[Suzerain of Sheol]

Hmm. Well, all the books I mentioned above are pretty definitively fantasy, I'd be very surprised to find them in any other section. I mean, they have all the elements: elaborate secondary world, functional magic, predisposed focus on wars and battles, and all the rest. They just... somehow manage to do it differently, whether by adding elements of philosophy or anthropology, or by making those secondary worlds less black and white than the usual genre fare.

For some reason, I can't see publishers marketing these books as anything but fantasy, the elements are just too strong. I get what you're saying, quiet, but those works are a bit less-tightly genre-bound, no? When something involves warrior-monks and sorcerous warfare, as the Prince of Nothing does, no amount of philosophy and psychology (which is the main focus of the books) is going to make it something other than fantasy. Which is hurting Bakker's sales, I've read.

Not to mention, now that these sort of books are coming out, a lot of authors are admitting that their stories originated in DnD and other RPGs and were an outcry against the tropes and norms of that game. Malazan and Prince of Nothing are both fairly obviously inspired by that sort of TSR/WotC fiction, and while they reach higher, they're still standing very firmly on the shoulders of what has come before.