Beyond “Lesbian Necromancers in Space”: How Necromancy Evolved in Modern Fantasy

“Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!”

That was how science fiction author Charles Stross famously described Gideon the Ninth in a promotional blurb for the book. The full version is even better:

“Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!”

Like the best blurbs, it manages to be both accurate and completely ridiculous. Readers quickly shortened the line to the now-famous meme “lesbian necromancers in space”, which spread widely across reviews and social media and became one of the most recognizable descriptions of the novel.

But while the phrase is funny, it also points to something interesting. Necromancers have become one of the most flexible archetypes in modern fantasy and science fiction.

Once they were almost always villains: dark wizards raising skeletons and commanding armies of the dead. But contemporary authors have expanded the concept dramatically. Necromancers can now be priests guarding the boundary between life and death, scholars studying forbidden knowledge, political operatives, or even the technical specialists of an interstellar empire.

Looking across several very different books reveals just how many forms necromancy can take.

Gideon the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

Few books have done more to reinvent necromancy in recent fantasy than Gideon the Ninth. Often jokingly summarized as “lesbian necromancers in space” (a description sometimes attributed to Charles Stross), the book mixes gothic horror, space opera, and extremely irreverent humor.

The story follows Gideon Nav, a sword-wielding servant forced to accompany her nemesis Harrowhark Nonagesimus — a prodigy necromancer — to a crumbling imperial palace where representatives of the empire’s necromantic houses compete to unlock forbidden secrets.

Necromancy here is not merely dark magic. It is the foundation of an interstellar empire. The ruling houses specialize in different branches of bone magic, and their power rests on the manipulation of death itself.

What makes the book stand out is how it treats necromancy almost like an applied science, with specialized techniques, schools, and disciplines. At the same time, the tone remains gleefully chaotic, mixing elaborate magical theory with sword fights, sarcasm, and an unusually entertaining cast of characters.

It is one of the most distinctive reinterpretations of necromancy in modern speculative fiction.

The Coldfire Trilogy – C. S. Friedman

C. S. Friedman’s trilogy (Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows) sits somewhere between science fiction and fantasy.

The setting is a colony world where human emotions and beliefs shape reality itself. Fear and superstition literally create monsters. In this environment, magic and psychology become inseparable.

While the series does not feature traditional necromancers raising skeletons from graves, it is deeply concerned with death magic, souls, and the manipulation of life energy. One of the central characters, Gerald Tarrant, is essentially a form of psychic vampire whose power is tied to death and darkness.

Necromancy in this series is therefore less about corpses and more about the power drawn from death itself — a darker, more metaphysical interpretation of the concept.

The trilogy stands out for combining philosophical speculation with dark fantasy atmosphere, and for presenting one of the most memorable morally ambiguous characters in modern fantasy.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer – Jonathan L. Howard

Jonathan L. Howard takes the idea of the necromancer in a completely different direction.

Johannes Cabal is not a dark sorcerer plotting world domination. Instead he is a brilliant, deeply unpleasant scientist who happens to specialize in necromancy. At the beginning of the story he has already sold his soul to the devil in exchange for forbidden knowledge — and now wants it back.

His solution is to travel the countryside with a demonic carnival, collecting souls for Satan in order to repay his debt.

The tone of the Cabal stories is darkly comic, and Howard clearly enjoys playing with the absurdity of the premise. Cabal treats necromancy less like mystical power and more like an academic discipline, complete with research, experiments, and professional detachment.

This makes him perhaps the most unusual necromancer on the list: not evil exactly, but so intellectually arrogant and morally indifferent that the distinction becomes almost irrelevant.

The series also demonstrates something rare — genuinely engaging short-form fantasy stories, which is much harder to do well than it looks.

Sabriel – Garth Nix

Garth Nix’s Sabriel is arguably one of the most influential necromancer stories in modern fantasy.

The protagonist, Sabriel, inherits the title of Abhorsen, a kind of royal necromancer whose duty is not to raise the dead but to lay them properly to rest. Armed with a bandolier of magical bells, she travels into Death itself to prevent the restless dead from returning to the living world.

Nix’s depiction of necromancy is unusually structured. Death is not simply a concept but a literal landscape with gates and currents that souls must pass through. The Abhorsen’s role is therefore something like a guardian of the boundary between life and death.

Even though Sabriel is often categorized as young adult fantasy, its worldbuilding and magical system are strong enough that it remains a classic decades after publication.

Among necromancer stories it represents a fascinating inversion: necromancy used not for power, but as a sacred responsibility.

The Necromancer Chronicles – Amanda Downum

Amanda Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles, beginning with The Drowning City, move necromancy into a more political direction.

The protagonist, Isyllt Iskaldur, is a necromancer employed by the crown as a kind of spy and magical investigator. Much of the story takes place in a city caught between empires, where political intrigue, rebellion, and espionage are constant threats.

Here necromancy is neither sacred duty nor scientific experiment. Instead it is a tool of statecraft. Isyllt’s abilities allow her to interrogate ghosts, uncover secrets, and manipulate the hidden forces shaping the city’s fate.

The books also explore identity and relationships in ways that feel more modern than many traditional fantasy series. Notably, they add yet another entry to the surprisingly long list of books with necromancers in speculative fiction with queer themes.

I am starting to suspect there may be a pattern there.

Looking across these stories more closely, that pattern becomes clearer — and more interesting than it first appears.

What These Necromancers Tell Us About Modern Fantasy

Looking across these stories, what stands out is not just that necromancers have evolved — but the direction of that evolution.

The shift is not random. It follows a few clear patterns that say something about how speculative fiction increasingly treats power, knowledge, and the boundary between life and death.

From Villain to System

In older fantasy, the necromancer was almost always an outsider — a figure who violated the natural order and had to be destroyed.

In these books, necromancy is no longer marginal. It is embedded within society itself.

In Gideon the Ninth, it forms the foundation of an interstellar empire, complete with schools, specializations, and institutional power. In Sabriel, it becomes an inherited office, a role defined as much by duty as by ability. In Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles, it is part of the machinery of the state — something that can be deployed in service of political goals.

Even Johannes Cabal, for all his eccentricity, treats necromancy as a professional discipline rather than a forbidden art.

What was once transgressive has become structural. Necromancy is no longer just something a villain does — it is something a society uses.

That shift mirrors a broader tendency in modern storytelling: power is no longer externalized as evil, but embedded within systems that feel uncomfortably familiar.

From Fear to Knowledge

Necromancy has always been tied to fear: fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of what lies beyond.

But many of these stories replace fear with something closer to curiosity. Death is no longer only something to dread — it is something to investigate.

Cabal approaches death as a subject of study, not reverence. In Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy, the connection between death, emotion, and reality turns necromancy into a form of metaphysical inquiry. Even in Gideon the Ninth, the elaborate schools of bone magic suggest a system that can be learned, refined, and mastered.

This does not make necromancy safe — but it does make it knowable.

And that shift matters. Once death becomes something that can be studied, categorized, and manipulated, it moves from the realm of horror into the realm of understanding.

From Power to Responsibility

Perhaps the most interesting shift is that necromancy is increasingly tied to responsibility rather than domination.

In Sabriel, the central task is not to command the dead, but to ensure they remain where they belong. The Abhorsen’s role is closer to that of a guardian than a ruler.

Even in more morally ambiguous settings, necromancy is never consequence-free. Downum’s Isyllt uses her abilities in the service of a crown, but that service comes with political and personal costs. In Gideon the Ninth, the structured hierarchy of necromantic houses suggests a system bound by rules, expectations, and long-standing obligations.

Power over death, in these stories, is rarely free. It comes with constraints — institutional, moral, or both.

Taken together, these shifts suggest that necromancy has moved far beyond its original role as a symbol of corruption.

It has become something more flexible, and perhaps more unsettling: a way of exploring what happens when death itself becomes part of the systems we build, the knowledge we pursue, and the responsibilities we inherit.

Final Thoughts

Necromancers remain one of fantasy’s most enduring archetypes. But as these books demonstrate, the idea has become far more flexible than the stereotypical dark wizard raising skeletons from graves.

Sometimes the necromancer is a priest, sometimes a scientist, sometimes a spy — and occasionally the necromancer is only half of a duo, with the other half being a sarcastic, kick-ass swordfighter locked in a deeply complicated love–hate relationship.

Which interpretation is the most compelling probably depends on what kind of stories you enjoy.

But taken together, they show that the boundary between life and death remains one of the richest themes in speculative fiction — flexible enough to support everything from gothic horror to political intrigue to irreverent space opera.

“Lesbian necromancers in space” sounds like a joke.

But it also captures something real: the archetype has become so adaptable that it can carry almost any kind of story.

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