Since Neil Gaiman’s been mentioned, how about Coraline. Ostensibly a children’s book but gripping, suspenseful and creepy as hell, nonetheless.
Ok, that sounds good. I am going to try to pick it up today.
Isn’t Perdido Street Station the New Weird? Or is that just for science fiction?
Oh, and The Iron Dragon’s Daughter is awesome, as is everything else Swanwick has written. I also love Stations of the Tide, although it’s not dark fantasy at all.
What about The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop? It reminds me very much of Perdido Street Station. It’s about two ex-mercenaries who travel to one of those languid tropical cities and, uh, you’d have to really read it yourself, I can’t imagine a plot summary that would express what I liked about the book or make any sense at all. It’s very good, though. Even though the first copy I ordered had the craziest binding mistake I’ve ever seen - the first half of the book was a set of papers from a conference on Virginia Woolf. (I actually skimmed a few of the first pages because I knew the book was supposed to be a little odd, but…)
There’s a lot of urban fantasy that might fit what you’re looking for - Jim Butcher has a series of books, the Dresden Files, that are a lot of fun, about a modern wizard detective. There’s vampires and werewolves and demons and such in them, but they haven’t got the gothic atmosphere of Gormenghast or anything.
PS - Coraline scared the living crap out of me. Children’s book indeed! (It’s awesome, just not at night.)
Are you kidding me? I am in the process of rereading the series and am almost finished with A Storm of Swords. A Game of Thrones was so depressing I almost couldn’t get through it again, but if anything, ASoS was worse.
He kills off people that you thought you could count on to be protagonists. He makes characters you love suffer unspeakably. He seems to let the bad guys win, a lot, and get away with murder, literally. I know there is hope, as a reader, but none of the characters we like have any hope. It’s pretty damn grim. China Mieville is grimmer, but not by much, IMO.
It’s a tweener book that left me only wanting the next book more. I guess he did his job, then.
The title of that short story is Snow Glass Apples if anyone’s interested in looking for it. It’s been printed in at least one of Gaiman’s short-story collections and is also available as an audio-short-story on the Two Plays for Voices CD along with the also-excellent story by Gaiman, Murder Mysteries.
My recommendation is God Stalk and it’s sequels, by Pat C. Hodgell. How to summarize it? In a world which would be bizarre enough on it’s own without an invasion by an evil, otherdimensional anti-reality force, a young woman seeks a place for herself despite knowing that she’s the incarnation of the Destroyer aspect of the Three-Faced God. Cursed and cast out by her people, she finds a few friends and lots of enemies as various factions seek to use or destroy her for various agendas.
For a really dark short story, try **After the Last Elf is Dead **, by Harry Turtledove. Sort of what the world might have looked like after Sauron won.
Exactly. I mean, within the first 50 pages of the first book,
He has a character throw a seven year old boy out of a top story window out of fear that the boy just saw him committing incest with his sister.
I just wanted to thank you guys so much for the recs. I loved Shadow and Claw so much - it was literally exactly what I was looking for when I made this OP. I almost equally enjoyed Perdido Street Station, and want to read everything else I can find by Mieville (i’m looking at that book of short stories, and then on to the others set in the same world as Perdido). I’m still working on Titus Groan, but really enjoying it.
Stephen Donaldson. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.
Very deep, well-decribed world.
Hero is a complete jerk.
The world seems to be going downhill in the first couple of books.
Precisely what I was thinking of.
Better still, there are two more books, and a fourth presumably on the way. Godstalk and Dark of the Moon are available together in the volume Dark of the Gods. Seeker’s Mask is separate. Blood and Ivory is a collection of short stories, mostly about the protagonist of the novels, although it also includes a Sherlock Holmes story with a sort of gothic horror bent.
They feature blood feuds, berserkers, twisted honor codes, theocide, a race of monotheists who aren’t on speaking terms with their god, and a millenia-long retreat from a terrible foe. And in the middle of it all, an odd streak of humour to make it all bearable. Godstalk has held onto its place as my favorite novel for nearly 25 years…and Seeker’s Mask is one of the few real challengers to it.
What’s more, the individual who commits that act ends up becoming a protagonist in the third book! And a sympathetic one, at that!
I do love this series. 
Me, too. I’ve yet to attempt one of his novels (don’t get too many novels read these days), but his “Report of Certain Events in London” from 2005’s *Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror * was wonderful. I like how his mind works.
Looking for Jake, I believe the collection is called.
I’ve been following this thread and thought I’d second the recommendations for The Book of the New Sun and the Gormenghast novels.
The reason I decided to make this post was that just tonight I began reading E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, which so far seems to fit what you’re looking for.
I had heard of this book for many years, described as a “masterpiece of hedonism”. When Lord of the Rings came out, it was said by some that this was the only book that was comparable in scope. It was first published in 1922, but Eddison had been imagining it for 30 years before, when he was 11. It seems to be impossible to find in stores, but it’s readily available on Amazon, so I recently got a copy and began it this evening.
I’m only a few chapters into it, but I haven’t been this engrossed in a novel since I read Gormenghast about seven years ago.
It’s written in lofty, Shakespearean prose, which may turn some off (to my knowledge the book has never had more than a cult following), but Eddison really pulls it off well.
I loved both The Book of the New Sun and Gormenghast, so if you are also enjoying those, I feel confident in recommending The Worm Ouroboros (even though I’ve only begun it).
When you’re done reading The Worm Ouroboros and are ready to turn pro, check out The Night Land, by William Hope Hodgson. You’ll decide that it’s either unutterably awful or one of the greatest works of fiction in the English language. Or maybe both.
Ooh, and then there’s M. P. Shiel…
Actually, believe it or not The Night Land has recently been on the short list of books I want to read in the near future. I read his The House on the Borderland a few years ago and enjoyed it.
I’m only familiar with (i.e., never read) The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel and don’t know much about him, but your link looks interesting; I’ll definitely have to check him out!
And of course, I only now see that I forgot to put in a link to the Hodgson book. Here ya go.