I'm looking for some nuanced fantasy settings like "The Witcher" and "The Name of the Wind", where protagonists and antagonists cannot be clearly put into the good/evil drawer. Scott Bakker's "The Prince of Nothing" series would also fall into this category, but it's a bit too dark for me.
Posted Dec 24, 2013, 9:52 AM UTC
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
Obvious, but have you tried A Song of Ice and Fire?
When I saw "non black/white fantasy," the first thing that popped into my head was A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones). It's POV style (point of view), so you are exposed to the thought processes of many characters, whether they're depicted as positive or negative. Every character is good AND bad. What I also love about it is this: no one is safe. The books have a huge reputation for driving readers to tears and anger because of sudden main/beloved character deaths. It's incredibly unpredictable. The fact is that there are so many main characters in the series that it's perfectly ok to kill some/most of them off.
Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker and Godslayer books. They were written from the perspective of the supposedly "evil" characters. She has done a great job in challenging the notions of good and evil.
The Broken Well trilogy by Sam Bowring was written specifically to play with the Light is Good, Dark is Evil tropes.
Elric, of course. The original fate-haunted, blood drenched, kinslaying, chaos worshipping, soulstealing albino sorceror. And he's the hero.
Joe Abercrombie, The First Law trilogy. Basically everything he has written.
Steven Erikson, The Malazan Book of the Fallen series.
My first thought as well. I'm still trying to figure out who i hated and who i liked
Abercrombie is all black. Everyone with any sort of power is an arsehole and we'd be better off without them.