Reading list
10 Must-Read Dark Fantasy Books with Stunning Illustrations
Dark fantasy has always leaned on pictures. Long before the genre had a name, the fairy tales it grew out of arrived with plates of thorn hedges and long-fingered shadows. The ten books below are the ones we keep returning to as we make our own — books where the artwork is not decoration, but part of how the story is told.
1.The Sandman
Neil Gaiman, with Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, P. Craig Russell and others
The series most people mean when they say a comic can be literature. Dream of the Endless walks through myth, history and nightmare, and each arc hands the art to a different set of hands — so the book changes texture as its subject does.
2.Berserk
Kentaro Miura
Astonishing black-and-white draughtsmanship in service of a genuinely bleak medieval world. The crowd scenes and armour alone are worth the shelf space. Be warned: the violence is unrelenting, and it means it.
3.Monstress
Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Art deco line work, an art-nouveau palette, and a matriarchal world recovering from war. Takeda's pages are so densely designed you will re-read them for the borders.
4.Gormenghast
Mervyn Peake
Peake was an illustrator first, and drew his own characters. Editions carrying his sketches show you exactly how grotesque he intended the castle's inhabitants to be. Slow, strange, and unlike anything else in the genre.
5.Through the Woods
Emily Carroll
Five short horror-fairytales told in colour that bleeds across the gutters. Short enough for one sitting, unpleasant enough to stay with you for a week.
6.Coraline
Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean
Shelved for children and frightening to adults. McKean's smudged, half-photographic figures make the other mother's button eyes far worse than the text alone would.
7.The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell
Riddell's silvery pen-and-ink edition is the definitive one. A boy raised by the dead, drawn by someone who clearly enjoys drawing headstones.
8.Neverwhere (Illustrated Edition)
Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell
London Below, given a face. The illustrated edition is where the Marquis de Carabas finally looks the way he sounds.
9.Grimm's Fairy Tales, illustrated by Arthur Rackham
The Brothers Grimm and Arthur Rackham
The root system under most modern dark fantasy. Rackham's gnarled trees and sidelong witches set the visual grammar that illustrators are still borrowing from a century later.
10.The Last Unicorn (graphic novel)
Peter S. Beagle, adapted by Peter B. Gillis, art by Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon
Gentler than the rest of this list, and sadder than all of them. Proof that dark fantasy does not have to mean grim to cut deeply.
And one more, still being made
The Legends of Auxillia is our own illustrated dark fantasy novel, written and painted in South Africa by Talon Quill Publishing. It follows Kaldon, a young Aluvian boy growing up under the shadow of the Dread King, in a world held together by five houses. It is not finished yet — which is rather the point of this page. You can read the opening pages, find out which house claims you, or take home a print of the artwork while we work.