Embracing the Darkness: Why Grimdark Fantasy Matters

“Not all stories deserve a happy ending. Some deserve a true one.”

I’ve been asked many times why I chose to write in the grimdark fantasy subgenre—why I deliberately crafted a world where moral ambiguity reigns and traditional heroism crumbles under the weight of harsh reality. The answer isn’t simple, but it begins with a fundamental belief about the power of literature.

The best fantasy has always served as a mirror, reflecting our world’s complexities through the lens of the impossible. Tolkien wrote about the loss of innocence in the wake of mechanized warfare. Le Guin explored gender and power through planetary societies unlike our own. George Martin deconstructed the romantic notion of medieval nobility by showing us what absolute power actually does to human beings.

Grimdark fantasy continues this tradition by refusing to look away from humanity’s capacity for both cruelty and sacrifice. It asks uncomfortable questions: What would you become to save your child? How much of your soul would you trade for revenge? When the system is corrupt beyond redemption, is violent resistance justified?

The mother’s journey in Makerborn emerges from these questions. She begins as an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The world doesn’t offer her clean choices or noble paths. She must navigate a landscape where survival itself requires compromise, where love and vengeance become indistinguishable from each other.

This isn’t darkness for its own sake—it’s darkness in service of truth. The Rift’s blood-soaked territories and imprisoned Old Gods serve as metaphors for the cycles of oppression and violence that plague our own world. The Sonomancers’ collared magic represents how systems of power corrupt both the oppressed and their oppressors.

Critics sometimes dismiss grimdark as nihilistic, but I see it as deeply humanistic. By stripping away the comfortable illusions that traditional fantasy often provides, grimdark forces us to confront what lies beneath. It asks: What remains of our humanity when everything else is taken away?

In the Makerborn series, the answer isn’t always pretty. But it’s always honest.

Some readers will finish these books feeling disturbed, questioning assumptions they’ve held about morality and justice. Others will find catharsis in seeing characters fight impossible odds without the guarantee of redemption. Both responses are valid. Both are necessary.

The darkness in these stories isn’t the point—it’s the canvas. What matters is what we choose to paint on it.

— Daymon