Musings: why fantasy got ‘gritty’

Inspired by reading Aeon’s Gate, some thoughts on traditional fantasy being stuck in a rut and why it had to change

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The book that started it all.

This isn’t a review. I don’t like to review books that are part of a series until I’ve read the whole set. I don’t think it’s fair to put my thoughts down before I’ve got the whole picture, as it were. So this more some initial thoughts on Sam Sykes’s book Tome of the Undergates, first in the Aeon’s Gate trilogy, and more general musings on the genre.

I’ve loved fantasy ever since first reading Raymond E Feist’s Magician when I was about 10. But it seems to me that traditionally fantasy has been rather, well, traditional. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the genre itself or if fantasy authors and readers are just resistant to change, but since Tolkien it seems that the genre has stuck with certain ways of doing things.

There tend to be three main races: humans, elves and dwarves. Of these only humans have any kind of diversity. Elves are always good, beautiful, sophisticated and forest dwelling. Dwarves live in caves, are bearded, industrious and axe wielding. Their evil counterparts are orcs (sometimes replaced by dark elves) and goblins, respectively. And these races are always evil. Only humans can be either, and even then it’s pretty uncomplicated. You’re either good through and through (think Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings) or thoroughly bad (Grima Wormtongue).

Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary

Magicians tend to be one of two types. Either old men (Gandalf) or youngsters whose bookish ways have left them weak. They would have been bullied by the bigger boys, all except one who befriended and championed him and grows up to be the hero warrior (Pug and Thomas in the aforementioned Magician, Raistlin and his brother Caramon in Dragonlance).

You’ll notice that I’ve only used the male pronoun. This is because women don’t feature much in traditional fantasy. They’re mothers, sisters or daughters. They might facilitate the hero, but they are never themselves the protagonist. In more than 1,000 pages, The Lord of the Rings has three female characters. Galadriel and Arwen pretty much do nothing. Eowyn is more interesting, but even she has to pretend to be a man in order to achieve anything.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary. Things had to change – it was time fantasy grew up.

With his New Crobuzon books, the wonderful China Mieville just invented a whole new genre – a kind of steampunk urban fantasy. But there has also emerged a more realistic type of fantasy – something that turns the genre on its head. I credit George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series as the initiator of this.

Shades of grey
Suddenly things weren’t quite so cut and dried. Good people did bad things or had bad things happen to them (who could forget Eddard Stark’s fate?), bad people didn’t necessarily get their comeuppance, women actually had a part to play. Characters could be morally ambiguous - they didn’t all choose a side and stick to it. And you really shouldn’t get too attached to any of the characters because you simply don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

As well as GRRM, writers of this brand of fantasy include Britain’s Joe Abercrombie and Americans Peter V Brett, Mark Lawrence and Brent Weeks.

This new, grittier fantasy turned the old tropes upside down and inside out. It’s also often really rather violent, leading to the use of the term ‘grimdark’. I think this was originally meant to be disparaging but proponents of the sub-genre have embraced it.

If I had to identify one thing I don't
like about these books it would be the
cover art. But I'm reading them
on a Kindle so that's not really important.

So back to the book that started all this musing: Sam Sykes’s Tome of the Undergates. I’m not sure if this is grimdark, but it has all the characteristics. Moral ambiguity; characters with complex reasons for behaving the way they do; violence, lots of violence in fact; it’s dark and gritty and full of things like murder, betrayal and bad things happening. It’s also great fun, has some wonderfully crude humour and some stunningly beautiful descriptions.

I downloaded the book because I follow Sam Sykes on Twitter. I think that if you follow an author and find them entertaining then the least you can do is buy one of their books. This does have its drawbacks. What if you like the author on Twitter but end up not liking the book? This happened to me with Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s lovely on Twitter but I just didn’t get on with her book, Shades of Milk and Honey. Luckily that didn’t happen here, and I really like this book. In fact since I started writing this rather long blog post I’ve finished both Tome of the Undergates and the second book and made a good start on the third and final installation, The Skybound Sea. I also bought the first book for my dad.

The problem is that I’ve started Twitter stalking Mr Sykes, sending him @replies like we’re friends, when clearly we’re not. He hasn’t blocked me or anything, so I guess it’s not that bad. But I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise, anyway. Also, if you’re on Twitter follow him, he’s @SamSykesSwears.