David
David asked Ed McDonald:

So, I've seen that you coined this term grimheart (which I love) - because I hate grimdark, but I've really enjoyed the grimheart books like yours - while we wait for book 3 to come out - any suggestions on other books that fall into the grimheart category?

Ed McDonald Hmmmm
I think that Mark Lawrence's Red Sister fits the category - it's nowhere near as dark as Prince of Thorns, but it has both that gritty edge and characters that you can root for.
It's not grim at all but I really enjoyed Chris Wooding's The Ember Blade. It's more like traditional quest based epic fantasy but well worth a read.
Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars is a really excellent series that has quite a hard, realistic sense of the world and plenty of hard scrapes for the characters, but there's definitely a lot of hope in them too. There's some sexual violence in it, but handled very well as I remember, addressing the oppression and trauma suffered by the victim properly.
Oh, and I always have to recommend the Sword of Shadows by J.V.Jones. It features the richest world building in the genre in my opinion.

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more