If you walked into a bookstore in 2008 looking for a nice, heroic escape involving elves and noble quests, The Steel Remains Richard Morgan was essentially a hand grenade tossed into your expectations. It didn't just break the rules of fantasy. It took those rules out back and beat them senseless.
Richard Morgan was already the "it" guy for gritty cyberpunk. He’d written Altered Carbon, a book so sleek and violent it eventually landed a massive Netflix budget. But then he pivoted. He decided to take all that "streetwise world-weariness" and pour it into a world of broadswords and sorcery. The result? A story that makes George R.R. Martin look like he’s writing bedtime stories for toddlers.
What’s the big deal with Ringil Eskiath?
Most fantasy heroes are farm boys with a destiny. Ringil "Gil" Eskiath is a washed-up war hero who spends his days drinking in a backwater village, telling tall tales to people who barely believe him. He’s cynical. He’s mean. He’s also "queer as the narrative voice most emphatically has it," as some early critics put it.
Honestly, the way Morgan handles Ringil is probably the most revolutionary thing about the book. In a genre that was (and often still is) aggressively heteronormative, having a protagonist who is openly gay—and whose sexuality is treated with the same gritty, unflinching realism as the combat—was a massive shock to the system.
Ringil isn't a saint. He’s an aristocrat who got kicked out of the club. When his mother shows up and asks him to save a cousin sold into slavery, he doesn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. He does it because he’s bored, bitter, and the only thing he’s actually good at is killing people with a Kiriath soul-sword named Ravensfriend.
A trio of broken people
The book doesn't just stick to Ringil. You’ve got Egar the Dragonbane, a nomadic steppe warrior who’s basically a barbarian version of a mid-life crisis. He’s the leader of his people, but he’s utterly bored by their traditions and misses the "civilized" world where people actually took baths and didn't yell about spirits all day.
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Then there’s Archeth. She’s the last of the Kiriath—a high-tech alien race that basically saved humanity and then dipped, leaving her behind as a sort of cosmic souvenir. She’s an engineer and an advisor to an Emperor who is, frankly, a bit of a prick.
These three fought together in the "Dragon War" a decade prior. They are the leftovers of a conflict the world is trying to forget, and the chemistry between them feels real because it’s built on shared trauma rather than "power of friendship" cliches.
The brutality of The Steel Remains Richard Morgan
If you’re squeamish, stay away. Seriously.
Morgan doesn't do "bloodless" swordplay. When someone gets hit by a sword in this book, they don't just fall over. They explode into a mess of viscera and screaming. He’s been accused of being "obscene," and yeah, the sex and violence are graphic. But there’s a point to it.
He wanted to strip away the "sugar coating" of the genre. He hated the idea of "stainless forces of good" fighting "hordes of irredeemable evil." In his world, everyone is a bit of a bastard. The priests are fanatics, the leaders are corrupt blowhards, and even the "heroes" are motivated by spite as much as justice.
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Is it actually Sci-Fi?
Here is where it gets interesting for the nerds. While it looks like fantasy, there are hints everywhere that we're dealing with "sufficiently advanced technology."
- The Kiriath aren't gods; they’re aliens with spaceships.
- Magic might just be physics we don't understand yet.
- The "Dwenda" (the antagonists) move in and out of time like they’re glitching through reality.
Morgan leaves these crumbs for the reader to find. It’s a "what if" scenario: what if classic fantasy tropes were actually the remnants of a high-tech civilization that collapsed? It gives the world a texture that feels much heavier than your standard D&D setting.
Why people still argue about it
The book won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2010. It also pissed off a lot of traditionalists. Some readers find the relentless "grimdark" tone too much. They argue that if everyone is a jerk and everything is miserable, why should we care?
Joe Abercrombie, another titan of the genre, famously said Morgan didn't just twist the cliches, he took an axe to them. And that’s the polarizing nature of the work. It’s "Brutalist Fantasy." It’s loud, it’s rude, and it uses the word "fuck" more than a Scorsese movie.
There's a specific kind of modernism in the dialogue that some find jarring. Barbarians saying things like "back in '55" or emperors saying "yeah" frequently. It’s intentional. Morgan is trying to bridge the gap between our world and the fantastic, making the characters feel like people you might actually meet in a dive bar, rather than statues in a museum.
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The legacy of the "Land Fit for Heroes"
This book kicked off a trilogy that includes The Cold Commands and The Dark Defiles. It’s a complete story, which is rare these days when every series seems to drag on for twenty volumes.
It hasn't been adapted for TV yet—and honestly, with the level of graphic content, it would be a nightmare for any standards and practices department. But its influence is everywhere. You can see its DNA in the way modern fantasy authors handle morality and sexuality. It paved the way for a more adult, less "cosy" version of the genre.
What to do if you're diving in
If you're going to read The Steel Remains Richard Morgan, don't expect a hero's journey. Expect a slog through a very dark, very well-realized mud pit.
- Check your expectations: If you want "noble" heroes, look elsewhere. Ringil is an anti-hero in the truest sense.
- Pay attention to the tech: Look for the sci-fi elements hidden in the "magic." It makes the world-building much more rewarding.
- Brace for the prose: Morgan’s writing is sharp and visceral. He describes a wound or a sex scene with the same clinical, unflinching detail.
It’s a tough read, but for those who are tired of the same old "chosen one" narratives, it’s a breath of very foul, very realistic air. It remains a landmark in the grimdark subgenre precisely because it refuses to play nice.
To get the most out of this series, start by tracking down a physical copy of The Steel Remains to see the maps and world-building notes firsthand. Once you finish, move immediately to The Cold Commands, as the transition from "fantasy" to "ancient sci-fi" becomes much more explicit in the second volume. Keep a close eye on the mentions of the "Gray Places"—it's the key to understanding how the Dwenda actually operate within the world's physics.