Born Again Fantasy Writer

I like Gene Wolfe's Latro series. More Roman times, but still quite fantastic. His Wizard Knight series is excellent, IMO.

A bunch of people like Steven Erikson's stuff. I'm not a huge fan, though I did like the first one. It's been described sometimes as dark, though gritty might be a more appropriate word. His stuff gets epic, too, as most of the events shape history in some way...


Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series is OK, but I found the second and third less entertaining than formulaic or overly contrived. Might just be me.


King Rat, by China Mieville, is pretty much a dark, urban version of Pied Piper. Highly recommended.


Garcia Marquez is good. Of Love and Other Demons, for example.

Borges; I just finished Ficciones. All his work is short(but genius).



AMC

I'm very impressed with Mike Varey's work. His Felix Castor series starting with 'The Devil You Know' is dark fantasy-crime noir set in contemporary London

Many urban fantasy novels tend to incorporate mythology a lot these days. On the other hand, I found Living with Spirits and The Name of the Wind to be very good and they're medieval based fantasy. Living with Spirits incorporates necromancy/mediumistic elements and the author's own created mythology. The Name of the Wind incorporates Fae.

When it comes to dark and grittier fantasy you can't really go wrong with Glen Cook's The Black Company and The Instrumentalities of the Night - though many people complain that instrumentalities is hard to get into. It is - but that's just 'cause Cook throws everything at you without spoon-feeding, early on, and it's up to the reader to make sense of it as s/he walks down the road of the book.

Just have to say.. If you're truly a born-again fantasy writer, I highly recommend Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle. A decidedly different look at the arthurian legend, in the context of Merlin, attempting to juxtapose the old ways of the atlantians and druids to the new rising religion of christianity.