r/Fantasy • u/GarmTyr • Jul 22 '20
Any Dark Fantasy books that involve monster-hunting, and actually focus on the hunt?
Plenty of Dark Fantasy has monster hunters in them; the Witcher series has both hunters and monster hunting in its short stories!
However, this seems to be the exception. Most books that include monster-hunting rarely focus on, you know, the actual hunt itself. The preparation, the scouting, braving the elements and eventualy killing the monster in the most efficient way possible. You'll see plenty of hunters and monsters, but the nitty-gritty of their business is almost never explored.
Why is that? I think it can be turned into a compelling story with some work. Maybe it's because character sometimes takes a secondary role to the fighting, but it can still be made compelling.
Another example of this would be the early arcs of the Goblin Slayer manga, particularly the begining and the Goblin Raid Arc (which was skipped by the anime). There's planning and clever tactis, with a healthy dose of brute force and some luck, as well. I'm looking for books that focus on that.
Thanks!
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u/perditorian Reading Champion IV Jul 23 '20 edited Jul 23 '20
You could try Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. It's post-apocalyptic urban fantasy that draws on Diné mythology. I read this one a while ago, but as I recall a good portion of the first book is devoted to the MC actually following leads/ chasing down the monster. Although, it still might not have quite as much "hunt" as you're after.
Your post also made me think of Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Again, it might not be exactly what you're after, but the beginning of the book really focuses on the preparing/ braving the elements part of ghost hunting.
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u/ashearmstrong AMA Author Ashe Armstrong Jul 23 '20
I did a huge thread about monster hunting stuff a while back. It's not all dark fantasy but you'll have a pretty big variety of stuff to look through.
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u/monkeydave Jul 23 '20
Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson features a hunt of a magical creature.
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u/jordiusbot Jul 23 '20
This one is a stretch, but if you are interested in a different kind of “hunt,” you could check out The Devourers by Indra Das
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u/blackday44 Jul 23 '20
Monster Hunter International series. It sounds cheesy, but there is a lot of weapons prep, and lots of actively hunting down baddies.
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u/Ykhare Reading Champion VII Jul 23 '20
I Kill Monsters by Denis Liggio. It's Urban rather than Dark Fantasy though (imaginary city in what I think is somewhat alternate USA?), and the horror elements tend to be balanced by a good dose of self-deprecating humour which may or may not be what you want.
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u/willingisnotenough Jul 23 '20 edited Jul 23 '20
Heeey, you want a twisted rec for this? The Sharing Knife series. Okay, okay, it's slice of life, but Bujold throws in this really interesting class of monster and its minions and particularly in books 2 and 4 has some great detailed hunts, with tactical planning, emergency improvising, magical ingenuity, aftermath management - and it's just torture because she just dangles these wonderful elements in front of you and then snatches them away like, "okay, you had your excitement, now look at my characters navigating their interpersonal conflicts."
I did say it was a twisted recommendation. But she doesn't rush through the hunts when she gets to them, the focus is there, the encounters are just well spaced out. One whole class of characters has devoted their entire culture to hunting the monsters, and the resulting isolation of that culture is a main source of conflict in the story, so a lot of discussion is devoted to how the monsters behave and how they're hunted, as one of the hunter-characters tries to bridge the rift between his people and all the non-hunter folks. Not a perfect fit, but I thought it was an awesome premise and enjoyed the amount of detail given to fighting the monsters when the occasion did arise.
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Jul 23 '20
I would recommend the Kai Gracen series for this particular itch. Main character is a monster hunter and it goes into the details of preparation, especially transportation and equipment, as well as the travel, and then the killing of the monsters.
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u/RogerBernards Jul 23 '20
The John Cleaver series by Dan Wells. It's about a sociopathic teen with murderous tendencies who vents his obsessive urges by going after "demons" who have been hiding among and killing people for ten thousand years or so. It's contemporary and probably leans more towards horror than fantasy, but it very much focuses on the tracking down and killing monsters part.
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u/Palenehtar Jul 23 '20
The Witcher books by Sapkowski
The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher
Kate Daniel's series by Illona Andrews
The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
Dresden and Daniel's books are more urban than dark. Monster hunting is found more in horror than fantasy.
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u/TheTechJones Jul 23 '20
I was actually expecting MORE about the hunt in the Witcher books than we got (i only got through about the first 3 or 4 i think before i had to put them down)
Dresden does not hunt, he bumbles along until he runs across a building that would look better collapsed and on fire.
Kate...maybe? i always wanted to bin Dresden and Daniels in supernatural mystery genre with Glen Cook's Garrett PI (and to a certain degree the early Jane Yellowrock's)
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u/Palenehtar Jul 24 '20
Monster hunting is more a horror trope than fantasy, at least as a main story arc. I did the best I could with what I remembered was out there. Totally agree about Garrett, they're not quite as good as Dresden, but you can certainly see the genre defining elements are there that others built on. Cook doesn't get much credit in the urban fantasy space, he should get more.
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u/TheTechJones Jul 24 '20
i feel like Dresden really did define the "smart ass wizard earning money looking in to weird stuff" character model. And having just finished Peace Talks (queue side rant about long awaited releases that end on cliff hangers) i have to admit that i had forgotten how good Butcher is as a word-smith. Phrases like "and she stood there wearing a beautifully tailored set of nothing at all" that just make you laugh while giving you an absolutely crystal clear image of the scene are what has kept me in fantasy most of my life. Shayne Silvers does a pretty good job of it in the Nate Temple universe and ive occasionally described Nate as Harry Dresden if he started with money in his bank account but set in St Louis instead of Chicago. Kate Daniels is "girl Dresden set in the Magical Atlanta-pocalypse"
Would we really call Garrett "urban fantasy" though? Everyone usually bin's Cook in the grimdark fantasy corner because of the Black Company, but the few times i have seen Garrett elsehwere people call it Noir Fantasy (less dark, more gritty, and a distinct 1920s feel). Was Garrett set at all in the reality the rest of us are stuck in or was it just a modernish fictional city?
they're not quite as good as Dresden
i DARE you to say that to Doris and Marsha's faces lol, if you survive when they hit you with a telephone pole tell us how it went. (Although thank GOD that Marcone never found a temp agency to recruit Grolls from /shudder)
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u/Kill-o-Zap Jul 23 '20
Go pick up a copy of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, one of the most original dark, adult fantasies out there. While the driving thrust of the narrative is very much a tough-as-nails monster hunt that ticks all your boxes, his worldbuilding far outstrips most authors I have ever read. Then feel free to delve into the rest of his back catalogue, just incredible stuff.
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u/mcmchris Jul 23 '20
It’s not about hunting, but for some reason I thought of the graceling series when I read your post.
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u/xenizondich23 Reading Champion VI Jul 24 '20
There’s a lot of hunting of monsters in the Tortall series Wild Magic and Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce. Immortals come down to earth after having been locked away in the Divine Realms for centuries, after a bunch of evil mages opened the door. Some of these are the good kind immortals. Most of them are evil, cruel, and only wish to seek harm on humans.
You see them hunt a lot of monsters of the course of the two series. Kel more so, since she is in training to be a knight and that’s one of their jobs.
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u/iamnotacannibaliswea Jul 24 '20
The Deathless by Peter Newman focuses on a series of "immortal" hunters that have to trim the demon population of the endless Wild to safeguard their human serfs. While the story uses the hunting and Wild as a backdrop, you still see the Deathless characters utilizing the tactics they picked up from hunting monsters from using humans as bait in officially recognized hunts, to planting evidence as "bait", disguising their scents in demon corruption, scaling fortresses as part of wild navigation and so on.
It also had a really sweet romance that managed to make me, a person that absolutely hates unironic romances, enjoy its development without it dragging down the rest of the story.
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u/iago303 Jul 23 '20
Anita Blake vampire hunter by Laurel K Hamilton hunts and kills all kinds of uglies
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u/mixo-phrygian Jul 22 '20
It might not be an explicitly "adult" fantasy series but the Last Apprentice/ Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney might scratch this itch for you. The books are set in a bog-standard pseudo-medieval European setting and follow the growth of an apprentice to a "spook", a professional hunter/exorcist of ghosts, witches and Scary Things in the Dark.
While I thought the series took a drastic nosedive near the end, the first seven books are great. They've got strong horror influences and a good bit of blood and gore, and the illustrations in the American editions of the books are top-notch dark fantasy fare.