[BOOKS] Game of Thrones for the Literate

Dante wrote:
http://www.zap2it.com/videos/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-jeyne-westerling-prologue-258382

Also....it might be nothing , but. He says "concentrate on finishing the book"

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

Dante wrote:
http://www.zap2it.com/videos/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-jeyne-westerling-prologue-258382

Also....it might be nothing , but. He says "concentrate on finishing the book"

It better be finishing by this stage. It will already be 4 years by 2015.

M99 wrote:Interesting. Tyrion says on season 2 that Myrcella will be betrothed to the YOUNGEST Martell son so either HBO made a mistake in Trystane's character description or we will have a minor continuity error

M99 wrote:Trystane Martell is described as Doran Martell's son and the heir to Dorne so it looks pretty likely that Arianne and Quentyn are getting cut unless HBO made a mistake. I thought they would not cut Arianne since she was integral to the plot and looks likely to marry Aegon but now I feel like earlier speculation of Aegon and Jon Connington being cut may be proven right after all. The speculation began when it was implied in the show that Stannis hires the Golden Company with his funds from the Iron Bank.

There were reports that deviation from the book would get larger and larger. Two audition tapes revealed a huge change from the book. MASSIVE SPOILERS, you have been warned.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

Dante wrote:
http://www.zap2it.com/videos/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-jeyne-westerling-prologue-258382

Also....it might be nothing , but. He says "concentrate on finishing the book"

It better be finishing by this stage. It will already be 4 years by 2015.

That was a massive deal, but honestly, I really like it. I’m so sick of going on the Internet and seeing all the book readers being snobby, spoiling it for other people, then saying, 'Well, it’s not a spoiler. The books have been out for years.' Like, couldn’t you just stop being mad for a second and let other people enjoy the show?

francisflute wrote:All seems lost as Jon lays bleeding in the snow, surrounded by traitors and cold.
As the cold grew stronger, the traitors realize something is off - it's TOO cold. The Others attack in force. Ghost, being warged by Jon, defends his body while Melisandre performs a last-minute ritual to revive him. She kills Shireen as sacrifice and breathes fire into Jon's mouth, and he rises up, but not before avenging Shireen by plunging Longclaw into Melisandre's heart. Longclaw bursts into flame, revealing Jon Snow as Azor Ahai reborn.
Meanwhile Stannis's forces smash the Boltons at Winterfell. Just as Stannis revels in his victory, Wyman Manderly buries a hatchet in his back and the northerners defeat the rest of Stannis's host. With the Boltons defeated and on the run, it is time to implement the Grand Northern Conspiracy. The northmen head to the Wall where they find Azor Jonhai leading a repentant Night's Watch against the Others. "Not yet, Jon," they say, "There's still plots to be twisted." They convince Jon to abandon the Night's Watch and head south with them, letting the Wall hold the Others back for now.
Danaerys returns with her Dothraki hordes and burns Meereen to the ground atop Drogon. Tyrion hops onto Rhaegal and becomes the first dwarf dragonrider. Victarion, Jorah, Barristan, Tyrion, Penny, and Daario bow down to their Queen, standing on the shore between a salty sea and a smoking city, and Moqorro reveals her as Azor Ahai reborn.
On their way to Westeros, Tyrion becomes suspicious of Daario, thinking he's seen him elsewhere before. As they pass the Smoking Sea, Tyrion realizes that he has met this man once before, while taking a piss off the edge of the world. "I know this man," he tells Dany. "This is Benjen Stark of the Night's Watch." Benjen reveals that he came to Dany knowing she was Azor Ahai, and wanted to bring her to the Wall to fight the Others. Dany declares that she must take her kingdom back first.
Victarion and Dany both decide it is important to sail the Smoking Sea - Dany for knowledge of her ancestors, and Victarion because *bleep* yeah, Victarion. They stop at one of the ruins to explore. They find Brightroar, which Dany gives to Jorah, much to Tyrion's dismay. Tyrion argues that he deserves a Lannister sword, but Dany quiets him by telling him he is not a Lannister. Dany reveals that his face is like her father's face, and his dark eye and his pale hair give him away as a secret Targaryen.
Before they leave the Smoking Sea, Victarion proposes marriage to Dany. She agrees, deciding that she needs his army and *bleep* yeah, Victarion. However, in the night, Benjen/Daario murders Victarion, throwing him overboard - but not before revealing that he's being warged by Euron.
Meanwhile, in King's Landing, Cersei watches Ser Robert Strong step forth to defent her in her trial by combat. She looks to see what weakling dare challenge this giant - and sees a similarly large man step forward, a hood over his head and a limp in his step. The man walks into the center of the pit, draws his sword and whispers, "*bleep* confirmed. Get hype." Robert Strong attacks, throwing the Gravedigger back, but his younger brother comes in at a low angle and knocks him over. Robert Strong's helmet rolls away, revealing a sick conglomeration of King Robert's head, Robb's head, Joffrey's head, the Mountain's head, and nothing at all. The High Septon denounces this as treachery and sorcery, and demands Cersei be executed on the spot.
At that moment, however, a man steps forth from the audience. "I know you!" he says. "You were at the Tourney of Harrenhal, many years before. You were beaten by squires and defended by the Knight of the Laughing Tree, who is really Lyanna." The High Septon scoffs. "You don't know me, he says." "Yes I do," the man replies. "You're Howland Reed." The crowd goes into an uproar, though they don't know who this is, and Reed runs out of the courtroom, shouting mystically "R+L=J!"
Azor Jonhai's army marches south, passing by a disguised Bolton family. Roose first kills Walda for food (it's cold and there aren't any animals around), and in the night Ramsay decides to do the same to him. Ramsay stabs Roose, but finds that the dagger shatters instead of killing. Roose laughs, and peels off his skin, revealing himself as a half-human, half-Other combination. He skins Ramsay alive before going north to meet the Others, who have breached the Wall. Roose tells them of all the happenings south of the Wall. The Night's King looks at him, says "The *bleep*'s wrong with you, man?" and kills him on the spot.
Dany and her army attack Westeros starting from Dorne, but find that the Martells will not join her - they've already chosen Aegon Targaryen. Just as Arianne and Aegon marry, however, Aegon pulls out Blackfyre and says, "Psyche! I'm not a Targaryen at all!" A Dance of Dragons breaks out, which ends promptly with Aegon getting incinerated by all Dany on Drogon, Tyrion on Rhaegal, and Bran warging Viserion. Euron/Benjen/Daario tries to warg Viserion as well, encountering Bran and Bloodraven. They form an eternal hive mind together, and make a movie about it titled "Being Brynden Rivers."
Lady Stoneheart orders Brienne to kill Jaime. Brienne and Jaime fight, but Brienne decides that she cannot stand to kill Jaime and swings her sword at Lady Stoneheart instead. Her sword pierces Stoneheart's stone heart, and bursts into flames, revealing Brienne as Azor Ahai reborn. Jaime, however, cannot stop the swing of his sword, which plunges into Brienne's heart before bursting into flames and revealing Jaime Lannister as Azor Ahai reborn.
Azor Jonhai's army reaches the Twins, and demands passage, which Walder Frey refuses. Suddenly Nymeria, being warged by Arya, and her pack invade the Twins and murder all the Freys, letting the northerners through.
Dany marches on King's Landing, which Cersei has somehow taken control of again. Jaime arrives at the same time, as does Azor Jonhai's army of warriors. Jonhai hears about Howland Reed shouting "R+L=J" and realizes he forgot to check the crypts in Winterfell. "BRB" he says, running north, looking in the crypts, and finding Rhaegar's harp as well as a wedding photo album. Jonhai runs back and proclaims "I'm a secret Targaryen!" Tyrion runs to his nephew, embracing him, saying, "I'm a secret Targ too!" Jaime sees this and starts fitting together the pieces - the incest, the madness... "Cersei and I are also secret Targs!" he shouts.
Dany can take no more of this. "Too many Targs!" she screams. "Kill them all!" Jorah and Barristan both realize that she has gone mad. The each step forward to kill her, and start fighting over who should do it. "I'll become Ajorah Ahai," Jorah says, while Barristan proclaims, "I need the dramatic irony!" Jorah slays Barristan and then Dany with Brightroar, which bursts into flame, revealing him as Ajorah Ahai.
"Wait," Jonhai says. "Ajorah, I have the Mormont sword. Jaime, you have the Stark sword. Ajorah has the Lannister sword. Before we start fighting, wanna trade?" They awkwardly exchange swords. "Now," Jon says. "My terms are simple. We gotta fight the Others." "My terms are simple," shouts Cersei from King's Landing, "go *bleep* yourselves." Ajorah and Jaime look around awkwardly because they have no direction in life.
"Wait, what about us?" ask Sansa and Arya and Rickon and Davos.
The Others march onto King's Landing, surrounding everyone. The Night's King walks forth as an emissary.
"Y'know, we're not that bad," he says. "I mean, yeah, we're killing people, but everyone does that these days. We actually have reasons. *bleep*, you guys have been burning the Riverlands for no *bleep* reason at all. You torture people constantly. We sent Roose down here to watch y'all and somehow he turned into a psychopath. What the hell is your problem?" The humans look at each other awkwardly without any good answer. The Night's King shakes his head. "I was just gonna tell y'all to just put a *bleep* Stark back in Winterfell again, but somehow I doubt you can even do that correctly. Night's King out."
Cersei watches the Others march away, heading back north. She yells out the window, "But what about the Valonqar?" Tyrion, Jaime, Sandor Clegane, and all the Second Sons look at each other, shrug, and all run up into the Red Keep to kill Cersei. Cersei gives a nod to Qyburn, who ignites the wildfire reserves and kills everyone.
EDIT: Forgot the most important part, where Varys, Illyrio, and Ser Mandon Moore arise from the ocean with their merling armies. Oh well.

Dante wrote:lmao..... from reddit . Sandor's part , i died

francisflute wrote:The man walks into the center of the pit, draws his sword and whispers, "*bleep* confirmed. Get hype."

Darkstar learns that he is of the day

M99 wrote:Well, she is right to call out the plebs who spoil it for others and then say "the book came out 10 years ago hurrr durrr"

M99 wrote:Is'nt that from the what if every fan theory came true thread

Another gem. This is from the thread what could be the most shocking and ironic plot twitst in The Winds Of Winter.

Darkstar learns that he is of the day

Keely wrote:There are plenty of fantasy authors who claim to be doing something different with the genre. Ironically, they often write the most predictable books of all, as evidenced by Goodkind and Paolini. Though I'm not sure why they protest so much--predictability is rarely a death sentence in genre fantasy.

The archetypal story of the hero, the villain, the great love, and a world to be saved never seems to get old--and there's nothing wrong with this story when it's told well. At the best, it's exciting, exotic, and builds to a fulfilling climax. At the worst, it's just a bloodless rehash, and the worse are more common by far.

Perhaps it was this wealth of predictable, cliche romances that drove Martin to aim for something 'different'. Unfortunately, being different isn't something you can choose to do, you have to come by it naturally. Sure, Moorcock wrote Elric to be the anti-Conan, but at some point, he had to stretch out and find a core for his series that was more than simply 'this is not Conan'--and he did.

In similar gesture, Martin rejects the moralistic romance of the genre, tearing the guts out of epic fantasy: the fantastical, the romantic ideals, the heroism, and with them, the moral purpose. Fine, so he took out the rollicking fun and the social message--what did he replace them with?

Like the post-Moore comics of the eighties and nineties, fantasy has borne witness to a backlash against the moral hero, and then a backlash against the grim antihero who succeeded him. After all, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, or Poul Anderson.

Like many authors who try to develop realism, Martin forgets that 'Truth is stranger than Fiction'. The real world is full of strangeness: unbelievable events, coincidences, and odd characters. When authors remove these elements in an attempt to make their world seem realistic, they end up with a fiction duller than reality; after all, unexpected details are the heart of verisimilitude.

When Chekhov and Peake removed the easy thrill of romance from their stories, they replaced it with strange and exciting characters. They wrote things strange enough to seem true. Compared with these authors, Martin's world comes off as dull and gray. Instead of innovating new, radically different elements, he merely removes familiar staples, and any world defined by lack is going to end up feeling rather thin.

However despite trying inject the book with history and realism, he does not reject the melodramatic characterization of his fantasy forefathers, as evidenced by his brooding bastard antihero protagonist (with pet albino wolf). Apparently, his idea of 'grim realism' is similar to 'Draco in Leather Pants'. This causes a central conflict in the story's tone, rather like putting the cast of a soap opera into an existentialist German film.

He also puts in lots of sex and misogyny, and wall-to-wall rape, which isn't necessarily bad, if its handled well. I think books should have sex in them, and shouldn't shy away from any uncomfortable, unpleasant reality of life. The problem is when people who are not comfortable with their own sexuality start writing about it, which seems to be the problem of every mainstream fantasy author.

If an author writing some sex and lets the pen get away from him, his own lack of fulfillment starts leaking into the scene. It's not about the characters anymore, now it's just the author cybering with me about his favorite fetish. I don't want to buy a book just to get lost in someone's squicky fetish. If I cyber with a fat, bearded stranger, I expect to be paid for it.

I know a lot of fans probably get into it more than I do (like how plenty of WOW players enjoy making their female night elf hunters hump each other), but reading Goodkind, Jordan, and Martin--it can be like seeing a Playboy at your uncle's house where all the pages are wrinkled. That's not to say there isn't servicable pop fantasy sex out there--there is, and it's written by women.

Though I didn't save any choice examples from this book, I did come across an article which mentioned this quote, from a later book in the series:
"When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest . . ."

I can imagine the process, as Martin sits, hands hovering over the keyboard, trying to get inside his character's head:

"Okay, I'm a woman. How do I see and feel the world differently? My cultural role is defined by childbirth. In the process of marriage, I can be bought and sold by my own--Oh, hey! Look at that, I've got tits! Man, look at those things go. *whooshing mammary sound effects* Okay, time to write."

Yet we don't get any descriptions of variously-sized dongs swinging within the confines of absurdly-detailed clothing. We do get a set of giant manboobs--which, as an overweight, elderly man, I assume Martin has some personal experience with--but not until book five, and even then, it's not the dude being hyperaware of his own, secretly moving under his clothes--they're just there to gross out a dwarf. Not really a balanced depiction.

The books are also well known for featuring sudden, apparently pointless deaths, which some suggest is a sign of realism--but, of course, nothing is pointless in fiction, because the author must deliberately decide what to include. Sure, in real life, people will often suddenly die before finishing their life's work (authors of doorstop fantasy series do it all the time), but there's a reason we don't tend to tell stories of people who die unexpectedly in the middle of thing: they are usually boring and pointless. They build up for a while and eventually, lead nowhere.

Novelists often write in isolation, and so it's easy to forget the rule to which playwrights adhere: your story is always a fiction, and any time you ignore that fact and treat it as if it were real, you are working against your own writing. The writing that seems to be the most natural is never effortless, it is carefully and painstakingly constructed to feel natural.

People are often told in entry-level creative writing classes to 'listen to how real people talk, and write like that', which is terrible advice. A transcript of spoken conversation is often so full of repetition, half-thoughts, and non-specific words ('stuff', 'thing') as to be incomprehensible--especially without all of the cues of pattern, tone, and body language. Written communication works very differently, so making dialogue feel like speech is an artificial process. It's the same with sudden character deaths: treat them like a history, and your plot will become just as choppy and hard to follow.

But then, I'm not sure Martin's deaths are truly unpredictable. As in an action film, they are usually a plot convenience: kill off a villain, and you don't have to worry about wrapping up his personal arc. You don't have to defeat him psychologically--the finality of his death is the great equalizer. You don't have to do the hard work of demonstrating that the hero was morally right if he's the only option left.

Likewise, in Martin's book, death ties up loose threads--namely, plot threads. Often, this is the only ending we get to his plot arcs, which makes them rather predictable: any time a character could get enough influence to make things better, or more stable, he will die. Any character who poses a threat to the continuing chaos which drives the plot will first be built up, and then killed off.

I found this interview with Martin to be a particularly telling example of how he thinks of character deaths:
"I killed (view spoiler) because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it. The next predictable thing [someone] is going to rise up and avenge his [death]. And everybody is going to expect that. So immediately [killing (view spoiler) became the next thing I had to do.

He's not talking about the internal motivations of the characters, or the ideas the characters represent, he's talking about them as tools he can use to shock the audience. But then, the only reason we think these characters are important, the only reason we expect them to succeed is because of how Martin writes them.

He treats them as central, heroic character, spending time and energy on them, but it all ends up being a red herring so he can get rid of them for a cheap twist. It's like the mystery novels of the 70's and 80's where to surprise the audience, the author would add in ghosts or secret twins or a new character in the last chapter--it's only surprising because the author has torn up the structure of their own book, undermining the trust between author and reader.

Like all authors, Martin begins by producing plot arcs that grow and change, providing tension and goals for his characters. Normally, when such arcs come to a close, the author must use all the force of his skill to deal with themes and answer questions, providing a satisfying conclusion to a promising idea that his readers have watched grow.

Or you could just kill off the character central to the conflict and bury the plot arc with him. That way, you never have to worry about closure, you can just hook your readers by crafting a new arc from the chaos caused by the dissolution of the previous build. Start to make the reader believe that things might get better, to believe in a character, then wave your arms in distraction, yell and point, 'look at that terrible thing, over there!', and hope your audience becomes so caught up in worrying about this new problem that they forget that the old one was never actually resolved.

By chaining these false endings together, you can create a perpetual state of tension which never requires solution--this is how most soap operas work--plus, the author never has to do the hard work of finishing what they started. If an author is lucky, they die before reaching the Final Conclusion the readership is always clamoring for, and will never have to worry about meeting the collective expectation which all the long years of deferral have built up. It's easy to idolize Kurt Cobain, because you never had to see him bald and old and crazy like David Lee Roth.

Unlucky authors live to write the Final Book, which will break the spell of continual tension and expectation that kept their readers enthralled. Since the plot has not been tightening into a larger, intertwined conclusion (in fact, it's probably been spiraling out of control), the author must wrap things up conveniently and suddenly, leaving fans confused and upset. And, having thrown out the grand moral story of fantasy, Martin cannot even end on the dazzling trick of the vaguely-spiritual transgressive Death Event on which the great majority of fantasy books rely for a handy tacked-on climax (actually, he'll probably try it anyways, with dragons).

The drawback is that, even if a conclusion gets stuck on at the end, the story fundamentally leads nowhere--it winds back and forth without resolving psychological or tonal arcs. But then, doesn't that sound more like real life? Martin tore out the moralistic heart and magic of fantasy, and in doing so, rejected the notion of grandly realized conclusions. Perhaps we shouldn't compare him to other writers of romance, but to grandly realized Histories.

He asks us to believe in his intrigue, his grimness, and his amoral world of war, power, and death. In short, he is asking us to compare him not to the false Europe of Arthur, Robin Hood, and Orlando, but to the real Europe of plagues, power struggles, religious wars, witch hunts, and roving companies of soldiery forever ravaging the countryside.

Unfortunately, he doesn't compare very well to them, either. His intrigue is not as interesting as Cicero's, Machiavelli's, Enguerrand de Coucy's--or even Sallust's, who was practically writing fiction, anyways. Some might suggest it unfair to compare a piece of fiction to a true history, but those are the same histories that lent Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock their touches of verisimilitude. Martin might have taken a lesson from them and drawn inspiration from further afield: even Tolkien had his Eddas.

More than anything, this book felt like a serial melodrama. It is a story of the hardships of an ensemble cast who we are meant to watch over and sympathize with, being drawn chiefly by emotional appeals (the hope that things will 'get better' in this dark place, 'tragic' deaths), even though these appeals often conflict with the supposed realism, and in the end, there is no grander story to unify the whole. The 'grittiness' is just Martin replacing the standard fantasy theme of 'glory' with one of 'hardship', and despite flipping this switch, it's still just an emotional appeal. 'Heroes always win' is just as boring and predictable as 'heroes always lose'.

It's been suggested that I didn't read enough of Martin to judge him, but if the first four hundred pages aren't good, I don't expect the next thousand will be different. If you combine the three Del Ray collections of Conan The Barbarian stories, you get 1,263 pages (including introductions, end notes, and variant scripts). If you take Martin's first two books in this series, you get 1,504 pages. Already, less than halfway through the series, he's written more than Howard's entire Conan output, and all I can do is ask myself: why does he need that extra length?

Some authors use it to their advantage, but for most, it's just sprawling, undifferentiated bloat. Melodrama can be a great way to mint money, as evidenced by the endless 'variations on a theme' of Soap Operas, Pro Wrestling, Lost, and mainstream superhero comics. Plenty of people enjoy it, but it's neither revolutionary nor realistic.

Some have tried to defend this book by saying "at least Martin isn't as bad as all the drivel that gets published in genre fantasy", but saying "he's better than dreck" is really not very high praise. Others have intimated that I must not like fantasy at all, pointing to my low-star reviews of Martin, Wolfe, Jordan, and Goodkind, but it is precisely because I am passionate about fantasy that I fall heavily on these authors.

A lover of fine wines winces the more when he is given a corked bottle of vinegar, a ballet enthusiast's love of dance would not leave him breathless at a high school competition, and likewise, having learned to appreciate Epics, Histories, the Matter of Europe, Fairy Tales, and their modern offspring, the fantasy genre, I find Martin woefully lacking.

There's plenty of grim fantasy and intrigue out there, from its roots in epic poetry to the Thousand and One Nights to the early fantasies of Eddison, Dunsany, Morris, Macdonald, Haggard, and Kipling. Then there are more modern authors: Poul Anderson, Moorecock, Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake, China Mieville, Phillip Pullman, Howard, Lovecraft, and Leiber.

There seems to be a sense that Martin's work is somehow revolutionary, that it represents a 'new direction' for fantasy, but all I see is a reversion. Sure, he's different than Jordan, Goodkind, and their ilk, because they took equal parts Tolkien and Howard, the pseudo-medieval high-magic world from the first and the blood-and-guts heroism from the second. Martin, on the other hand, has more closely followed Tolkien's lead than any other modern high fantasy author--and I don't just mean in terms of Orientalist racism.

Tolkien wanted to make his story 'real'--not 'realistic', by using the various dramatic techniques of literature--but actually real, by trying to create all the detail of a pretend world behind the story. Over the span of the first twenty years, he released The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and other works, while in the twenty years after that, he became so obsessed with worldbuilding for its own sake that instead of writing stories, he filled his shed with a bunch of notes (which his son has been trying unsuccessfully to make a book from ever since).

It's the same thing Martin's trying to do: cover a bland story with a litany of details that don't contribute meaningfully to his characters, plot, or tone. So, if Martin is good because he is different, then it stands to reason that he's not very good, because he's not really very different. He may seem different if all someone has read is Tolkien and the authors who ape his style, but that's just one small corner of a very expansive genre. Anyone who thinks Tolkien is the 'father of fantasy' doesn't know enough about the genre to judge what 'originality' means.

So, if Martin neither an homage nor an original, I'm not sure what's left. In his attempt to set himself apart, he tore out the joyful heart of fantasy, but failed replace it with anything worthwhile. There is no revolutionary voice here, and there is nothing in Martin's book that has not been done better by other authors.

However, there is one thing Martin has done that no other author has been able to do: kill the longrunning High Fantasy series. According to some friends of mine in publishing (and some amusingly on-the-nose remarks by Caleb Carr in an NPR interview), Martin's inability to deliver a book on time, combined with his awful relationship with his publisher means that literary agents are no longer accepting manuscripts for high fantasy series. So it turns out that Martin is so bad at structuring that he actually pre-emptively ruined books by other authors. Perhaps it is true what they say about silver linings . . .

Though I declined to finish this book, I'll leave you with a caution compiled from various respectable friends of mine who did continue on:

"If you need some kind of closure, avoid this series. No arcs will ever be completed, nothing will ever really change. They keep saying 'Winter is Coming', but it's not. As the series goes on, there will be more and more characters and diverging plotlines to keep track of, many of them apparently completely unrelated to each other, even as it increasingly becomes just another cliche, fascist 'chosen one' monomyth, like every other fantasy series out there. If you enjoy a grim, really long soap opera with lots of deaths and constant unresolved tension, pick up the series--otherwise, maybe check out the show."

Dante wrote:Found this review on Goodreads whilst searching for a good book to read , (probably series) . It is a long read and harsh in it's criticism of the books. However , it is surely interesting to read what she has to say . This particular review gave me a lot to think about regarding the books. Obviously , it could never cheapen my passion for these books and the story , but it made me doubt some of the defining characteristics of ASOIAF , such as the death of a character , or the length of the books . This review also partly confirmed , maybe , my thoughts that Martin is way too concerned in shocking his audience. That is something i don't necessarily have any issue with , in fact i enjoy it way too much. But .... she makes a great point why we do see so many deaths of characters . So when you have the time , trust me , it's worth the read. I am particularly interested to see what you think of this , as far as i can see , this Keely makes some really precise points in what she has to say about Martin and Asoiaf. I'd say enjoy , but i doubt you will .

Keely wrote:There are plenty of fantasy authors who claim to be doing something different with the genre. Ironically, they often write the most predictable books of all, as evidenced by Goodkind and Paolini. Though I'm not sure why they protest so much--predictability is rarely a death sentence in genre fantasy.

The archetypal story of the hero, the villain, the great love, and a world to be saved never seems to get old--and there's nothing wrong with this story when it's told well. At the best, it's exciting, exotic, and builds to a fulfilling climax. At the worst, it's just a bloodless rehash, and the worse are more common by far.

Perhaps it was this wealth of predictable, cliche romances that drove Martin to aim for something 'different'. Unfortunately, being different isn't something you can choose to do, you have to come by it naturally. Sure, Moorcock wrote Elric to be the anti-Conan, but at some point, he had to stretch out and find a core for his series that was more than simply 'this is not Conan'--and he did.

In similar gesture, Martin rejects the moralistic romance of the genre, tearing the guts out of epic fantasy: the fantastical, the romantic ideals, the heroism, and with them, the moral purpose. Fine, so he took out the rollicking fun and the social message--what did he replace them with?

Like the post-Moore comics of the eighties and nineties, fantasy has borne witness to a backlash against the moral hero, and then a backlash against the grim antihero who succeeded him. After all, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, or Poul Anderson.

Like many authors who try to develop realism, Martin forgets that 'Truth is stranger than Fiction'. The real world is full of strangeness: unbelievable events, coincidences, and odd characters. When authors remove these elements in an attempt to make their world seem realistic, they end up with a fiction duller than reality; after all, unexpected details are the heart of verisimilitude.

When Chekhov and Peake removed the easy thrill of romance from their stories, they replaced it with strange and exciting characters. They wrote things strange enough to seem true. Compared with these authors, Martin's world comes off as dull and gray. Instead of innovating new, radically different elements, he merely removes familiar staples, and any world defined by lack is going to end up feeling rather thin.

However despite trying inject the book with history and realism, he does not reject the melodramatic characterization of his fantasy forefathers, as evidenced by his brooding bastard antihero protagonist (with pet albino wolf). Apparently, his idea of 'grim realism' is similar to 'Draco in Leather Pants'. This causes a central conflict in the story's tone, rather like putting the cast of a soap opera into an existentialist German film.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:He also puts in lots of sex and misogyny, and wall-to-wall rape, which isn't necessarily bad, if its handled well. I think books should have sex in them, and shouldn't shy away from any uncomfortable, unpleasant reality of life. The problem is when people who are not comfortable with their own sexuality start writing about it, which seems to be the problem of every mainstream fantasy author.


If an author writing some sex and lets the pen get away from him, his own lack of fulfillment starts leaking into the scene. It's not about the characters anymore, now it's just the author cybering with me about his favorite fetish. I don't want to buy a book just to get lost in someone's squicky fetish. If I cyber with a fat, bearded stranger, I expect to be paid for it.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:I know a lot of fans probably get into it more than I do (like how plenty of WOW players enjoy making their female night elf hunters hump each other), but reading Goodkind, Jordan, and Martin--it can be like seeing a Playboy at your uncle's house where all the pages are wrinkled. That's not to say there isn't servicable pop fantasy sex out there--there is, and it's written by women.

Though I didn't save any choice examples from this book, I did come across an article which mentioned this quote, from a later book in the series:
"When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest . . ."

I can imagine the process, as Martin sits, hands hovering over the keyboard, trying to get inside his character's head:

"Okay, I'm a woman. How do I see and feel the world differently? My cultural role is defined by childbirth. In the process of marriage, I can be bought and sold by my own--Oh, hey! Look at that, I've got tits! Man, look at those things go. *whooshing mammary sound effects* Okay, time to write."

Yet we don't get any descriptions of variously-sized dongs swinging within the confines of absurdly-detailed clothing. We do get a set of giant manboobs--which, as an overweight, elderly man, I assume Martin has some personal experience with--but not until book five, and even then, it's not the dude being hyperaware of his own, secretly moving under his clothes--they're just there to gross out a dwarf. Not really a balanced depiction.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:The books are also well known for featuring sudden, apparently pointless deaths, which some suggest is a sign of realism--but, of course, nothing is pointless in fiction, because the author must deliberately decide what to include. Sure, in real life, people will often suddenly die before finishing their life's work (authors of doorstop fantasy series do it all the time), but there's a reason we don't tend to tell stories of people who die unexpectedly in the middle of thing: they are usually boring and pointless. They build up for a while and eventually, lead nowhere.

Novelists often write in isolation, and so it's easy to forget the rule to which playwrights adhere: your story is always a fiction, and any time you ignore that fact and treat it as if it were real, you are working against your own writing. The writing that seems to be the most natural is never effortless, it is carefully and painstakingly constructed to feel natural.

People are often told in entry-level creative writing classes to 'listen to how real people talk, and write like that', which is terrible advice. A transcript of spoken conversation is often so full of repetition, half-thoughts, and non-specific words ('stuff', 'thing') as to be incomprehensible--especially without all of the cues of pattern, tone, and body language. Written communication works very differently, so making dialogue feel like speech is an artificial process. It's the same with sudden character deaths: treat them like a history, and your plot will become just as choppy and hard to follow.

But then, I'm not sure Martin's deaths are truly unpredictable. As in an action film, they are usually a plot convenience: kill off a villain, and you don't have to worry about wrapping up his personal arc. You don't have to defeat him psychologically--the finality of his death is the great equalizer. You don't have to do the hard work of demonstrating that the hero was morally right if he's the only option left.

Likewise, in Martin's book, death ties up loose threads--namely, plot threads. Often, this is the only ending we get to his plot arcs, which makes them rather predictable: any time a character could get enough influence to make things better, or more stable, he will die. Any character who poses a threat to the continuing chaos which drives the plot will first be built up, and then killed off.

I found this interview with Martin to be a particularly telling example of how he thinks of character deaths:
"I killed (view spoiler) because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it. The next predictable thing [someone] is going to rise up and avenge his [death]. And everybody is going to expect that. So immediately [killing (view spoiler) became the next thing I had to do.

He's not talking about the internal motivations of the characters, or the ideas the characters represent, he's talking about them as tools he can use to shock the audience. But then, the only reason we think these characters are important, the only reason we expect them to succeed is because of how Martin writes them.

He treats them as central, heroic character, spending time and energy on them, but it all ends up being a red herring so he can get rid of them for a cheap twist. It's like the mystery novels of the 70's and 80's where to surprise the audience, the author would add in ghosts or secret twins or a new character in the last chapter--it's only surprising because the author has torn up the structure of their own book, undermining the trust between author and reader.

Like all authors, Martin begins by producing plot arcs that grow and change, providing tension and goals for his characters. Normally, when such arcs come to a close, the author must use all the force of his skill to deal with themes and answer questions, providing a satisfying conclusion to a promising idea that his readers have watched grow.

Or you could just kill off the character central to the conflict and bury the plot arc with him. That way, you never have to worry about closure, you can just hook your readers by crafting a new arc from the chaos caused by the dissolution of the previous build. Start to make the reader believe that things might get better, to believe in a character, then wave your arms in distraction, yell and point, 'look at that terrible thing, over there!', and hope your audience becomes so caught up in worrying about this new problem that they forget that the old one was never actually resolved.

By chaining these false endings together, you can create a perpetual state of tension which never requires solution--this is how most soap operas work--plus, the author never has to do the hard work of finishing what they started. If an author is lucky, they die before reaching the Final Conclusion the readership is always clamoring for, and will never have to worry about meeting the collective expectation which all the long years of deferral have built up. It's easy to idolize Kurt Cobain, because you never had to see him bald and old and crazy like David Lee Roth.

Unlucky authors live to write the Final Book, which will break the spell of continual tension and expectation that kept their readers enthralled. Since the plot has not been tightening into a larger, intertwined conclusion (in fact, it's probably been spiraling out of control), the author must wrap things up conveniently and suddenly, leaving fans confused and upset. And, having thrown out the grand moral story of fantasy, Martin cannot even end on the dazzling trick of the vaguely-spiritual transgressive Death Event on which the great majority of fantasy books rely for a handy tacked-on climax (actually, he'll probably try it anyways, with dragons).

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:The drawback is that, even if a conclusion gets stuck on at the end, the story fundamentally leads nowhere--it winds back and forth without resolving psychological or tonal arcs. But then, doesn't that sound more like real life? Martin tore out the moralistic heart and magic of fantasy, and in doing so, rejected the notion of grandly realized conclusions. Perhaps we shouldn't compare him to other writers of romance, but to grandly realized Histories.

He asks us to believe in his intrigue, his grimness, and his amoral world of war, power, and death. In short, he is asking us to compare him not to the false Europe of Arthur, Robin Hood, and Orlando, but to the real Europe of plagues, power struggles, religious wars, witch hunts, and roving companies of soldiery forever ravaging the countryside.

Unfortunately, he doesn't compare very well to them, either. His intrigue is not as interesting as Cicero's, Machiavelli's, Enguerrand de Coucy's--or even Sallust's, who was practically writing fiction, anyways. Some might suggest it unfair to compare a piece of fiction to a true history, but those are the same histories that lent Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock their touches of verisimilitude. Martin might have taken a lesson from them and drawn inspiration from further afield: even Tolkien had his Eddas.

More than anything, this book felt like a serial melodrama. It is a story of the hardships of an ensemble cast who we are meant to watch over and sympathize with, being drawn chiefly by emotional appeals (the hope that things will 'get better' in this dark place, 'tragic' deaths), even though these appeals often conflict with the supposed realism, and in the end, there is no grander story to unify the whole. The 'grittiness' is just Martin replacing the standard fantasy theme of 'glory' with one of 'hardship', and despite flipping this switch, it's still just an emotional appeal. 'Heroes always win' is just as boring and predictable as 'heroes always lose'.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:It's been suggested that I didn't read enough of Martin to judge him, but if the first four hundred pages aren't good, I don't expect the next thousand will be different. If you combine the three Del Ray collections of Conan The Barbarian stories, you get 1,263 pages (including introductions, end notes, and variant scripts). If you take Martin's first two books in this series, you get 1,504 pages. Already, less than halfway through the series, he's written more than Howard's entire Conan output, and all I can do is ask myself: why does he need that extra length?

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:Some authors use it to their advantage, but for most, it's just sprawling, undifferentiated bloat. Melodrama can be a great way to mint money, as evidenced by the endless 'variations on a theme' of Soap Operas, Pro Wrestling, Lost, and mainstream superhero comics. Plenty of people enjoy it, but it's neither revolutionary nor realistic.

Some have tried to defend this book by saying "at least Martin isn't as bad as all the drivel that gets published in genre fantasy", but saying "he's better than dreck" is really not very high praise. Others have intimated that I must not like fantasy at all, pointing to my low-star reviews of Martin, Wolfe, Jordan, and Goodkind, but it is precisely because I am passionate about fantasy that I fall heavily on these authors.

A lover of fine wines winces the more when he is given a corked bottle of vinegar, a ballet enthusiast's love of dance would not leave him breathless at a high school competition, and likewise, having learned to appreciate Epics, Histories, the Matter of Europe, Fairy Tales, and their modern offspring, the fantasy genre, I find Martin woefully lacking.

There's plenty of grim fantasy and intrigue out there, from its roots in epic poetry to the Thousand and One Nights to the early fantasies of Eddison, Dunsany, Morris, Macdonald, Haggard, and Kipling. Then there are more modern authors: Poul Anderson, Moorecock, Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake, China Mieville, Phillip Pullman, Howard, Lovecraft, and Leiber.

There seems to be a sense that Martin's work is somehow revolutionary, that it represents a 'new direction' for fantasy, but all I see is a reversion. Sure, he's different than Jordan, Goodkind, and their ilk, because they took equal parts Tolkien and Howard, the pseudo-medieval high-magic world from the first and the blood-and-guts heroism from the second. Martin, on the other hand, has more closely followed Tolkien's lead than any other modern high fantasy author--and I don't just mean in terms of Orientalist racism.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:Tolkien wanted to make his story 'real'--not 'realistic', by using the various dramatic techniques of literature--but actually real, by trying to create all the detail of a pretend world behind the story. Over the span of the first twenty years, he released The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, and other works, while in the twenty years after that, he became so obsessed with worldbuilding for its own sake that instead of writing stories, he filled his shed with a bunch of notes (which his son has been trying unsuccessfully to make a book from ever since).

It's the same thing Martin's trying to do: cover a bland story with a litany of details that don't contribute meaningfully to his characters, plot, or tone. So, if Martin is good because he is different, then it stands to reason that he's not very good, because he's not really very different. He may seem different if all someone has read is Tolkien and the authors who ape his style, but that's just one small corner of a very expansive genre. Anyone who thinks Tolkien is the 'father of fantasy' doesn't know enough about the genre to judge what 'originality' means.

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:So, if Martin neither an homage nor an original, I'm not sure what's left. In his attempt to set himself apart, he tore out the joyful heart of fantasy, but failed replace it with anything worthwhile. There is no revolutionary voice here, and there is nothing in Martin's book that has not been done better by other authors.

However, there is one thing Martin has done that no other author has been able to do: kill the longrunning High Fantasy series. According to some friends of mine in publishing (and some amusingly on-the-nose remarks by Caleb Carr in an NPR interview), Martin's inability to deliver a book on time, combined with his awful relationship with his publisher means that literary agents are no longer accepting manuscripts for high fantasy series. So it turns out that Martin is so bad at structuring that he actually pre-emptively ruined books by other authors. Perhaps it is true what they say about silver linings . . .

Dante wrote:

Keely wrote:Though I declined to finish this book, I'll leave you with a caution compiled from various respectable friends of mine who did continue on:

"If you need some kind of closure, avoid this series. No arcs will ever be completed, nothing will ever really change. They keep saying 'Winter is Coming', but it's not. As the series goes on, there will be more and more characters and diverging plotlines to keep track of, many of them apparently completely unrelated to each other, even as it increasingly becomes just another cliche, fascist 'chosen one' monomyth, like every other fantasy series out there. If you enjoy a grim, really long soap opera with lots of deaths and constant unresolved tension, pick up the series--otherwise, maybe check out the show."

Dante wrote:This quote was actually a link to this :

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2011/06/30/game-of-thrones-fascism/

i read that too , although it was incredibly boring and too ... how should i put it. Looks through asoiaf with political eyes , like solely? Didn't really agree with most of it tbh.

As for the review , yeah , she's somewhat pretentious , like an apostle of Fantasy

nevertheless , there are certain points she makes that are at the very least interesting to contemplate. It actually helped me balance my opinion between the , Good vs Evil fantasy and the realistic and grey part of fantasy . Or what Martin did to my thoughts on certain types of story , with expecting characters to die or not to die , depending on who they are and what they are going through. (Not just in books , in movies too lol)

I decided that if it's interesting and well written , i simply don't give a damn anymore .

Anyhow , you don't agree with the review i presume , lol

keely wrote:It's the same with sudden character deaths: treat them like a history, and your plot will become just as choppy and hard to follow