Grimdark

Grimdark is a subgenre or a way to describe the tone, style or setting of speculative fiction (especially fantasy) that is, depending on the definition used, markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly violent or realistic. The word was inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war."

Several attempts to define "grimdark" have been made:

Whether grimdark is a genre in its own right or an unhelpful label has also been discussed. Valentine noted that while some writers have embraced the term, others see it as "a dismissive term for fantasy that's dismantling tropes, a stamp unfairly applied."

According to Roberts, grimdark is a modern form of an "anti-Tolkien" approach to fantasy writing. The most successful and popular grimdark fantasy, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is, in Roberts' view, characterized by its reaction to Tolkien's idealism even though it owes a lot to Tolkien's work.

Writing for The Guardian in 2016, Damien Walter summarized what he considered grimdark's "domination" of the fantasy genre as "bigger swords, more fighting, bloodier blood, more fighting, axes, more fighting", and, he surmised, a "commercial imperative to win adolescent male readers". He saw this trend as being in opposition to "a truly epic and more emotionally nuanced kind of fantasy" that delivered storytelling instead of only fights.

Authors whose works have been described as grimdark tend to be people writing from the 1990s onward. They include – apart from Martin – Joe Abercrombie,Richard K. Morgan, and Mark Lawrence.

...
Wikipedia