Looking for darker recommendations

[BenBanned]

Heres one I read via a recomendation on this site
Crawlspace

Im allways down for runaway/feral children stories.



First non-fiction?
It's about a culture of the homelessness underneath the early 90's NYC streets.
Really awesome read that I recomend through and through.
A documentary was made (equal in awsomeness)with a lot of the same characters in the book. The soundtrack is all Dj Shadow and the entire film is in black and white.
Tunnel People
Watch for free on youtube:
Dark Days Documentary

[Dragoro]

For dark fantasy, Malazan books of the Fallen by Steve Erikson is great.

[ekster]

Thanks again everyone, all the books sound great. This will take me more than a winter to get through!

[BenBanned]

You might not make it through the winter, if you read all these depressing books!

[ekster]

Depressing books have the opposite effect on me. Makes me realize how nice and amazing my life is. Which is perfect when it comes to long, cold and dark winters.

It's the happy ending that turn me all cynical!

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by ekster

Depressing books have the opposite effect on me. Makes me realize how nice and amazing my life is. Which is perfect when it comes to long, cold and dark winters.

It's the happy ending that turn me all cynical!

Yeah - I like dark books and they never seem to get me down. Life, on the other hand....

[BenBanned]

Originally Posted by ekster

It's the happy ending that turn me all cynical!

Never realized I thought of it like that.........

[jehane]

If you like Abercrombie, also check out Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains (and subsequent books). I recently read that and am about to start the next book The Cold Commands.

Guy Gavriel Kay is also good for good/evil ambiguity, in particular Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan. His tone is not really dark, tending to show that there are no clear cut good or bad guys, rather that people are human, with human motivations (as opposed to the Evil Overlord).

Probably not deliberately dark, but I always found Kim Stanley Robinson quite depressing. Mostly because his versions of our near future are all too believable.

Cordwainer Smith is not precisely dark, but in many ways disturbing and definitely though-provoking.

[fjtorres]

Actually, another thread reminded me of:
John Ringo's PALADIN OF SHADOWS series.
Very dark and controversial protagonist.
Takes a thick skin to get past the first volume, which was intended as a "This will never sell, but it's what the character wants to be," kind of writing exercise. Only it sold well despite (or because?) of the condemnation of the protagonist.
The series evolves into a pulpish Doc savage-ish dirrection. If Doc Savage had a taste for nasty SM sex and covert ops against terrorists.
(The thing isn't really meant to be taken seriously but... It can be, apparentlly.)

[Penforhire]

The problem with painting the Paladin series as dark is, for me, there is way too much intentional and unintentional humor and absurdity. If something is THAT improbable then I have a hard time feeling any darkness between chuckles and tsk's.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

The problem with painting the Paladin series as dark is, for me, there is way too much intentional and unintentional humor and absurdity. If something is THAT improbable then I have a hard time feeling any darkness between chuckles and tsk's.

That was my take. From what Ringo said about it, I suspect *all* the humor is intentional. (This is the man who gave us the Anime Zone and Tiny, after all.)
But so many people take it as serious as if it were real so maybe its a matter of approach. Maybe if you don't have a sense of humor?

[ekster]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

But so many people take it as serious as if it were real so maybe its a matter of approach. Maybe if you don't have a sense of humor?

I have one, unfortunately. But I guess I'll still check it out. I rarely say no to books in general. Some of my favourite reads ever were topics and genres that neither I, or anyone who knows me, would ever imagine me liking. And besides, some extra humour is always nice...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ekster

I have one, unfortunately. But I guess I'll still check it out. I rarely say no to books in general. Some of my favourite reads ever were topics and genres that neither I, or anyone who knows me, would ever imagine me liking. And besides, some extra humour is always nice...

The books aren't humorous per se, but there is a bit of Duke Nuke'em in the protagonist. The action is, as pointed out, so pulpishly close to/over the top I find it hard to imagine anybody taking them seriously enough to be offended. Yet, a lot of people do take them seriously.

Fans of Ringo's military SF epics (Into the Looking Glass) may at first think Mike Harmon, the hero of this unusual novel, is cut from the same cloth as Mike O'Neal from the Posleen War series (Watch on the Rhine, etc.). Like O'Neal, Harmon is a former Navy SEAL trying to adjust to civilian life who gets sucked back into action by circumstances, in particular by his witnessing the kidnaping of a college coed by jihadists. It becomes clear, though, that Harmon has a darker side, to which, by late in the book, as illustrated by a shocking scene in a Bosnian brothel, Harmon has almost completely surrendered. More techno-thriller than SF, this is a picaresque tale about a modern Barry Lyndon who resists, with equivocal results, baser instincts brought out by extreme stress. It's refreshing to find a successful popular writer who's not afraid to try something different, and the adventurous reader will find Ringo's latest insightful, exciting and outrageously funny. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

At Amazon, it has 148 reviews, very bi-modal - 56 4&5 star, 62 one star:
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Paladin-.../dp/1416520872

This one's typical:

I found myself voting "helpful" for reviews with one star and reviews with five stars. I'm definitely conflicted over this book.

As the author says in his own review on this site, the book reads well. The stories are pretty carefully plotted, although the third one kind of skips around a little too much.

And how many nukes does one guy just happen to stumble across? In that respect it reminds me of the murder mystery genre, where amatuer sleuths just happen to trip over bodies every time they go on vacation. Suspension of disbelief is integral to the idea. These are "tall tales", not psuedo-realism.

And yes, there is lots of sex. Very dark sex, too. And it gets darker from story to story.

And yes, there is lots of violence. Very dark violence, too. It also gets darker from story to story.

Not only is the book not "politically correct", but it is an over-the-top right wing fairy tale. The hero is always right, the Bush-like president is noble and wise, all liberals and the French are weak and stupid, and all the positively portrayed characters make comments about how they are now going to vote Republican for life. The book is also relentless about showing the bad side of Islam: the villians in all three stories are Muslim terrorists. There is not a single sympathetic portrayal of a Muslim in any of the stories.

But ... well that's what this book is about. It is not about plot realism, political moderation, or cultural understanding. It is about darkness: rage, sexual dominance, the seductive joy of killing your enemies, and most of all it is about the relationship of the wolves to the sheep.

The rest of the series, starting with KILDAR pulls back a wee bit and expands the cast to add some sympathetic regulars but the focus does stay on the seductiveness of dark impulses.

(One of the later volumes features a drug dealer that kidnaps and tortures the protagonist's Administrative assistant trying to extract information from her, unaware the lady is a top rank masochist verging on a death wish. She is also smart and feeds him just enough misinformation to get him to *prolong* the session. The bad guy, of course, gets his just desserts in full measure. It's *that* kind of series.)

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by jehane

Guy Gavriel Kay is also good for good/evil ambiguity, in particular Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan. His tone is not really dark, tending to show that there are no clear cut good or bad guys, rather that people are human, with human motivations (as opposed to the Evil Overlord).

Ah yes - good call.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by caleb72

Ah yes - good call.

Quite. I'll second Guy Gavriel Kay wholeheartedly any day of the week...