10 grimdark fantasy series for readers who enjoy a little mud on the crown
Nobody is clean. Some of them are still worth cheering for.
Grimdark is not misery for its own sake. At its best, it gives good people impossible choices and lets the consequences matter.
The First Law Trilogy
Joe Abercrombie
Barbarians, torturers, nobles, and soldiers collide in a series with lethal humour and the unnerving habit of making every viewpoint character matter.
No announced next book
Gentleman Bastard
Scott Lynch
Locke and his friends run elaborate cons in a Venetian-style city, until an enemy turns their criminal cleverness into a survival problem.
No announced next book
The Broken Empire
Mark Lawrence
Jorg is a ruthless prince in a ruined world, and the trilogy asks how far a protagonist can go before the reader refuses to follow.
No announced next book
Chronicles of the Black Company
Glen Cook
A mercenary company records its own brutal history while serving dark powers, surviving wars, and trying to stay human around both.
Next book: They Cry: Book Two of A Pitiless Rain, a Chronicle of the Black Company (Chronicles of The Black Company 13), 13 · Nov 3, 2026
The Poppy War
R. F Kuang
Rin rises from poverty through a military academy into a war story that gets darker, angrier, and more mythic with every decision.
No announced next book
The Faithful and the Fallen
John Gwynne
Old gods, invading armies, and a large cast collide in a series that starts heroic and steadily makes its battles hurt more.
No announced next book
Powder Mage
Brian McClellan
A coup, gunpowder magic, and a god who may not be as dead as everyone needs him to be make for an exceptionally brisk revolution.
No announced next book
The Masquerade
Seth Dickinson
Baru tries to destroy an empire from inside its accounting system, which is every bit as cold-blooded and difficult as it sounds.
No announced next book
The Prince of Nothing
R. Scott Bakker
Philosophy, war, and manipulation drive a dense epic where almost everybody is trying to use somebody else’s certainty.
No announced next book
The Red Queen's War
Mark Lawrence
A cowardly prince and a quiet warrior stumble through a bleak world with more humour and heart than the series initially advertises.
No announced next book
The next book is somebody else’s calendar problem now.
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Start your watchlistWhy these make the shelf
The First Law and related modern grimdark series remain the comparison point in contemporary fantasy discussions, which makes this a durable reader-intent cluster. Locus Magazine.
Pick the itch you want scratched
- The First Law. Barbarians, torturers, nobles, and soldiers collide in a series with lethal humour and the unnerving habit of making every viewpoint character matter.
- Gentleman Bastard. Locke and his friends run elaborate cons in a Venetian-style city, until an enemy turns their criminal cleverness into a survival problem.
- The Broken Empire. Jorg is a ruthless prince in a ruined world, and the trilogy asks how far a protagonist can go before the reader refuses to follow.
- The Black Company. A mercenary company records its own brutal history while serving dark powers, surviving wars, and trying to stay human around both.
Questions people actually ask
- Which best grimdark fantasy series should I start with?
- The First Law is the cleanest first stop. Start with The Blade Itself and give it a proper evening.
- Are these series still worth tracking?
- Yes. Some are complete and make excellent binges; others are active, which is exactly when a release tracker saves you from checking Amazon like it owes you money.
- Can I read these on Kindle?
- Each entry links to its first Kindle book in the matching Amazon store. Availability moves by marketplace, so the card sends you to the edition that is actually being tracked.