How to Make a Grimdark Setting
I’m a huge fan of Andrjez Sapkowski’s The Witcher novels. While most fans are familiar with the series through CD Projekt Red’s video game trilogy, the novels are an excellent grimdark series of their...
REVIEW: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
In the Nineties, I loved my weekend sessions of Vampire: The Masquerade. Before A Song of Ice and Fire, it was a fascinating world of moral ambiguity (even moral decay) where the protagonists were...
REVIEW: Damoren by Seth Skorkowsky
What if the Dresden Files were about a ruthless gunslinger? That’s sort of what I think about Damoren. This is unfair to the author as the character of Matt Hollis isn’t all that similar...
VG Review: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher series by Andrjez Sapkowski is one of the seminal works of grimdark literature in Europe. The video game adaptations of the series have since gone on to popularize the series globally. The...
REVIEW: Kings of Paradise by Richard Nell
Kings of Paradise (Ash and Sand #1) by Richard Nell is probably my favorite grimdark novel of 2018, so if you expect this review to be anything other than gushing then you have come...
The Grimdark Villain
Many fans of grimdark literature, film, and games might argue that the term villain is an inappropriate one for the genre. It conjures an image of the mustache twirling evil-doer whom the square-jawed hero...
Who is the Grimdark Hero?
Grimdark is a relatively new subgenre in the world of fantasy and science fiction, having emerged as the grittier, morally ambiguous side of fantasy in the 1970s and ‘80s with the likes of Karl...
Is the First Law Trilogy the Anti-Lord of the Rings?
A question that often comes up in the various fantasy forums I frequent is, ‘What is the anti-Lord of the Rings?’ This is an odd query because it implies there’s automatically an antithesis the...
Interview: M.L. Spencer
Recently, C.T. Phipps had a chance to chat with M.L. Spencer about her novel series, The Rhenwars Saga. You can also read a review of Darkstorm, the first book of The Rhenwars Saga. [CTP]...
Review: Darkstorm by M.L. Spencer
Grimdark comes in a variety of shapes and sizes but tends to be viewed as epic trilogies or doorstopper series. Rarely do we get to see what I term to be “pocket-sized fantasy” where...
