The latest Rayden Valkyrie Tale, Darkness Enthroned, and the latest Ragnar Stormbringer Tale, The Awakening! Readers of fantasy, heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, dark fantasy, and action-driven tales will love these adventures featuring two iconic protagonists!
Darkness Enthroned
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In the heart of a frigid northern winter, Rayden Valkyrie takes refuge in the lands of the Sarvan people when a mounted column of Attun warriors is seen passing along the outskirts of their territory heading west.
Far from their steppe domain in the east, the Attun warriors are journeying into a remote, unpopulated wilderness, drawing great alarm from the Sarvans about their purpose. Learning of the situation, Rayden joins with a band of warriors from the area’s villages to investigate.
Following the tracks of the Attun warriors, they are led to the base of an enormous, ancient burial mound, where the trail vanishes abruptly. A mystery looms, and Rayden seeks to discover the nature of the burial mound and the reason why the Attuns have traveled so far from their homelands to enter it.
Darkness Enthroned is a stand-alone adventure that is part of the Rayden Valkyrie Tales.
Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Enthroned-Rayden-Valkyrie-Tales-ebook/dp/B08R6HF3MF/
Barnes and Noble Link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/darkness-enthroned-stephen-zimmer/1138511678?ean=2940162709091
The Awakening
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Following the end of a brutal war, Ragnar Stormbringer travels across the sea channel to the west with the warrior Thorsalla to visit her brother’s new settlement in the fertile lands of Ulstara.
Coming upon a scene of total devastation, they find no bodies, but there are a large number of strange tracks heading in one direction and signs of a few survivors in another.
Ragnar will soon discover that some mysteries are the gateways to even greater ones.
The Awakening is a stand-alone adventure that is part of the Ragnar Stormbringer Tales.
Links for The Awakening:
Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Ragnar-Stormbringer-Tale-Tales-ebook/dp/B08W2CFYVX/Barnes and Noble Link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-awakening-stephen-zimmer/1138858478?ean=2940162362692
I am honored and grateful to be here at The Book Junkie Reads, and I was asked to comment on my favorite ten dark fantasy reads. I thought I would go back into books that were influences of mine that I find to be dark fantasy in nature and genre.
These stories span a fairly lengthy time range in terms of their years of publication, but all of them are gems in storytelling and quality of writing. They are in no particular order. I definitely encourage you to check them out, if you haven’t yet!
10 Recommended Dark Fantasy Reads
Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories: I am grouping these stories together into one slot, but you could read any of them and have a great reading experience in dark fantasy. In novella and novellete formats, the titles include works such as “The Tower of the Elephant,” “Queen of the Black Coast,” “The Hour of the Dragon,” and many more steller tales. All of them are gritty and dark-edged in nature, definitely not for the faint of heart, with many horror elements, including a heavy dose of the supernatural. These stories have had a tremendous influence on countless writers and helped define standards in the sword and sorcery genre.
Glen Cook’s The Black Company: The Black Company begins a great dark fantasy series featuring a mercenary company that campaigns in wars taking place in a world filled with sorcerous and supernatural elements. Many readers with military experience have remarked how Glen has captured the vibe of soldiers extremely well. The characters live and breathe, and the camaraderie between the members of the company resonates strongly.
C.S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising: Black Sun Rising is the first book in the Coldfire Trilogy and takes place on a world where human settlers live in a constant standoff with dark fae that have powers to manipulate the human mind. The demonic powers in this story are very well-imagined and both protagonists and antagonists are extremely well developed. I highly recommend this series.
Wayne Barlow’s God’s Demon: This book is the first of a visionary and intense series set in a very imaginative and vivid conception of hell. God’s Demon involves the journey of a high-ranking demon that seeks redemption and desires to return to Heaven. It is very visceral and horrific, but the fantastical elements take it more into a dark fantasy category than it does a strict horror genre classification.
Clive Barker’s Imagica: An epic-scale story, this book represented a major step away for Clive from the horror tales he was most known for. It is thought-provoking and has many dark edges, within a contemporary fantasy context. Clive is a truly masterful writer who brings powerful visuals to the reader’s mind, and Imagica is no exception. This novel is a literary masterpiece.
Stephen King’s The Stand – One of the iconic works in Stephen King’s catalog, The Stand is a foray into dark fantasy with its apocalyptic and supernatural edges. I recommend the unabridged version that Stephen released later. It is a novel that has stood the test of time and will remain among the top stories in apocalyptic literature.
Brian Lumley – Necroscope Books: Without question, these books are my favorite vampire tales. The vampires of these books are creepy and macabre, even monstrous, with no charming figures to be found! Many of these tales involve the character Harry Keogh, who is uniquely talented to speak to the dead, as he has to confront vampires that have come into our world from another realm due to physics experiments gone awry. One subset in this series is my favorite of all, the Vampire World Trilogy, which takes place in the vampires’ home world, a world where half of it lies in darkness and the other half is in the sun (sunside/starside).
David Gemmell’s Wolf in Shadow: David Gemmell, in my opinion, is one of the most criminally underappreciated writers out there. He has a penchant for writing engaging, heroic characters, who find themselves tested to their limits. Wolf in Shadow, the first in the Jon Shannow trilogy, introduces the Jeruslalem Man, who wields a gun in each hand as he takes on the minions of a demonic entity who presides over an empire steeped in dark sorcery and human sacrifice. Fantastic storytelling and possibly one of the best dark fantasy protagonists that you will encounter.
Jeff Long’s The Descent: A very thrilling story that takes place on earth, involving the discovery of a subterranean world in which a dangerous race of hominids has grown, thrived, and evolved. These creatures, called Hadals, launch a worldwide ambush on humans, and the storyline is filled with plot twists, mythic elements, and touches of the supernatural. A well-written novel that readers of dark fantasy will love.
E.E. Knight’s Way of The Wolf: This is the first book of The Vampire Earth series, which involves a predatory, vampiric species that comes into our world in the middle of the 21st century and establishes a presence on it. It is dark fantasy with strong military thriller and horror elements, and this series was way ahead of the plethora of post-apocalyptic and apocalyptic releases that were to come later. It is entertaining and action-packed, with plenty of thrills and scares.
Author Info
Stephen Zimmer is an award-winning author and filmmaker based out of Lexington Kentucky. His works include the Rayden Valkyrie Tales (Sword and Sorcery), The Ragnar Stormbringer Tales (Sword and Sorcery) the Rising Dawn Saga (Cross Genre), the Fires in Eden Series (Epic Fantasy), the Hellscapes short story collections (Horror), the Chronicles of Ave short story collections (Fantasy), the Harvey and Solomon Tales (Steampunk), and the Faraway Saga (YA Dystopian/Cross-Genre).
Stephen’s visual work includes the feature film Shadows Light, shorts films such as The Sirens and Swordbearer, and the Rayden Valkyrie: Saga of a Lionheart TV Pilot.
Stephen is a proud Kentucky Colonel who also enjoys the realms of music, martial arts, good bourbons, and spending time with family.
Author Links:
Website: www.stephenzimmer.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stephenzimmer7
Twitter: @sgzimmer
Instagram: @stephenzimmer7
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