I don’t really get grimdark fantasy. Cold heroes, hopeless worlds, cynicism as a shorthand for meaning and optimism for foolishness—it depresses and bores me to death. I’m much more of a Tolkien gal myself. The two philosophies could not be more different, blood and guts on the one hand and stupidly joyful eucatastrophe on the other—yet somehow, Peter Newman’s debut Vagrant Trilogy manages to straddle both to become one of my favourite series of all time.
But how? Is it possible? Is it even good? Oh, I am so very glad you asked. I kind of hate to get into it because it was such a delight to read with no expectations, but I’ve also wanted to talk about this for a while so I’ve kept it as spoiler-free as possible. You’re welcome.
First, though, a bit about grimdark. Exactly what it means to go grimdark depends on who you ask: its proponents, notably Joe Abercrombie, will tell you that it’s about realism and complexity, which honestly sounds pretty solid. Tolkien doesn’t always cut it when you’re looking for something to really sink your teeth into, and grimdark thrives on reversing the tropes of your traditional fantasy epic. Gone are the romantic old worlds with incorruptible heroes and happily ever afters; here there be flaws, and murky morals, and what if the good guys don’t win? Actions have consequences, good and bad and in between, unguided by the hands of fate. And that’s all really interesting stuff that people respond to in a big way: just look how thoroughly Game of Thrones has dominated our culture this last decade or so. There’s a huge appetite for challenging, complex, and subversive fantasy, and grimdark is perfect for the bill.
There’s another side to this coin, though. Altered Carbon author and grimdark posterboy Richard K. Morgan said in an interview that his writing is motivated by ‘rage’, that he is ‘incensed by how badly humans behave’ when ‘we could be so much better’—but he’s not interested in that last bit. Instead, he draws on real-world horrors and amplifies them through a fantastical lens for all the very worst that humankind has to offer. The interview details a scene in Morgan’s original book where a man in a woman’s body is brutalised according to an Amnesty International report Morgan read about female torture. It wasn’t exploitative, he said, because in this scenario the man gets to fully empathise with the plight of women and also slaughter everyone involved later. But, I mean… why? What is gained by any of this apart from titillating horror?
Too often the shock of a cleverly subverted trope is mistranslated into just plain shock, and there’s nothing more shocking than spectacular violence. Grimdark fantasy relies not only on bleakness but an unequivocal acceptance of that bleakness: characters and readers alike are not expected to examine such violence but to embrace it as a necessity of a cold, brutal world. People who hope for the best are usually the fools of their stories and quickly killed off, because only the strongest, surliest, toughest badasses can survive out here. And that’s pretty much the extent of the goal—survival. Or else some kind of personal gain, or vengeance, or just plain killing. At best it will be to keep things from getting any worse, but it’s rarely to make them better. In these worlds, there’s no such thing as ‘better’. That’s the whole point.
And honestly? I’m good, thanks. Call me a sook and a sap, but I find the real world depressing enough; at the end of the day, the blunt-force trauma that abounds in so many of these stories exhausts and sickens me. I love nothing so much as a subverted trope and the ideas put forward by the realism of grimdark are truly fascinating to me, but getting there is a minefield of racism, misogyny, and self-congratulatory pessimism that I’d rather avoid.
So what’s so great about The Vagrant Trilogy?
The Vagrant Trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic hellscape overrun by demons called infernals. As they spread, so do they infect the world around them with their tainted essence until just about everyone and everything is a little bit monster. Lying, cheating, and beating are not just par for the course—they’re the only course. Many humans have voluntarily aligned themselves with the infernals, some by joining a superhuman hybrid hivemind and others by buying surgical upgrades from a sentient ball of corpses. Meanwhile, the gods and knights who were supposed to stop exactly this from happening have given up and stay safely cloistered in the unreachable north. So far, so grimdark, right? It is bad.
Our hero is the eponymous Vagrant, a brooding loner with naught but a sword, a goat, and a baby to his unknown name. He’s on the run from just about every infernal out there, and he’s ready to do whatever it takes to fulfil his task. What is that task? We don’t know. He never speaks and the narration never gets directly inside his head, so at first all we know about him is what we can see: he’s got a very cool sword, he’s very good at using it, and he’s not here to make friends.
He also really loves that baby.
She’s not a princess or the Chosen One or anything like that. He just genuinely loves babies, and will walk through hell to find a safe place to raise this one in peace. If he doesn’t talk it’s because he’s disabled and physically incapable of speech, and if he raises his sword it’s more often out of a bleeding heart than bloodlust. He makes hard choices but chooses compassion where he can; far from succumbing to the horrors of his world, he protests them. His quiet partnership with another man is remarkable only for its unabashed tenderness and honesty. This cross-section of tenderness, toughness, disability, and queerness is one we rarely get to see in male heroes of any genre, but here he is. This Vagrant, despite everything, is good.
So—because we are still in grimdark hell-world—he must be broken, right? For a while it sure seems that way: potential allies are killed or else turn traitor, civilians knocked down, ideals abandoned, and all the while the infernals keep coming and coming. We settle in to familiar territory: we know that by the rules of his world and his narrative, the Vagrant cannot be allowed to prosper. He’ll die, or the baby will die, or he’ll give up and go infernal, or something.
And while we’re waiting for that other, terrible foot to fall, the Vagrant makes a friend. Several friends, in fact—all of them unlikely, all of them loyal. He saves lives and does good deeds, and against all odds his narrative rewards him for that. Similarly, the naivety of book two’s new protagonist is often criticised by readers but celebrated and cherished in turn by her own narrative. No matter how dark and desperate the series gets, it still holds true to this central tenet: kindness and mercy are worthwhile, even and especially in the wasteland.
There’s other stuff, too. Women fight and lead like it’s no big deal, because it isn’t. Disabled and chronically ill characters abound, just as important and capable as their abled counterparts and with no time for sob stories. Even the monstrous infernals are treated with a nuance that is rarely extended to such grotesque antagonists, and if they can’t quite win our sympathy they certainly gain our understanding. The Vagrant Trilogy doesn’t break genre rules for the sake of it, but to create a stronger, unique, and truly fascinating world unlike any I’ve seen before.
Don’t get me wrong—bad stuff still happens, a lot. That other foot’s gotta fall eventually, even if it’s not necessarily in the way that you expect. Sacrifices are made, backs stabbed, friends killed, lines blurred, battles lost—but they’re never, ever glorified. Here, making things better is not out of the question. It’s not even a question: for most of the series, it’s an imperative.
So maybe The Vagrant Trilogy isn’t all that grimdark after all. It’s not quite Tolkienesque, either. More likely it’s just cool, inventive fantasy that I’ve read far too much into. But I cannot begin to tell you how stoked I was to turn page after page of this gritty, brutal saga only to discover gold nuggets of real gentleness. For the first time, I got to have my grimdark cake and eat it with no bitter aftertaste: I got realism and fantasy, hurting and healing, despair and hope, all in equal measure. The resulting story is clever, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and absolutely brilliant.
