Story with the grimmest magical other land?

Cafe Society
1

I just finished reading the last book in Lev Gossman’s Magicians trilogy, and doing so reminds me of one of my biggest frustrations with the series - I picked it up hoping for a really grown up interpretation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but Fillory isn’t really all that grown up. It’s actually all rather cutesy there in Fillory, with talking animals and ram gods and all. Oh, sure, that whole bit with Julia is rather horrifying, and you know the thing with Penny’s hands, and what happens to Alice, but honestly, they all get better so that lessens the impact of even those things.

So, even though I liked the first two books rather much and the last one middling, The Magicians isn’t really what I was looking for. I long for a trip through a wardrobe, through a looking glass, down a rabbit hole that lands our plucky protagonists in eldritch horror, not a land of horsies that can argue about whether they’ll go on to the mildly alarming stereotypically colored castle. A magical land full of ghosts and goblins, not good witches. Buildings in decay, danger around every corner, and any sane person would long to leave post-haste by whatever means landed them there in the first place.

More Innsmouth than Oz, do you know what I’m saying?

So… let’s be clear that we’re limiting stories to places were the magical land is apart from our earth. The protagonist(s) end up there anyway, like in The Lion, Witch and The Wardrobe, Magic Kingdom of Landover, or the Dark Tower, but not a magically hidden island or other earth-based place like Lost, Gulliver’s Travels, or Avalon, and not time-travel.

What’s the darkest place you can think of that a person has ended up while rummaging through a coat closet?

Does such a thing really exist (and yes, I think **The Dark Tower **is still too tame, ftr), or do I need to binge on Lovecraft and kids books simultaneously for a while and see what I can apply to paper myself after stewing in that?

2

The whole point of Grossman’s work is that even though Narnia and Harry Potter (Fillory and Breakbills) really exist and are more or less just as magical as you thought they were growing up, it doesn’t make people in the real world less petty or less greedy or more noble.

I don’t think I’ve read any books that fit the bill you’re looking for.

3

You could get into the Slender Man

4

Kay’s Fionavar is a bit of a dark take on The Magic Kingdom. It’s not horrifying or what the kids today call grimdark, but it’s definitely not Narnia.

Maguire’s Oz is definitely a bit off the path of the original. I’ve read every single book in the series with a definite aura of everything being at a very uncomfortable angle.

5

I’ll submit Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit For Heroes series, although there’s no Earthling traveling to a magical world here. BUT everyone in the book is flawed, even our protagonists, and the overall tone is one of despair. There are supernatural creatures with motivations neither we nor our protagonists can understand, lots of death and violence and a whole bunch of worse-than-death. I highly recommend these books for truly adventurous fantasy enthusiasts.

Brian Daley’s Coramonde duology isn’t steeped in darkness, but it’s not exactly sunshine and lollipops either. These books do feature a Terran being magically transported to another world.

6

The Dresden novels feature the Never-Never, a realm where myths, legends and dreams have physical reality. Meaning that if you don’t know what you’re doing there, you can end up worse than dead.

7

Well, the Land in Lord Foul’s Bane started out pretty bad and seemed to get more grim in each sequel.

Not a book, but in the TV series Angel, Connor grew up in some miserable hell dimension. Which almost made up for what a self-pitying douche he was.

We never do see it, but the land that Robin Williams character spends 30 years in Jumanji seems pretty rugged.

8

In Michael Moorcock’s book, Von Bek, there’s a three or four stories. At least one of those features a fantasy world that’s an allegory of the Holocaust, with great ships that burn humans to power their ways across the desert, the ashes raining down on everything.

Piers Anthony’s Mode series isn’t particularly light and friendly, though I wouldn’t call it dark and horrifying either. It’s just fairly realistic, with all the highs and lows that involves.

The story that Piers Anthony wrote with Robert Kornwise, Through the Ice is also fairly dark, if I remember correctly. But not necessarily horrifying.

9

The fantasy world in John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things is fairly dark, though maybe not enough for you.

Peter Clines’s 14 has a grim, Lovecraftian other land toward the end of the book.

10

The novels set in the Warhammer 40k universe is, as far as I can tell, intended to have a Gothic atmosphere. I would hate to live in that future.

11

It doesn’t qualify under the precise description of the OP, but I sure am glad I haven’t stumbled into the land of George RR Martin’s books.

12

The future (as Imagined by C.M. Kornbluth) is pretty grim (see “The Marching Morons”).

13

Sunside/Strside in the Necroscope series is no picnic.
There’s always Ravenloft
mmm - Midnight in Abarat is pretty grim.

But I think the unnamed mirror universe in Coraline is grimmer in its way.

14

I was going to mention those, too, but I’m not sure it counts. In the Dresden books, the Nevernever is the world of magical beings, but our world is also magical. Wizards might make deals with the Queens of the Fey, but the wizards themselves are (mostly) born and raised right here among us, and can do most of their mojo without ever interacting with the Nevernever at all. And while most supernatural beings hie from the Nevernever, some of them, like the various sorts of vampires, also appear to be native to our world (well, now, anyway… There are indications that the progenitors of the vampires were Outsiders).

15

I don’t know if you’re sticking specifically to books (you mention Lost in the OP), so I’d suggest the anime series Now and Then, Here and There. It’s possible that the world they get sent to is the Earth in the far future, but if that’s conclusively established I don’t remember it. It’s certainly a terrible shithole.

16

Does DC’s Apokolips count?

17

Nobody has mentioned Stephen R Donaldson yet?!

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (three trilogies, in total) features a Land (that’s the actual name) that has the potential to be an idyllic place full of fairies, but more often than not, the Land’s great enemy is doing his thing. Lord Foul the Despiser loves nothing more than convincing you to lose hope and destroy for yourself what you love.

Then there’s the Mordant’s Need pair of books. Travel between worlds is made possible by mirrors, which are actually the basis of all magic there. Many people find this series more approachable than Covenant, but Donaldson is essentially incapable of writing anything that’s actually happy.

18

Simon R. Green’s Nightside is a pretty grim place to be, I think. Lots of opportunities to get fucked up if you don’t know what or who you’re doing. Malevolent buildings, crazy forgotten gods and lots of stupid people traipsing along where they don’t belong.

19

The magical world of Pan’s Labyrinth seemed pretty dark, although to be fair, not as dark as the real world.

20

Again not quite within the OP’s remit, but Angela Carter’s ‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’ conjures up a pretty grim, magical world if I recall correctly (as do most of her stories).