I like the dark and oppressive mood. I like the creative/brutal violence and horrors that they come across as well as the lore. I like the medieval type setting. I also like for main characters to die sometimes or at least seriously feel like they’re going to die. I definitely prefer a world that is filled with danger and the threat of death rather than characters just being in the normal world for like 85% of a book while barely spending any pages with the danger. I feel like so many books/movies are like that. It’s especially bad in movies. I don’t want to read a ton of basically realistic fiction while getting hints of something to come and then getting the horror at the end. That’s especially terrible when the payoff isn’t even good.
The Aching God series by Mike Shel is closest I’ve gotten. It’s got a dark D&D esque thing going. A lot of crew members die horrible deaths in dungeons. It’s not a litrpg though, there are no stats or anything like that. The Obsidian path series is kind of close at times. The Blacktongue thief has moments like what I’m looking for, especially when they deal with the goblins who eat humans.
The Road which is good if somewhat austere. This checks some of the boxes but doesn’t have the same vibe for most of it. The Black Company doesn’t really feel much like horror but I liked the first 3. It checks even fewer boxes and has even less of that vibe.
Please don’t recommend Berserk, Lovecraft, Christopher Buehlman’s other books (I’ve read em), Shadow of the Torturer, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” or “On the Beach” (not similar).
by Bomberman_N64