• He added a midquel, Port of Shadows, in 2018, and there are some really good shorts you can find in his Best of collections that are also recent. I’ve found a lot of folks who read them back when have missed these!

      I feel like this is a great rec because The Witcher is pretty grimdark and Cook is a grimdark progenitor. Good pick!

  • If you want more grimdark and it has to be fantasy, check out Warhammer horror especially the vampire Genevieve. If you’re okay with grimdark science military science fiction, a good chunk of the Warhammer 40k and Horus Heresy lines will fit your bill.

    I feel like Hobb is much lighter. For whatever reason I always think of Tad Williams and the Dragonborn Chair as connected to Hobb. I suspect it’s from the Legends anthology but they were only together in Legends II with a different Hobb trilogy setting and Otherland for Williams. Both are great starting points to find authors that have huge bodies of work that could hook you. They were how I found George RR Martin back in the early aughties.

  • i got one no one seems to have heard of, but its a series by a bunch of writers, and it was stitched together by none other than George RR Martin…

    The WildCard series… i just love the different writing styles across the different characters…and its an amazing universe… i highly recommend it

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards

    the short is: alien race f’s up a non trivial percent of the human population with a virus… most die. what neat is the mish-mash of history with a new minority of deformed humans. i think it starts in ~1947 running through the 90s.

    British writer Neil Gaiman met with Martin in 1987 and pitched a Wild Cards story about a character who lives in a world of dreams. Martin declined due to Gaiman’s lack of prior credits at the time. Gaiman went on to publish his story as The Sandman.

  • The Prince of Nothing series.

    A very solid series, dense as fuck, with an intriguing way magic works. Just be aware that there can be a fair bit of talking in-between action scenes, there’s a lot of time spent in political/religious discourse between characters.

    Also, birds with human heads! A prostitute finding out who she slept with by the fact he literally has black cum! Too many scenes of people cleaning themselves up after taking their morning shit!

    • You might know this already, but the original series in that universe, The Riftwar Saga, Feist wrote about a DnD campaign he played with his friends. I picked up the first one, Magician, and it felt just like a DnD campaign, so I looked it up and sure enough it was exactly that.

      I’m making my way through all of the books and haven’t gotten to the Krondor books, so I don’t know how different they are as I could clearly see his growth as a writer in just the first series. I’m currently reading through the Daughter of the Empire series that he co-wrote with another author and I’m really enjoying it.

  •  Dagwood222   ( @Dagwood222@lemm.ee ) 
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    311 months ago

    Green Bones by Fonda Lee

    First book is Jade City. I like that it’s set in a 1950’s tech world with the magic being only one part of the greater story. Crime, politics, family drama; it’s the Godfather with super powers.

    To Your Scattered Bodies Go… by Philip Jose Farmer. Everyone who ever lived wakes up on the banks of The River.

  • Some slightly off-track suggestions (because genres are a bit misaligned with what you’re asking for):

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    Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb series)

    Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

    Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will be become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

    I must admit that Charles Stross’ pitch is what got me to pick up the book in the first place, it’s just too funny:

    “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” —Charles Stross

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    The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Trilogy)

    OK, maybe not so far off the path …

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    Storm Front by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files series)