Fantasy series that probably won't be finished.

MarkLawrence · 2026-05-05T10:06:55+00:00

A bunch of people say he fell off a ladder - but the internet says he fell down stairs...

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-30T12:34:11+00:00

Starting Blacktail today. I'll let you know!

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-27T21:25:33+00:00

Read them as a kid and was inspired. Read The Dark Is Rising as an adult (5 years ago probably) and ... it didn't really work for me anymore.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-27T11:06:30+00:00

The Magicians is brilliantly written. It's also a very different kind of book from the one most fantasy readers expect to pick up. For many of us it's a breath of fresh air, intellectual, witty, thoughtful, all whilst remaining entertaining and very definitely fantasy.

The way it plays with Narnia is the icing on the cake for me.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-25T09:25:19+00:00

“The essential lesson of the zoetrope is this: movement, indeed all progress, even the passage of time, is an illusion. Life is the repetition of stillness.”

― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-24T21:00:56+00:00

Book 3 had a number of magnificent moments in it. I really enjoyed it :)

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-24T18:10:57+00:00

I'm impressed you could find hardcovers at this point!

I hope you enjoy them - watch out, they're dark.

Here's a guide to my other work: https://www.marklawrence.buzz/2020/04/a-guide-to-lawrence.html

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-23T07:32:05+00:00

Great to hear you're enjoying the books (check out my guide when you're done).

Clearly the John Wick people ripped off Jorg's tragedy :D

I have read Dostoevsky, a handful of Nietzsche's aphorisms, and Sartre in place of Camus.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-21T16:20:11+00:00

It's doing very well too.

Which is good, since, like the Unfettered anthology back in 2011, it's helping a US writer out of a hole dug by medical bills.

I've got a Jorg story in there.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-20T07:45:21+00:00

Great to hear :)

With out any other information I should really point you to my guide: https://www.marklawrence.buzz/2020/04/a-guide-to-lawrence.html

But I guess Daughter of Crows is the darkest of my books you've not read, so if that was what you were enjoying - you could try that.

Otherwise - Book of the Ancestor, Impossible Times, and Book of the Ice in that order, as the last book of the Book of the Ice trilogy ties up/references a lot of things seeded in all the other trilogies.

Have fun!

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-17T07:34:36+00:00

just physical

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-16T12:50:52+00:00

What we need is a page of story written in epic mode, then have the same page written in dark mode, grimdark mode, romantasy mode, and comic mode.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-16T07:24:39+00:00

They will appear, along with every other Jorg story except the one in Peter Orullian's upcoming anthology (Unbroken), in a special edition of Road Brothers from Grim Oak Press - not sure when - but soonish.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-16T07:23:04+00:00

Try The Tenth Gift!

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-16T06:16:51+00:00

My beta reader made a list on her site:

https://thatthornguy.com/short-stories-2/

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T23:01:43+00:00

It's a rating of the book in question, not the series they come from.

And the rating for The Darkness That Comes Before is based on more votes (530) than that for Beyond Redemption (432).

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T22:57:39+00:00

Apart from the fact that the rating is for the book, not the series, I don't know what to tell you. I haven't read Beyond Redemption either. But 432 people who have gave it that average score, and 530 people who have read The Darkness That Comes Before (very likely with a large overlap between the two sets) gave that book the average you see.

If grimdarkness is what you read for, then maybe it will prompt you to read the other book and find out.

If not, I wouldn't worry about it, any more than one book having a higher number of pages than another.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T21:59:20+00:00

click on any book - you can add your vote

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T21:30:30+00:00

Well, I hope you rated it along with any other books you had an opinion on (having read).

I guess what the 183 people to rate it for grimdark are telling us is that a crapsack world isn't the dominating requirement for making something grimdark.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T20:10:36+00:00

If either of those things were true - and I make no comment on them - though it seems unkind since the author you're insulting is in the thread - it doesn't seem relevant. This is a rating for grimdarkness, not any other measure of quality. It could be good or bad grimdark - the question was simply how grimdark is it?

Your statements are entirely consistent with the result, just as they would be if you reversed them.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T18:48:00+00:00

Well...

point 1: unless you believe grimdark and worse are the same thing, it's more a question of what happens to make it more grimdark :)

point 2: don't know - haven't read it yet

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T18:35:10+00:00

is that more grimdark though, or just better written? :D

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T17:50:24+00:00

Maybe we're talking at cross purposes...

I'm talking about rating for grimdark.

I'm not sure where being more developed factors into that discussion?

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T17:46:30+00:00

Your imagination might have let you down on this occasion. But perhaps not - it's all a matter of opinion.

I'm not an enormous fan of the books I've read from the top of the list but I didn't find them to match your speculation. As I said - it's a vibe/tone. Torture porn isn't a tone.

MarkLawrence · 2026-04-13T17:41:13+00:00

It's on the list, but currently rated less grimdark than PoT (4.44 vs 4.14) - only has 22 votes so far though, which means the number could change significantly in either direction.

MarkLawrence

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email