life for the vast majority of people who have ever lived has been ugly, subject to random disease, starvation, violence, conscription and slavery ( and that's just for those luck enough to be born men!). If a writer aims for a fantasy setting that more accurately parallels an equivalent period in our history it's going to be a lot less pleasent than Tolkien's "English villages as they never were". I'll take the darkness over bland extruded fantasy product every time.
But do writers find themselves writing about these things because of the medieval (or quasi medieval) setting they have chosen, or do they choose the setting because it allows them to write about disease, starvation, violence, etc.? And if readers are so keen to read about these things, because that's how life is for the vast majority of people, why not read real-life accounts by people who have actually experienced these things? Or why not read contemporary fiction based on those accounts? There are plenty of places where such things are happening right now. Why not read about them
without the fantasy trappings? Not much good as escapist entertainment? A little too close to home?
Why are most stories about rape told from the male point of view and written by male writers? The male character does it or sees it and then moves on. A female viewpoint character has to live with the trauma, the consequences. But again, perhaps not so good as escapist literature?
Why, if we want to see something new, don't we get out of the Middle Ages altogether? Staying in the same playground, even if the games are more dangerous and the players are getting more badly hurt, is not the same thing as growing up and gaining a more mature perspective on the world -- which may be long overdue. Of course there is Steampunk and Urban Fantasy, which do present some different perspectives on the human experience, but they don't feed the appetite for violence, nor support the narrow mindset that fantasy
must take place in a quasi-Medieval setting.
I wonder if violence and rape are becoming as much a cliché as the battle between good and evil? After a while, taking the old stereotypes and turning them on their heads ceases to be original. One of these days, people might start referring to books that are relentlessly dark and violent as "extruded fantasy product."
None of what I am saying refers to Mark Lawrence's books, because I have not read them nor do I intend to -- the very things that some people say they like about them don't match up with what I care to read about -- but to the general trends some people have been discussing here.
