I wanna read something that’s fucking brutal with fighting and sex and all the things, but also WELL WRITTEN (so NOT George R.R. Martin, I can’t stand his shit). I want Lord of the Rings on crack and steroids.
“Malazan: The Book of the Fallen” by Steven Erikson has probably got what you need.
The main series is 10 books long, and they are amongst the most violent, brutal, but ultimately very well-written series I’ve ever (so far) read (still on Book 5).
Books 2 and 3 were too dark for my tastes but I plugged on through and I’m loving it. Great characters, wonderful dialogue, and way less obsessed with Food as GRRM
I listen to audio books while I work and have been hunting for new long stories to listen to. I’ll definitely be grabbing this one.
Saving this for future references as well
I’ll definitely check it out! Sounds like what I’m looking for!
I bounced off of book 1 multiple times but just finished it last week and it is fantastic. The book just drops you in the middle of everything and largely lets you piece it together rather than give you a fresh faced character that everyone explains everything to. 50-150 pages was when I started to feel grounded and like I understood the world well enough to say I liked it.
Malazan is my favorite fantasy series but it ruined other fantasy for me. I’ve found nothing else that can compare in the scope, breadth, world building, and detail.
The world was developed by these guys as their tabletop rpg setting in college. The series takes place over hundreds of thousands of years but is written with the density of a short story.
I’d recommend keeping Tor’s re-read blog handy if you start getting lost. There are chapter summaries and discussions by both a first time reader and a rereader which are spoiler free but include foreshadowing and things to pay attention to. The user discussion below each post could contain spoilers though.
https://reactormag.com/columns/malazan-reread-of-the-fallen/?WT_mc.id=10586
The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is a fine example of grimdark high fantasy. It isn’t overflowing with sex scenes, but carnal relationships are definitely in play.
And it definitely ticks the box for “fucking brutal.”
I loved this and the other trilogy of his that I’ve read, brutal and dark certainly, but his character writing is mint. I need to read more of his stuff!
I don’t like what he does with his characters. Poor characters of Joe Abercrombie’s world!
I’ll add it to the list! Thank you!
I’m no stranger to dark fantasy but reading best served cold even I was like “God damn, he’s going there too?” So that’s a +1 from me
The Blade Itself
I didnt like the ending, but yeah. I guess the follow on books are good too but I haven’t tried them.
The follow up book about Caul Shivers is possibly even better than the original trilogy. Check it out.
I’m with you, the ending of the 3rd book deflated me and actually lowered my opinions on the first 2 books. I’m curious whether the follow-up books do anything to fix it, but I can’t find the motivation to read them now.
They don’t fix it but they’re good. Really enjoyed Best Served Cold.
TBF I actually meant the ending of the first book. I haven’t gone back to the series to finish it. I expected bloody nine content starting book two and it wasn’t.
Logen is in all 3 books of the trilogy, and plays prominent roles in all of them. It’s just a matter of the constantly shifting perspectives.
I lied, I finished the trilogy.
Logan jumps out the window in the end and I’m like “fuck. Thats it?” And then it’s all kids and idk if I want to continue.
SPOILERS FOR BOOK 3 HERE:
Yeah… I’m stuck on the idea of continuing, but the end of book 3 basically feels like instead of the world being a place that is mutable and changeable, it’s instead a deconstruction of the concept of heroism and would rather say that people are themselves, that they can’t be changed, and that the wizard has everyone dancing in his palm.
My friends say it continues to be good… But I got really attached to Logen and, surprisingly, Glokta. He might be my favorite character of the books so far and I kinda assume they are both gone? Makes it hard to want to keep going.
I came here to recommend The First Law trilogy. It’s the definition of gritty
I’m actually re-reading it right now. It’s been years since I originally read it, and I started the second follow-up series to the First Law Universe and couldn’t remember some of the characters. So I decided to re-read the first book, but it’s good enough that I’m going to read the whole trilogy again.
Richard k. Morgan’s foray into to fantasy “the steel remains” trilogy might meet that requirement. He’s the guy who wrote the altered carbon books, so it’s basically hard-boiled pulp fiction applied to swords and sorcery fantasy. Similarly Joe Abercrombie’s books operate similarly. Genre is… Grimdark I think.
Steven Erickson’s “Malazan book of the fallen” series also would meet the definition, but watch out—there’s a ton of them, and they can be a bit narratively challenging sometimes.
Man I got stuck on like book 4 of Malazan I think, it’s been a long time. Still have the books though, I should take another stab at it.
I’m still slowly working my way… think I’m in book 7 maybe? I sometimes find it hard with series where they change focuses and stories a lot, and malazan does that every book (the whole changing location every other book thing) and I also sometimes have trouble keeping track or who all the characters are, and who is dead, alive, or only sorta dead. But they are very high quality, even if I don’t always understand what is going on. Anyhow there’s so much of it I just dip in and out and will read other stuff for a while—definitely a marathon series haha
I did really enjoy the Altered Carbon books, and others have mentioned the other 2 series you said, so those sound good. Thanks!
I’ve been hyping up Dresden Files in damn near every book thread for the last four months, but damn if it doesn’t fit here too. There’s sex and murder in nearly every one of the books. The murder is very rarely clean, and the stakes are never low. Jim Butcher is one of my very favorite authors now, by a significant margin.
My guilty pleasure. His books draw me in but some of the sexism/arrogance (especially in earlier books) makes me cringe. Doesn’t stop me from staying up too late to finish one if I’ve started. Butcher knows how to keep me hooked.
His newer series the cinder spires is quite good as well.
I just finished reading through the entire series a month or two ago - what a fantastic series.
It has completely consumed my life for the last several months. I’m partway through Changes right now. I can’t remember the last time I was this completely absorbed in a book series.
Dresden Files are great. One of my favourite series. I am going through all the books slowly, don’t want to run out of them before the next one releases. Generally read a book every month or so. Last one I read was White Night. Going to start Small Favor when I am done with my current book.
It’s not exactly R rated, but Gideon the Ninth (and its sequels) don’t shy away from gore and raunchy language.
I guess T. Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel series. It may not hit the “fucking brutal” mark but it does cover a lot of dark themes like loss very well for a fantasy, also not afraid to get racy. I enjoy T. Kingfisher as an author so I highly recommend.
Sounds good! Thanks for the recommendation!
Lies of Locke Lamora is beautifully written gritty fantasy. Thus far there are 3 books in the series.
I’ve never read the Warhammer 40K books so I can speak to the quality of writing, but the series definitely matches the genre of interest.
I really enjoyed reading 40k books when I was younger, but they’re generally shit writing. The kind of complete schlock that is good when you want to turn off the brain.
The Gentleman Bastard sequence is fantastic, Lies of Locke Lamora hooked me so hard. Can’t wait for the other 4 books. Highly recommend it.
Mark Lawrence - Prince of Thorns. Loose fit but it scratches that itch for me anyway. Maybe it will for you too.
NK Jemisen’s the fifth season was amazing. It won a Hugo. Then the sequel was amazing and different and won the Hugo.
Then the last book in the trilogy was crazier and won the Hugo.
Truly wild magic and a very very brutal world.
Is it necessary to read the previous four seasons as well or can you skip those?
Heh, nice one.
Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant
Cenotaph Road series by Robert E. Vardeman. More sci fi than fantasy, but fantasy adjacent sci-fi.
I’ll look into it. I’m a little sc-fi’d out at the moment, but if it’s adjacent, it might do. Thanks for the recommendation!
Covenant is fantasy, so that might be the ticket
The Gap Cycle is SciFi, though. Its fairly fuckin dark.
TIL there’s a sub here for books.
Terry Goodkind wrote the Sword of Truth series beginning with The Wizard’s First rule in 1994, with 17 books in the main series and I believe still ongoing. Not much sex, but it has the brutality down, and is very well written.
I regret that I have but one downvote to give. Wizard’s First Rule is literally the worst book I ever read. (A lot of people do seem to like it, though.)
Wizard’s First Rule is the only tolerable book, if barely. They’re all thinly veiled (not thinly veiled) fetish writing, or high school level political theory.
At a certain point it’s clear that Terry fired enough editors that the remaining ones stopped trying.
Yeah Wizard’s First Rule even had a decent stopping point at the end, iirc? That or by the third or so. Good enough read if you’re an edgy teen.
I’m going to choose to interpret your comment as charitably as possible, and that your library is the best curated on the planet. What have you been reading?
Hah, I did mean it in the spirit of good discussion. (Though maybe I also feel like I have a sacred mission to keep the unwary from inadvertently Goodkinding themselves!)
I’ve actually been having a hard time getting into anything new lately for some reason, but I recently reread C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire and Magister series (serieses? trilogies), which are kind of dark, but not so “gritty, gorey” that I thought they’d be a good recommendation for this thread. The former in particular is excellent, and they’re both fairly unusual takes on fantasy.
And those are getting added to my list, I’ll see if they hold up
Goes weird and hard to follow after the 4th book. Even the 4th was a bit of a drag
Love the series, read it multiple times. It seems to get a lot of hate but I don’t get why. I like the story, hate the villains, and can get invested in the characters. Plus it’s very adult. My favorites series hands down.
I absolutely understand why people hate it. on lemmy, probably because of themes that could be interpreted as being anti communist. In the real world, because of how it mocks religion quite viciously, and promotes critical thinking.
Also multiple strong female characters who are well written, that really pisses people off.
Lol, the “strong female characters” and critical thinking of The Sword of Truth series. Might as well push Atlas Shrugged because “it’s got a female author”
i haven’t actually read Atlas Shrugged, probably should considering how often it’s referenced in discussions on literature.
It’s hard to get through… it’s huge, but keeps bludgeoning you with the same cartoonish ideas over and over again until you’re just exhausted. Kind of worth reading, just because it does come up in discussions so often, but don’t necessarily expect to enjoy it.
There are two aspects to it, one the books, and second the author. Author isn’t very likable, if you read some of his interviews you will understand. His opinion about himself, about fantasy, and general readers (and authors) of fantasy can be a bit annoying. As for the books, they sometimes have very stupid writing.
It has been a long time since I read the series, but one scene that I remember on top of my head, there was a woman (or group of them), who has to escape / pass through the whole army, so they go topless, cause then all the men in army will not be looking at their face and won’t recognize them.
There were many other things like that.
First off, that scene isn’t so they don’t recognize their faces. It’s to look like spirits and scare/shock them. They were a small army trying to use crazy tactics, I don’t see what’s so wrong about that. I’ve read it multiple times and I don’t remember a point where they go topless implying no one would ever look at their face if they were topless.
As for the author, I don’t know much about him, but I like the books. And way I think Michael Jackson is a bad person but I can still enjoy his music.
Nothing wrong with liking what others don’t. I just responded cause you said you don’t get why it gets so much hate. Of course, you don’t have to agree with the reasons.
BTW I just gave you a random example from my mind cause I read it a long time ago, maybe over 20 years or so. It’s possible I don’t remember it from the book but by some mention online. There were many other complaints about his writing though, but since you like it, and I don’t even remember most of it, no point arguing over it. 😀
The Poppy Wars which had an eastern theme.
The Prince of Nothing series which is quite grimdark in a fantasy setting.
The Crimson Empire series is a darkish revenge story.
The Covenant of Steel about a poor boy rising through the ranks.
The Rhenwar Saga involves more magic than the rest.
I really enjoyed The Poppy Wars series. I devoured all three books after reading her first book Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. Would recommend all of them. Babel isn’t high fantasy by rather a fantasy reimagining of history
The Black Company by Glenn Cook is pretty dark. It’s about a band of mercenaries taking part in a world war where there are basically no good guys. The first book stands well on its own, but it is part of a trilogy.
The world and the story is interesting, but for some reason I didn’t like how the book is written. Have only read the first book though, got the whole trilogy as omnibus, so will eventually get to the next two books.
While I enjoyed the whole trilogy, IMO the first book is definitely the best. If you didn’t care for its style, you probably won’t enjoy the other two.
They both have some DOPE set pieces tho
Thanks for the info!
Gods yes, awesome series for sure.
I’ll add it to the list!
If you’d be up for modern fantasy you might enjoy Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, or American Gods.
For high fantasy, Brando Sando has violence aplenty but not sex. I really like the Stormlight Archives.
I also wouldn’t write off the Shattered Sea series by Joe Abercrombie. Yes, they’re labelled YA but it just makes them easier to binge.
