Get knee-deep in grit with twenty-six grimdark fantasy and sci-fi short stories from the shadowy vaults of Grimdark Magazine. The top names in dark speculative fiction and the genre’s brightest newcomers bring you stories of war, betrayal, violence, and greed, as anti-heroes and adversaries fight to the bittersweet end.

For the first time, two years of fiction from Grimdark Magazine are printed on dead trees and bound together like captive slaves to be read or reread and proudly placed among your favourite tomes on your bookshelf.

Knee-Deep in Grit features short stories by authors including Mark Lawrence, Aliette de Bodard, Adrian Tchaikovsky, R. Scott Bakker, Kelly Sandoval, James A. Moore, and Victor Milan.

One of the things I’m hoping to do this year is put a good-sized dent in the amount of short fiction I own. Whether it’s various SFF anthologies or short story collections from certain authors, these books have really seemed to pile up around me. So I’ve gotten in a pretty good habit of having a short story collection going at the same time as the current novel I’m reading. It’s been a super long time since I’ve been juggling more than one book at a time, so it’s taking some getting used to! But I’m digging it, and there’s something satisfying about being able to read a whole story when you only have maybe 10-20 minutes to spend reading at a particular time!

The list of authors in Knee-Deep in Grit, published by Grimdark Magazine to celebrate their two-year anniversary in 2017, reads like a who’s who of dark fantasy/grimdark. There are some big name authors here, like Mark Lawrence, James A. Moore, and R. Scott Bakker. Like a lot of anthologies, this is one where I’ve read books by a handful of the authors, but plenty of them were completely new to me.

I decided to read Mark Lawrence’s story in this collection, “Bad Seed”, even though it’s also in his short story collection, Road Brothers (which I’ve shamefully still not read yet!) “Bad Seed” (along with all the stories in Road Brothers) is set in the world of Lawrence’s Broken Empire & Red Queen’s War trilogies. This one is like an origin story for one of THE best secondary characters from the Broken Empire books, and it was just awesome!

The story that came out of nowhere and fucking dazzled me was “A Fair Man” by Peter Orullian. This one is right in the middle of the collection, and while I was enjoying the stories, I just hadn’t found the story yet. I’ve had a copy of his book, Trial of Intentions, sitting on my shelf for awhile, but it’s been one of those sort’ve intimidating beasts of a novel for me. Not only is it pretty massive, it’s also the second book in a series, yet it’s the recommended starting point by the author. So that’s a whole thing. I have no way of knowing if “A Fair Man” is set in the same world or not, but it’s just a perfectly crafted short story about a father willing to risk everything for his daughter. It’s just atmospheric af & Orullian makes the absolute most of his 25 (or so) pages. I adored this story!

In the spirit of brutal honesty, there were a couple stories in here I chose to not finish, R. Scott Bakker’s “The Knife of Many Hands” among them. His books seem to be an extreme example of love-it-or-hate-it, with some folks holding him up as a kind of grimdark messiah, and others criticizing his work for being pretentious, overwrought, and way too sexually violent. So, for sure, I went into this story carrying a little baggage about his work, got as far as the part with the enslaved “naked adolescents” and just…skipped it. Yeesh.

I was really happy to read “Red Seas, Red Sails” by the late Victor Milán. It’s part of his series, The Dinosaur Lords, a series known as much for its BEAUTIFUL covers (by Richard Anderson) as for its mixed reviews. I really thought this sea-faring short story was a lot of fun, and while I’m not sure where this story fits chronologically with the series, it makes me a bit more interested to crack open The Dinosaur Lords at some point!

Some other favorites from this one:

-“A Proper War” by James A. Moore…an absolute bloodbath, a ton of fun, and a great introduction (for me) to his writing. Not sure if this is part of one of his series, but I’m really excited to check out The Tides of War and/or Seven Forges soon!

-“Redemption Waits” by Mike Brooks…a cool sci-fi/ heist-type story, and my introduction to the crew of the Keiko! The Keiko trilogy is on my hopefully-maybe-soon TBR!

So, some hits, some misses in this one! That seems to be the nature of anthologies, at least in my experience. Also, contrary to what you might expect based on the the cover, there are some sci-fi & cyberpunk stories here, in addition to fantasy.

Also, I fucking love how this book looks & is put together! Grimdark Magazine doesn’t publish a lot of books, but when they do, they look super badass!! The layout & overall vibe of the design by STK•Kreations is rad as hell, and they even included some black & white versions of some of their cover art by Julian de Lio, Austen Mengler, and Jason Deem.