Monthly Short Story Winner: Grimdark
Xiagan
We’ve been getting such good feedback for the short stories our members have submitted in our Monthly Short Story Competition that we have decided to post them on the main…
dark fantasy
Dark Souls II: Of Pigs and Men
Zachary A. Matzo
Fans of fantasy are, more often than not, gamers. And when those two worlds meet, it can be a sublime experience. The Legend of Zelda, Baldur’s Gate, The Elder Scrolls…
Balancing Wit & Grit In Fantasy Fiction
Sebastien De Castell
The Mender of Soles Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a tragic play fraught with intrigue, betrayal, and murder that makes us question the very foundations of human nature. It starts with…
Low Fantasy Subgenres
Marsha A. Moore
In my last article, I compared and contrasted two very popular low fantasy subgenres, urban fantasy and paranormal romance. In this article, I’ll continue with an overview of other major…
She Who Waits by Daniel Polansky
Mike Shackle
Welcome back to Low Town and the world of the Warden, a disgraced secret police enforcer turned drug dealer. It’s not a place for the faint-hearted but for anyone who…
She Who Waits by Daniel Polansky
Editor’s Note: This review contains minor spoilers for the entire Low Town trilogy. If you search for “define warden” on Google, you’ll get the following: a person responsible for the…
Red Country by Joe Abercrombie
Overlord
Because this is the first review of Red Country (that I’m aware of) and we’ve been given the exclusive trailer, which you can see above – this review is a…
Why Are Our Heroes Getting Darker?
Tegan Beechey
I know this is a terrible request in my first article, but I am going to ask you to close your eyes. Go ahead! After putting in a few hours…
Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
In my opinion, Mark Lawrence is one of the finest writers of fantasy around today. His ability to craft beautiful, fluent prose is matched only by the likes of Patrick…
The Broken Empire Trilogy: The Allure of Jorg
The following is a guest post I wrote last year for Harper Voyager on the allure of Mark Lawrence’s protagonist Jorg Ancrath. Although most of my references were to the…
Berserk by Kentaro Miura
CptNemo
Berserk is fantasy at its finest. There are faeries, sages, knights, and demons – tropes, in fact, that may be terribly clichéd in a novel yet are fresh and exciting…
The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
Juan de Dios Dougnac
One of the many shocks that George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire gave me was how vivid the narration became by writing chapters from the point of…