mojave_wolf: Dark Fantasy

mojave_wolf (

mojave_wolf) wrote,
@ 2009-07-11 15:08:00

Dark Fantasy
First, for those of you who, like me, fell in love with Lane Robins' Maledicte, she has a new book out, called Kings and Assassins. Based purely on her past work, I recommend it highly. If you haven't read Maledicte yet, I strongly strongly strongly urge you to go do so asap if you like intoxicatingly written fantasy fiction.

I found this out when another blog (by a famous writer, yet!) wanted dark fantasy recommendations. I took a couple of things away from reading the responses. One of the more interesting things about the different recs was the very, very different ideas of what constitutes dark fantasy. Someone recommended Zelazney's Chronicles of Amber, which is a truly great series that I truly love (and goes without saying the rec again), but except for a couple of scattered segments, not remotely something I would label "Dark Fantasy".

Someone else recommended Patricia McKillup's "The Riddlemaster of Hed." Okay, I love this book. The trilogy it starts is one of my most beloved books of all time. But if this is dark fantasy, so are Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and Crown Duel. I love all of these books, and all of them have *some* darkness (damn, Charlotte's Web has some darkness) but they are NOT DARK FANTASY. I just . . . no. Amber and the Riddle of Stars trilogy are not dark fantasy. Period.

So what is dark fantasy? Several people suggested Tanith Lee, and I agree. Others mentioned Michael Moorcock, and logically, I gotta say "yes", but I still don't internally classify him that way (maybe only because it's been too long and memory has warped things since high school, because from what I remember, he certainly should count). Others suggested George RR Martin, Robin Hobb and Sarah Monette. I can't tell you why, as all are plenty dark, but I wouldn't classify any of these things that way. (which is weird, because I can think of things by Tanith Lee that I would call dark fantasy which work out happier than stuff by Hobb that I wouldn't, for example)

A lot of people (me included) were not at all sure what the person requesting dark fantasy recs (not the author, but a friend of his) wanted. And people tried to come up with a defintion. I don't think anyone managed it. Someone said "horror, but where the protagonist(s) at least have some hope of coping". I initially liked this defnition, then realized that over 90% of actual horror would fit this definition. So unless we're gonna make "Salem's Lot" a subset of "dark fantasy", it doesn't quite work. (and a lot of people did give mutliple recs, based on whether "horror" was included; so did I).

I personally thought of including Kari Sperring's Living with Ghosts, which I'd recently read, because in a lot of ways it would fit, but as with Hobb/Martin/Monette, something just wasn't properly "dark" enough . . . the whole perspective just seems too non-doomed. (again, given the bleakness of martin's latest and the way Hobb's Assassin trilogy wound up, I can't quite say why I would say this . . .)

So I'm going for a sort of sustained tone . . . Maledicte, for example, immerses you in the lead character's perspective and the overall dark-god-haunted atmophere so that reading it is sort like mainlining something sensual but bad for you in some icy fluttering sink into something caressing even while people are cutting each other up with both words and swords sort of way . . .

Maybe that is it-- whether one gets the sense that there's something really attractive in the darkness in the novel (or short story, or whatever)(and in which case I'd have to ditch my horror rec from that thread)? Or maybe this is just such an ill-defined term that no one is ever going to agree (except that Riddlemaster of Hed, for all that some of the bad guys who admit to lacking in compassion nonetheless seem full of interesting passion, when we get a proper glimpse of them, is NOT DARK FANTASY, good grief! I think we can all agree on that. No offense to the person who said this, who hopefully is none of you reading me.)

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ela_bird
2009-07-11 11:14 pm UTC (link)

I am of the opinion that categorizing anything like books and music is a very risky business. They are so incredibly subjective that it seems slightly outlandish to expect everyone to agree on type of genre. Yes, there are the clear-cut obvious ones like, for instance, the Dragon Lance series or Madonna but one has to understand that what one listener/reader takes away from a song/book may be completely different than another. I was about 14 when I was talking to a woman about Madonna's "Material Girl" and she was telling me how she hates that song because of the selfish, self-centered, materialistic image that Madonna portrays of herself and I commented that I actually really like the song, not for its lyrics, but for the tune, rhythm, sound and melody. The same thing, I think, and even moreso, applies to books. Their interpretation depends greatly on life experiences of the individual reading. To you, Chronicles of Amber might be kid's play but to someone who has read nothing but vanillas like Sweet Valley High their whole life and considered it indulging will experience CoA in a very different light.

Some people think TOOL is alternative rock. I want to slap them. But that's their interpretation. To me, TOOL cannot be categorized. What their music does for me on a full-spectrum experience simply cannot be placed into one closed-minded, in-the-box category. But their CD's are always in the Rock section at music stores. Sometimes, if the stores are daring, they might even shove them into the Metal section. How ballsy and progressive of them.

~Ela.

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	mojave_wolf 2009-07-12 12:28 am UTC (link)
	Point taken. And I can see how people could read things very differently, and choose different aspects to focus on. And this could be a meaningless category. Except Sweet Valley High. That definitely isn't dark fantasy! (sez I who never read it) Also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am not a huge fan of Tool. ::ducks:: (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ataxi 2009-07-12 03:35 pm UTC (link)
	Well, that's what Tool is - progressive. j/k (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	ela_bird 2009-07-12 03:39 pm UTC (link)
	HA! I can't argue with that. They're that in the actual definition of the word. ::reaches up and smacks MW for not liking Tool:: the nerve. ~Ela. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	ataxi 2009-07-12 03:49 pm UTC (link)
	Ha, well I meant progressive as in prog ;-) Language - so fluid, so pointless. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mojave_wolf 2009-07-12 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	Ow! That smarts. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sartorias 2009-07-12 12:47 am UTC (link)
	I think of dark fantasy having little humor and a lot of horror. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mojave_wolf 2009-07-12 03:06 am UTC (link)
	heh, at first I thought this was just your snarky way of saying you didn't like stuff categorized as dark fantasy, but come to think of it . . . this description, at least to my way of thinking, has a point (the prominent sense of humor being one reason I found someone's recommendation of the Simon R. Green's "nightside" series strange, in that thread). (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	sartorias 2009-07-12 03:40 am UTC (link)
	No, no snark at all. The old Gothick of Mrs. Edgeworth and The Monk, et all, depended on just that type of atmosphere--little or no humor,and Grand Guignol locales and actions and emotions. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mojave_wolf 2009-07-12 11:29 pm UTC (link)
	Aye, Gothic fantasy/horror is a much easier, more well-defined and probably all round more useful category. Definitely a lot overlap. (Reply to this) (Parent)

redcandle17
2009-07-12 01:20 am UTC (link)

Maybe that is it-- whether one gets the sense that there's something really attractive in the darkness in the novel

I'd say that's it, which is why Laurell K. Hamilton first comes to mind. The thing I most liked about the Anita Blake series before LKH lost her marbles was the sense that Anita was standing on the edge of the precipice. And what I dislike about the later books - besides the sex scenes overwhelming the plot - is that Anita has fallen over that edge but LKH doesn't acknowledge it.

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mojave_wolf
2009-07-12 03:15 am UTC (link)

I remember someone arguing that dark fantasy is just a marketing category for "urban fantasy other than paranormal romance", and early LKH would fit that bill (obviously, later LKH would not), plus the "horror where people can effectively fight back" definition of one commenter. I dunno about Anita standing on the edge of the precipice but I haven't read Skin Trade or, I think, the book or so before it. ::trites to remember the last one in series I read, fails, decides to pretend the whole thing stopped w/"Obsidian Butterfly", tho I did read a few after that).

i basically never thought of her as bad and actually thought her a lot of her moral qualms were, ummmm, misguided. Especially from someone who's cool about killing chickens and goats to raise the dead. *That's* a moral precipice. And I think my dislike of her later books keeps me from saying anything intelligent about her early ones, though I did quite like both this series and the Merry Gentry one for quite a while.

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redcandle17
2009-07-12 04:07 am UTC (link)

The thing that always interested me the most about Anita - and which has never been directly addressed in any of the novels I read - is her reasons for choosing to become a vampire executioner. She makes it clear early on that the pay is very low, just a token. The other vampire executioners we see either became executioners because vampires were responsible for something traumatic in their childhood or because they like killing and vampires are a legal outlet for their urges. Vampires never did anything to Anita until she became an executioner so I have to wonder if she doesn't use them as a target for rage she harbors about her family(growing up feeling like a "small dark mistake" after her father remarried) and fiance(her first - and until she slept with Jean Claude in book six, her only - lover) who broke up with her because his mother didn't like the fact that her mother was Mexican.

In Skin Trade she thinks about something that happens in a previous book, an instance where she had to kill vampires for something that wouldn't be a capital offense for humans, and acknowledges that she is a murderer.

But anyway the reason I call the ABVH series "dark" is because the violence - which becomes entwined with sex long before Narcissus In Chains - is written in a way to make the reader enjoy it. ASoIaF is violent but the violence isn't meant to be enjoyed the way ABVH is. The other fantasy series that immediately comes to mind is Anne Bishop's Black Jewels novels, for the same reason.

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mojave_wolf
2009-07-12 11:09 pm UTC (link)

Someone (or a couple of someone's, I think) recommended Bishop (this was on Brust's blog, fwiw). And yeah, the first book in that trilogy especially qualifies as dark. Her "Sebastian", too.

Also, very good points about Anita, that I never thought of. She really was kind of a fundie in her thinking early on, complete w/all the repressed desires and rage against the other. Nice thoughts.

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	la_marquise_de_ 2009-07-12 11:52 am UTC (link)
	That's me, the blonde end of dark fantasy! (Reply to this) (Thread)

mojave_wolf
2009-07-12 10:57 pm UTC (link)

heh, I have no idea whether you consider yourself dark fantasy or not. I seriously thought about putting you there (the disccussion was in Brust's blog). I'm still inclined to "no" even while thinking maybe I need to broaden my definition or simply quit talking about the category.

And I had no idea you were blonde! Aha! My faux review was write, and you are really Kelly Spelling who played Brenda on the original 90210 in disguise! What a happy accident of discovery! And your tone, so much darker than Dumas, yes, yes, Doestevsky really was your inspiration, whatever you say, and "The Plague"!

Perhaps I should repost my Leaving With Ghosts review here!

(actually, I really had to restrain myself from doing that anyway, right after, as I frequently find myself hilarious, and clearly, am far too self-absorbed)

Victor reviews here I come!!!

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	la_marquise_de_ 2009-07-13 10:21 am UTC (link)
	I guess I classify as darkish fantasy -- someone called it a dark fantasy of manners, which kind of works. But the truth is I don't know. I write Kari stuff. (But I did read an awful lot of Dostoevsky in my teens. Help, I'm a French-influenced late 19thc. Russian.) Blonde just now, but it varies a lot! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mojave_wolf 2009-07-13 09:32 pm UTC (link)
	Huh. I always thought of your hair as reddish-brown; old icon? And yes, Kari stuff. Tis very good. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

la_marquise_de_
2009-07-14 09:27 am UTC (link)

The hair tends to default to red-brown, but I have phases of other colours. (The favourite being blue!) It's black and pink in the icon, I think.
BTW, if you'd like to review for Vector, I do have a book that needs to be reviewed by someone who has never met the author -- he's a lovely man but he's very well known in UK fandom , so finding a neutral reviewer is almost impossible here. It's a short story collection (Sf). Email me off lj if you're interested.

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ataxi
2009-07-12 03:46 pm UTC (link)

To me a term like "dark fantasy" is perhaps a little more about hoping readers want to define themselves in relation to the work than about defining a category of work itself.

Literary terms that talk about the scope of information, or the style, e.g. "psychologically realist" or "stream of consciousness" make a bit more sense than a label like "dark fantasy" which is more about marketing.

Some of your other commenters have pointed out that e.g. GRRM isn't terribly "dark". I agree, and I'd claim it was because his books presuppose the possibility of identifying and distinguishing between "good" and "evil" on some level, of working towards goals, of victory and defeat.

Fantasy scenarios can provide a means to illustrate the idea of the meaninglessness of existence, language and humanity, and the lack of a foundational morality bound up with the world. Light content within this bleaker philosophical frame (e.g. Vance) can be significantly darker, to me, than "depraved" violence, rapine and horror within a comfortingly moral overarching space of ideas.

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mojave_wolf
2009-07-12 11:04 pm UTC (link)

These are good thioughts, and worth far more deliberation than I have time to give them at the moment. I think I agree w/you about the clear demarcation in grrm, as opposed to some of the things I actually call "dark fantasy"; he's just very *grim* traditional fantasy. (hah, no pun intended there) Though I always think there's a point in identifying and distinguishing and working towards goals and there's always victory and defeat of some sort as a meaningful way of viewing outcomes, and of course I think there's always meaning even if there's not some uber-being out there to give it to you; if all else fails, make your own meaning and impose it on things (and if morphic fields r fer reel, then maybe what meaning we all impose does have some degree of bounceback effect on the actual universe, even aside from other considerations of "meaning"). But yeah, basically, I think you otherwise made great points and I think you're mostly right and have helped clarify my own thoughts on the matter, so thanks!

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ataxi
2009-07-13 02:57 am UTC (link)

Well, thanks to you too.

Yes, GRRM reads like trad fantasy with a reweighted distribution of probabilities: the heroes fail (much) more often, die more often, suffer horrible losses, torture, abandonment, rape more often. But I have a feeling the end - should it ever come - won't be a Greek tragedy. There will be a stack of corpses, but there will at least be a narrative of post-Ragnarok renewal. Much like the last HP book actually.

I just saw the film of "The Possibility of an Island" by Houellebecq and I suppose you could call it dark. The "island" of the title seems to refer to a quest for perfect isolation. The plot revolves around the discovery of a hybrid cloning technology that allows present day people to be born into a de-humanised, re-natured post-apocalyptic future as photosynthesising motile plants. The central character is reborn both physically and spiritually, reads the history leading up to his restoration in a handwritten journal, and sets off on a meditative vision quest across the landscape with only a dog for company (of the dog he says "for the first time, I experienced perfect love"). Otherwise he is alone.

But meanwhile his old lover has also been restored to life, and the film closes with her, angry and frustrated, about to reach him in his perfect isolation, and restore conflict and pain to his world of one.

That to me is quite a dark fantasy - a speculation that what people truly need for contentment is to completely disassociate themselves from other people.

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mojave_wolf
2009-07-13 09:36 pm UTC (link)

Hmmm, can't tell if that is fantasy or science fiction, but definitely thoughtful. My only issue is the same as I had w/"A Boy and His Dog", which I quite liked at the time -- this sort of thing wouldn't matter in a vacum, but in a generally misogynistic world where most film seems at best neutral and more commonly reinforcing of bad tropes, the whole "yay, he is happy!" followed by "oh noz! an angry frustrated woman shows up to ruin everything!" is a wee bit problematic. Maybe wouldn't be that way in the actual film, and again, in isolation, not a problem, just woulda rather seen a role reversal. Or something. (can see all sorts of nuances that would fix this, which the film may have had, I dunno).

Also, ummm, "No Exit"!

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