Looking for something with a focus on someone losing their literal humanity (having started as human) kinda like Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Tokyo Ghoul, and/or losing their figurative humanity (becoming accustomed to doing cruel things) kinda like… Tokyo Ghoul again, I guess
Thanks!
by Ontbijt1
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You might enjoy **Vita Nostra** by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, a strange, unsettling, and surreal fantasy/magical realism novel. It follows a young woman living in Eastern Europe, who begins to experience some strange, impossible things in her life, and is eventually recruited to a weird sort of ‘magic school’. It’s compared to Kafka a fair bit, among other things.
You might also enjoy **Annihilation** by Jeff VanderMeer, and the rest of The Southern Reach series. Eerie, compelling, sci-fi, with a good dose of cosmic horror. They’re pretty short books, trippy, and original.
A great fantasy series that contains themes of this nature, both literally and figuratively, is The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb, starting with **Assassin’s Apprentice**. Beautifully written, melancholy, high fantasy, with complex characters, rich world building, strange magics, and an epic story told over the course of multiple excellent trilogies. The first follows Fitz, the bastard son of a dead prince, who is raised to become the King’s assassin. It’s a series that’s lower on action, high on emotion– always engaging, but maybe more of a slow burn. The main character possesses a sort of forbidden magic, allowing him to communicate and bond with animals…fraught with danger of losing one’s humanity. Themes of loneliness, self-sacrifice, guilt, and duty, pervade the series.
If you’re really willing to commit to a dense, dark, brutal epic fantasy series, this is a theme throughout The Second Apocalypse by R. Scott Bakker, starting with **The Darkness That Comes Before**. The more metaphorical loss of humanity, that is. A beautifully-written, fucked up, philosophical fantasy series, filled with original, complex, and villainous characters of all types. Some may have already lost their humanity, it’s up to you to decide. Some may be on their way. Deep lore, interesting and strange magics, dense, abstract prose at times, and a somewhat Biblical tone as well, it starts out with a trilogy based on the real world First Crusade, then heads deeper and darker, into the fucked up metaphysics, religion, the gods etc. Good shit, if you’re looking for the most doom metal-ish fantasy series ever.