along with Mark Lawrence–is widely considered to be the founder of the grimdark subgenre of fantasy. (Really, George R.R. Martin should be considered the leader!)
I was expecting all the hallmarks of the grimdark genre:
- Gray morality
- Blood baths
- Repulsive characters
- Long, drawn out descriptions of how horrible everything is
That’s been my experience of grimdark fantasy, particularly books 2-5 of “Game of Thrones” (I think book 1 is actually quite good).
What I got, however, was quite different.
Abercrombie thrusts the reader into the life of a barbarian known for his bloody ways who has an experience that makes him reconsider his past and entertain the possibility of morality in a world where morality is unlikely.
❌ What I Didn’t Like
What I didn’t like is something that is entirely a matter of personal preference and partly why I’ve been knocking my head against the genre of modern fantasy. That is, most fantasy writers today don’t treat fantasy as an escape from reality.
(As most of you know, I am a huge proponent of Tolkien’s idea that fantasy allows escape from the evil and banal aspects of our own life; and through that escape, we find a consolation that empowers us to be internally resilient and deal with reality in a brave, virtuous, heroic manner.)
Modern fantasy writers are not interested in this. The worlds they create are not escapes but rather mirrors of our postmodern world. It’s essentially LARPing: modern people dressing up and working out modern problems in modern ways.
I’m not saying this as an insult. If it’s done well, it’s enjoyable, and I did enjoy “The Blade Itself” a lot.
✅ What I Liked
I was pleasantly surprised at Abercrombie’s humorous and sympathetic take on very fallible characters. Yes, they are morally gray (one of them is a torturer, not for the sake of slaking some sort of weird sexual thirst for violence, which is a common trope, but for the sake of making restitution and balancing justice in the world).
This character is one of the most appealing and sympathetic characters. By the end of book one, the reader is rooting for him to win and find his place in an utterly decadent and rapidly declining society similar to our own post-enlightenment world of freedom and democracy.
A Fresh Look at Grimdark Fantasy
There are some trademark grimdark, heart-wrenching moments in this book, e.g. characters who are essentially good, or at least not evil, have to execute a teenager who himself killed innocents. In another scene, a likable character dies in a tragic and gruesome manner. So the book is definitely grimdark fantasy, but it’s also a reflection of our current world, starring empathetic characters, which is a win.
“The Justice of Kings” by Richard Swan
The second book I read is “The Justice of Kings” by Richard Swan. It’s a brand new series–a Polish-inspired Medieval fantasy–that recently concluded its third and final volume. The covers are spectacular, and for once, the author didn’t pander to modern publishing’s ideological commands.
Within the first chapter, I was utterly hooked. Swan is a very good writer. I couldn’t stop reading, which is impressive since I usually have a short attention span when reading on Kindle. The book has elements of crime fiction, mystery, and thriller, and the combination is highly effective.
❌ What I Didn’t Like
This is clearly a traditional Christian-bashing job. There’s an empire with a strong, militaristic religious bent that has conquered several smaller countries and dukedoms and enforced religious unanimity. It’s strongly reminiscent of the rzeczpospolita (the Polish religiously-informed domination of east Slavic lands enforced by templars) of the late medieval period. So it’s historically accurate and internally consistent, just not my favorite style.
✅ What I Liked
That said, there’s a lot to love. While the setting is a little too expected – patterned after the gritty, smelly, gray-brown vision of the Medieval world that’s currently dominating our cinema – it was set in the middle of winter in what is clearly inspired by east Slavic lands. If you’ve been to these places during the breaking point between winter and spring, you know there is no color in the world at all. For the dark, depressing world of this particular story, this setting works fantastically well.
The worldbuilding is also excellent. The set up of the different religions fighting each other, the political posturing of various powers, and the portrayal of the breakdown of a unified culture that was barely managing to keep the peace right before the advent of war is very powerful, especially as we readers today are watching tensions rise in Europe and the Middle East. It’s compelling and real.
Like Abercrombie’s book, it isn’t an escape in the Tolkienian sense, but you are able to enter into a secondary world with interesting characters, all of whom are very human.
The story is told from the perspective of a nineteen-year-old girl who is apprenticing under a wandering executioner. Over the course of the story, she grows from a nonexistent entity who interprets the world as she believes her boss is seeing it, to becoming someone who has her own place in society, all the while avoiding the repugnant “girl boss” trope. She is strong, interesting, and compelling. The executioner gains respect for her professional competence, and they develop an older brother/younger sister dynamic that is very rare in fantasy. Though the story is violent and dark (there are moments of dark magic and necromancy I skipped over), it is also real and rooted.
SPOILER ALERT – Skip to Should Grimdark Be Part of the Canon of Speculative Fiction? If You Don’t Want To Know What Happens
“The Justice of Kings” is a character study of a virtuous man who believes in the absolute moral clarity of his order of justices but then sees this order collapse into decadence. Because of this, he consciously chooses to break his own code. It is a profoundly tragic story of someone who loses his center of moral gravity and becomes utilitarian in his application of justice. At the end of the story, I was really rooting for him to remain the lone virtuous character in a morass of human failure. And then he caved. I was so mad at Richard Swan for doing this!
But in the end, I still gave the book a five star review. Why?
Again, this is not grimdark in that it celebrates nihilism and the postmodern worldview. It’s deeply tragic, and you can feel the author allowing this tragedy to unfold in an almost classical way as an opportunity for the reader to say, “No!” Allowing the reader this moral clarity while looking at an absolute morass of evil is a beautiful thing.
In the end, I believe there should be a prominent place for this kind of storytelling.
So… Should Grimdark Be Part of the Canon of Speculative Fiction?
This leads me to the question I raised at the beginning of this article:
Should grimdark fantasy be part of the canon of speculative fiction?
Let me give this question some context: I’m starting a publishing company through St. Athanasius Press called Wood Between Worlds Press. You can find us on Substack, where I’ve been having some really interesting conversations with other creatives.
Part of what I’m doing with this project is creating a definitive resource about why Christians should read speculative fiction, particularly fantasy.
In my first post, I announced our mission of publishing authors writing in the mythopoetic tradition of the Inklings, but for a new century.
The second post is titled The Sun’s Reflection in Water and is an essay version of a speech I gave for Doxacon last year. In it, I argue that Church fathers like St. Basil the Great find value in non-Christian writings for the ethical, moral, and spiritual development of young people who are beginning their journey of what it means to become fully human. Give it a read and subscribe for more articles like it!
This being the case, we need to do a lot of work in determining a canon for speculative fiction, a definitive list of books that will be remembered for centuries. We need to identify books that are not merely well-written, entertaining, and exciting, but that allow us to escape the evils of reality, become consoled by encountering something transcendent, and change our lives for the better.
Grimdark vs. Noblebright
Five years ago, I would have said grimdark fantasy absolutely does not belong in the canon because, by definition, the genre embraces a nihilistic viewpoint that prefers postmodernism to more traditional views of life, Christian and otherwise, that have predominated throughout world history up until this very strange moment. I said we can engage with grimdark carefully but ultimately wait for it to go into the dustbin of human history.
As an alternative, I offered the genre noblebright.
But let’s be honest – noblebright has a bit of the “taint” of Christian fiction to it, the glibness that tends not to engage with pain and suffering in substantive, real ways. To illustrate my point, consider that Dostoevsky would never have been published by 21st century Christian publishers!
Some of the better-known noblebright authors have written books I’ve really enjoyed, but often there’s something missing in this genre, some engagement with the pain of reality, the rootedness of this flesh and blood existence. That’s something the classics never shied away from.
This is my problem with the noblebright genre. It’s little more than clean fiction. If you’re doing it for kids, that’s fine, but if you’re doing it for adults, all you’re doing is setting up a parallel reality where everything smells like roses and you miss the opportunity for real impact.
And that’s why I’ve changed my mind about grimdark.
I recently spoke with Christopher Ruocchio (come join us on Patreon for live discussions like this!), whose books are very dark but whose message is profoundly good. You almost have to labor through the darkness to get the full impact of the goodness. Think of the moment in “The Return of the King” when the star shines in Mordor– that moment is heart-wrenchingly beautiful because there’s been nothing but unremitting darkness for so many chapters before.
Are We Capable of Writing Powerful Eucatastrophes?
Something weird happened on Facebook last week. “The Rings of Power” trailer dropped, and 30 minutes later, the “House of the Dragon” trailer was released. Now I don’t find “House of the Dragon” enjoyable, but it’s a far better show, and its trailer was objectively better (click here to learn what I think about “The Rings of Power”). Watching the trailers back-to-back was a reminder that these two series exist in completely different universes.
This led me to reflect in a Facebook post: are we even capable of writing the kind of heroic fiction that so well characterizes “The Lord of the Rings” and the work of the Inklings in general?
Tolkien could only have written such transcendent beauty because he went through the horrors of the war. We’ve been living, at least for my lifetime, in a world where there hasn’t been a lot of suffering compared to much of the history of mankind. So are we capable of writing powerful eucatastrophes?
My post on this question went mini-viral, and I got a lot of interesting comments from people who don’t normally visit my page. One comment in particular put this whole question into focus for me.
The “House of the Dragon” is not nihilistic grimdark garbage. It’s classical tragedy like the old Greek plays. In other words, humans have fatal flaws that end up angering the gods and ruining the characters’ lives. There’s a sense of determinism and fate.
When I read that comment, I thought: I get it. Right now, in this particular moment, in this twilight of Christendom, we’re living in a period akin to the end of Athens when the Greek tragedies were written. This reminds me that we need the clarity that tragedy provides.
So I wholeheartedly say that yes, some grimdark novels must be in the canon.
Will Richard Swan’s series be in the canon? I will finish it and let you know. Does Joe Abercrombie’s series belong? I’m not sure–I don’t think it’s as hefty and powerful as some others I’ve read, but it’s certainly an enjoyable read.
Want More Cultural Commentary Like This?
You can expect more of these shorter reviews of sci fi and fantasy on The Wood Between the Worlds Substack, and it’s also something we talk about in my Patreon community, which will become increasingly active as I transition away from social media.
Do join us! You can sign up for just $2/mo, and I offer free trials for some of my tiers.