It's not uncommon to think of fantasy as a place of mesmerizingly gorgeous, idealistic worlds with cuddly creatures and magical forests, but that's not always the case. Some worlds are broken and plagued by injustice, curses, and twisted beings with bloodthirsty urges. As most fans know, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings paved the way for a lot of modern fantasy, showing there was room for light and dark in the genre with the quaint Shire and volcanic Mordor.
The worlds of this genre display a depth of imagination that can be both awe inspiring and disturbing in the best way.
Republic Of The Burgue, Carnival Row
From the smoke-filled Victorian style city skies to the gritty Jack the Ripper-inspired murders taking place below, the Burgue isn't a hopeful place for humans or fae. The area known as Carnival Row features a variety of species from faun to faerie, but they're not flitting about, instead they're forced into wing corsets to prevent them from flying.
Refugees driven from their homelands, the fae don't have many options for their futures and are pushed into servitude. They are continually oppressed and some are even beaten in the streets, but the alternative is to be hunted down and killed. From the land to its people, this world is filled with examples of the grimmest parts of society.
Other World, Coraline
Author Neil Gaiman is a master at creating fascinatingly strange fantasy worlds, so it's no surprise that the parallel universe in Coraline is worth exploring in depth.
At first, it appears to be full of magic and wonder, but it soon becomes obvious it's a desolate land made up of illusions. Most of the landscape dissolves into nothingness, revealing its true nature as a prison for the souls of children killed there. Those who resist are abused and their eyes replaced by buttons, demonstrating how anyone who enters is a ragdoll to be thrown about for the Other Mother's amusement for all of eternity.
Westeros, Game Of Thrones
Anyone living in the Seven Kingdoms knows what it feels like to have their dreams crushed or to literally be crushed. Death is around every corner in Game of Thrones, whether it's being burned alive by a dragon or blown apart by bright green wildfire. Its rulers are just as likely to be stripped and shamed in the streets as their people.
Beyond the Wall, if the miles of unforgiving frozen wilderness don't kill the wildlings, the White Walkers and their army of the dead will. And that's not even scratching the surface of the despairing treatment of the majority of the women in this land.
Dark World, The Seventh Tower
This series of novels, written by Garth Nix, is the result of a partnership between Scholastic and Lucasfilm, and if isn't obvious from the name of the world, it's not a cheery place. Its inhabitants live in perpetual darkness because the sun is blocked out from the sky by a magical Veil.
If that wasn't upsetting enough, the society lives in an unforgiving caste system with room for demotion but little to none for elevation. Everyone is judged and if they are ranked low enough, they become the Underfolk. Once someone is pushed down to that level, they spend the rest of their lives as slaves and servants with no chance of rising back up.
Underground Realms, Pan's Labyrinth
It makes sense that a world running in parallel with a bloody, fascist regime isn't composed of dancing fairies and unicorns. Instead everything is twisted into a more horrific version of traditional fairy tales and doesn't provide a real escape from the war crimes happening in the reality above.
From the eerily faun demanding to sacrifice an infant to the dark tunnels home to child-eating monsters, this endless labyrinth has no clear way out except death, especially for those who break the rules.
Orïsha, Children Of Blood And Bone
In Tomi Adeyemi's trilogy, magic wielders known as the maji are hunted down and killed by the monarchy. The divîners, who can't yet use their powers, are oppressed by the rest of society and treated with mistrust, as well as called slurs and kept living in poverty. Any time they seek the slightest bit of power for themselves, they are hunted down and killed by the monarchy.
Their hair color instantly identifies and singles them out, so there's no chance of escaping the mistreatment.
Cittàgazze, His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials features many worlds parallel to Lyra's, but The Subtle Knife showcases what it really looks like for a place to be utterly devastated.
Cittàgazze has been ravaged by Spectres, shadowy creatures who feed on Dust and eat the soul of anyone whose daemon has settled. The result is a city of desperate children with nowhere to go, living in chaos and fear until they become old enough to be attacked by Spectres and left as an empty shell just like their parents, who they have watched forget them.
Ravka, Shadow And Bone
The setting of many of the Grishaverse novels by Leigh Bardugo, Ravka features many of the stark staples of its inspiration, tsarist Russia in the 1800s.
Majority of the population in Shadow and Bone lives in poverty or is forced into the military, while the ruling class lives in extravagant palaces. The Grisha, those born with powers, have the illusion of an elite society but also live in fear that they could be turned against and executed as witches at any moment.
The Unsea, or Shadow Fold, is a thing of true hopelessness as the darkness steadily expands to swallow more towns and sends its winged creatures, the volcra, to feast on the flesh of any human trapped inside.
Thra, The Dark Crystal
The rich history of The Dark Crystal's Thra spans over decades due to the amount of material on the universe from movies and television show to comic books and novels, but the period known as the Age of Division sheds light on a corrupt, barren world.
The race known as the Skeksis commit genocide by wiping out all but two members of Gelfing race. This was after they'd made an alliance and broke it by capturing Gelfings and draining them of their essence. Once the Gelfing are driven to near extinction, the Skeksis raid villages of the Podling people to steal their essence and turn them into slaves.
Everlost, Skinjacker Trilogy
There is nothing bleaker than Neal Shusterman's shadow world full of deceased children who couldn't pass on to the light. This isn't a place of peace, it's a graveyard of death where the only things that exist are areas where people have died in the world of the living. Souls trapped there have to be careful not to stray outside of the dead-spots or they risk forever sinking down into a purgatory realm at the center of earth.
If dying young wasn't bad enough, the cruel afterlife also features soul-eating monsters and criminal possession of the living to reap more child inhabitants by killing them.