J.G. Keely's Reviews > A Game of Thrones
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
by
by
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 hardly a death sentence in genre fantasy.
The archetypal story of a hero, a villain, a profound love, and a world to be saved never seems to get old--it's a great 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. Unfortunately, the worst are more common by far.
Perhaps it was this abundance of cliche romances that drove Martin to aim for something different. Unfortunately, you can't just choose to be different, any more than you can choose to be creative. Sure, Moorcock's original concept for Elric was to be the anti-Conan, but at some point, he had to push his limits and move beyond difference for difference's sake--and he did.
In similar gesture, Martin rejects the allegorical romance of epic fantasy, which basically means tearing out the guts of the genre: the wonder, the 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 nineties, fantasy has already borne witness to a backlash against the upright, moral hero--and then a backlash against the grim antihero who succeeded him. Hell, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes in an amoral world, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, and Anderson.
Like many authors aiming for realism, he forgets 'truth is stranger than fiction'. The real world is full of unbelievable events, coincidences, and odd characters. When authors remove these elements in an attempt to make their world seem real, they make their fiction duller than reality; after all, unexpected details are the heart of verisimilitude. When Chekhov and Peake eschewed the easy thrill of romance, they replaced it with the odd and absurd--moments strange enough to feel true. In comparison, Martin's world is dull and gray. Instead of innovating new, radical elements, he merely removes familiar staples--and any style defined by lack is going to end up feeling thin.
Yet, 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 to him, 'grim realism' is 'Draco in Leather Pants'. This produces a conflicted tone: a soap opera cast lost in an existentialist film.
There's also lots of sex and misogyny, and 'wall-to-wall rape'--not that books should shy away from sex, or 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 plague every mainstream fantasy author. Their pen gets away from them, their own hangups start leaking into the scene, until it's not even about the characters anymore, it's just the author cybering about his favorite fetish--and 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 night elf hunters humping away in WOW), but reading Goodkind, Jordan, and Martin--it's like seeing a Playboy at your uncle's where all the pages are wrinkled. That's not to say there isn't serviceable pop fantasy sex out there--it's just written by women.
Though I didn't save any choice examples, I did come across this quote from a later book:
Imagine the process: Martin sits, hands hovering over the keys, 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. I can be bought and sold in marriage by my own--Oh, hey! I've got tits! Man, look at those things go. *whooshing mammary sound effects* Okay, time to write."
Where are the descriptions of variously-sized dongs swinging within the confines of absurdly-detailed clothing? There are a set of manboobs (which perhaps Martin has some personal experience with) but not until book five. Even then, it's not the dude being hyperaware of his own--they're just there to gross out a dwarf. Not really a balanced depiction.
If you're familiar with the show (and its parodies on South Park and SNL) this lack of dongs may surprise you. But as Martin himself explained, when asked why there's no gay sex in his books, despite having gay characters, 'they’re not the viewpoint characters'--as if somehow, the viewpoints he chooses to depict are beyond his control. Apparently, he plots as well as your average NaNoWriMo author: sorry none of my characters chose to be gay, nothing I can do about it.
And balance really is the problem here--if you only depict the dark, gritty stuff that you're into, that's not realism, it's just a fetish. If you depict the grimness of war by having every female character threatened with rape, but the same thing never happens to a male character, despite the fact that more men get raped in the military than women, then your 'gritty realism card' definitely gets revoked.
The books are notorious for the sudden, pointless deaths, which some suggest is another sign of realism--but, of course, nothing is pointless in fiction, because everything that shows up on the page is only there because the author put it there. Sure, in real life, people suddenly die before finishing their life's work (fantasy authors 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 things: they are boring and pointless. They build up for a while then eventually, lead nowhere.
Novelists often write in isolation, so it's easy to forget the rule to which playwrights adhere: your story is always a fiction. Any time you treat it as if it were real, you are working against yourself. The writing that feels the most natural is never effortless, it is carefully and painstakingly constructed to seem that way.
A staple of Creative Writing 101 is to 'listen to how people really talk', which is terrible advice. A transcript of any conversation will be so full of repetition, half-thoughts, and non-specific words ('stuff', 'thing') as to be incomprehensible--especially without the cues of tone and body language. Written communication has its own rules, so making dialogue feel like speech is a trick writers play. It's the same with sudden character deaths: treat them like a history, and your plot will become choppy and hard to follow.
Not that the deaths are truly unpredictable. Like in an action film, they are a plot convenience: kill off a villain, and you don't have to wrap up his arc. You don't have to defeat him psychologically--the finality of his death is the great equalizer. You skip the hard work of demonstrating that the hero was morally right, because 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 is about to build up 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 action will first be built up, and then killed off.
I found this interview to be a particularly telling example of how Martin thinks of character deaths:
He's not talking about the characters' motivations, or the ideas they represent, or their role in the story--he isn't laying out a well-structured plot, he's just killing them off for pure shock value.
Yet the only reason we think these characters are important in the first place is because Martin treats them as central heroes, spending time and energy building them. Then it all ends up being a red herring, a cheap twist, the equivalent of a horror movie jump scare. It's like mystery novels in the 70's, after all the good plots had been done, so authors added ghosts or secret twins in the last chapter--it's only surprising because the author has obliterated the story structure.
All plots are made up of arcs that grow and change, building tension and purpose. Normally, when an arc ends, the author must use all his skill to deal with themes and answer questions, providing a satisfying conclusion to a promising idea that his readers watched grow. Or just kill off a character central to the conflict and bury the plot arc with him. Then you don't have to worry about closure, you can just hook your readers by focusing on the mess caused by the previous arc falling apart. Make the reader believe that things might get better, get them to believe in a character, then wave your arms in distraction, point and yell 'look at that terrible thing, over there!', and hope they become so caught up in worrying about the new problem that they forget the old one was never resolved.
Chaining false endings together creates perpetual tension that never requires solution--like in most soap operas--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 clamoring for, and never have to meet the collective expectation which 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, breaking the spell of unending tension that kept their readers enthralled. Since the plot isn't resolving into a tight, intertwined conclusion (in fact, it's probably spiraling out of control, with ever more characters and scenes), the author must wrap things up conveniently and suddenly, leaving fans confused and upset. Having thrown out the grand romance 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 do it anyways, with dragons--the longer the series goes on, the more it starts to resemble the cliche monomyth that Martin was praised for eschewing in the first place).
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 works of romance, but to histories.
He asks us to believe in his intrigue, his grimness, and his amoral world of war, power, and death--not the false Europe of Arthur, Robin Hood, and Orlando, but the real Europe of plagues, political 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 these 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. Despite being fictionalized and dramatized, Martin's take on The War of the Roses is far duller than the original.
More than anything, this book felt like a serial melodrama: the hardships of an ensemble cast who we are meant to watch over and sympathize with, being drawn in by emotional appeals (the hope that things will 'get better' in this dark place, 'tragic' deaths), even if these appeals conflict with the supposed realism, and in the end, there is no grander story to unify the whole. This '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 blandly 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 Rey 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 a third of the way into 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?
A few 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, and superhero comics. People get into it, but it's neither revolutionary nor realistic. You also hear the same things from the fans: that it's all carefully planned, all interconnected, all going somewhere. Apparently they didn't learn their lesson from the anticlimactic fizzling out of Twin Peaks, X-Files, Lost, and Battlestar. Then again, you wouldn't keep watching if you didn't think it was going somewhere.
Some say 'at least he 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 at 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, knightly ballads, fairy tales, and their modern offspring in fantasy, I find Martin woefully lacking. There's plenty of grim fantasy and intrigue out there, from its roots to the dozens of fantasy authors, both old and modern, whom I list in the link at the end of this review
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, who simply took the pseudo-medieval high-magic world from Tolkien and the blood-and-guts heroism from Howard. 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 racism.
Tolkien wanted to make his story real--not 'realistic', using the 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 to make a complete 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 that 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. 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 on-the-nose remarks by Caleb Carr in an NPR interview on his own foray into fantasy), Martin's inability to deliver a book on time, combined with his strained relationship with his publisher means that literary agents are no longer accepting manuscripts for high fantasy series--even from recognized authors. Apparently, Martin is so bad at plot structure 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. The tagline is 'Winter is Coming'--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, excessively long soap opera with lots of deaths and constant unresolved tension, pick up the series--otherwise, maybe check out the show."
My Fantasy Book Suggestions
The archetypal story of a hero, a villain, a profound love, and a world to be saved never seems to get old--it's a great 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. Unfortunately, the worst are more common by far.
Perhaps it was this abundance of cliche romances that drove Martin to aim for something different. Unfortunately, you can't just choose to be different, any more than you can choose to be creative. Sure, Moorcock's original concept for Elric was to be the anti-Conan, but at some point, he had to push his limits and move beyond difference for difference's sake--and he did.
In similar gesture, Martin rejects the allegorical romance of epic fantasy, which basically means tearing out the guts of the genre: the wonder, the 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 nineties, fantasy has already borne witness to a backlash against the upright, moral hero--and then a backlash against the grim antihero who succeeded him. Hell, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes in an amoral world, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, and Anderson.
Like many authors aiming for realism, he forgets 'truth is stranger than fiction'. The real world is full of unbelievable events, coincidences, and odd characters. When authors remove these elements in an attempt to make their world seem real, they make their fiction duller than reality; after all, unexpected details are the heart of verisimilitude. When Chekhov and Peake eschewed the easy thrill of romance, they replaced it with the odd and absurd--moments strange enough to feel true. In comparison, Martin's world is dull and gray. Instead of innovating new, radical elements, he merely removes familiar staples--and any style defined by lack is going to end up feeling thin.
Yet, 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 to him, 'grim realism' is 'Draco in Leather Pants'. This produces a conflicted tone: a soap opera cast lost in an existentialist film.
There's also lots of sex and misogyny, and 'wall-to-wall rape'--not that books should shy away from sex, or 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 plague every mainstream fantasy author. Their pen gets away from them, their own hangups start leaking into the scene, until it's not even about the characters anymore, it's just the author cybering about his favorite fetish--and 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 night elf hunters humping away in WOW), but reading Goodkind, Jordan, and Martin--it's like seeing a Playboy at your uncle's where all the pages are wrinkled. That's not to say there isn't serviceable pop fantasy sex out there--it's just written by women.
Though I didn't save any choice examples, I did come across this quote from a later book:
"... she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest . . ."
Imagine the process: Martin sits, hands hovering over the keys, 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. I can be bought and sold in marriage by my own--Oh, hey! I've got tits! Man, look at those things go. *whooshing mammary sound effects* Okay, time to write."
Where are the descriptions of variously-sized dongs swinging within the confines of absurdly-detailed clothing? There are a set of manboobs (which perhaps Martin has some personal experience with) but not until book five. Even then, it's not the dude being hyperaware of his own--they're just there to gross out a dwarf. Not really a balanced depiction.
If you're familiar with the show (and its parodies on South Park and SNL) this lack of dongs may surprise you. But as Martin himself explained, when asked why there's no gay sex in his books, despite having gay characters, 'they’re not the viewpoint characters'--as if somehow, the viewpoints he chooses to depict are beyond his control. Apparently, he plots as well as your average NaNoWriMo author: sorry none of my characters chose to be gay, nothing I can do about it.
And balance really is the problem here--if you only depict the dark, gritty stuff that you're into, that's not realism, it's just a fetish. If you depict the grimness of war by having every female character threatened with rape, but the same thing never happens to a male character, despite the fact that more men get raped in the military than women, then your 'gritty realism card' definitely gets revoked.
The books are notorious for the sudden, pointless deaths, which some suggest is another sign of realism--but, of course, nothing is pointless in fiction, because everything that shows up on the page is only there because the author put it there. Sure, in real life, people suddenly die before finishing their life's work (fantasy authors 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 things: they are boring and pointless. They build up for a while then eventually, lead nowhere.
Novelists often write in isolation, so it's easy to forget the rule to which playwrights adhere: your story is always a fiction. Any time you treat it as if it were real, you are working against yourself. The writing that feels the most natural is never effortless, it is carefully and painstakingly constructed to seem that way.
A staple of Creative Writing 101 is to 'listen to how people really talk', which is terrible advice. A transcript of any conversation will be so full of repetition, half-thoughts, and non-specific words ('stuff', 'thing') as to be incomprehensible--especially without the cues of tone and body language. Written communication has its own rules, so making dialogue feel like speech is a trick writers play. It's the same with sudden character deaths: treat them like a history, and your plot will become choppy and hard to follow.
Not that the deaths are truly unpredictable. Like in an action film, they are a plot convenience: kill off a villain, and you don't have to wrap up his arc. You don't have to defeat him psychologically--the finality of his death is the great equalizer. You skip the hard work of demonstrating that the hero was morally right, because 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 is about to build up 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 action will first be built up, and then killed off.
I found this interview to be a particularly telling example of how Martin thinks of character deaths:
"I killed (view spoiler) because everybody thinks he’s the hero ... 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] ... So immediately [killing (view spoiler)] became the next thing I had to do.
He's not talking about the characters' motivations, or the ideas they represent, or their role in the story--he isn't laying out a well-structured plot, he's just killing them off for pure shock value.
Yet the only reason we think these characters are important in the first place is because Martin treats them as central heroes, spending time and energy building them. Then it all ends up being a red herring, a cheap twist, the equivalent of a horror movie jump scare. It's like mystery novels in the 70's, after all the good plots had been done, so authors added ghosts or secret twins in the last chapter--it's only surprising because the author has obliterated the story structure.
All plots are made up of arcs that grow and change, building tension and purpose. Normally, when an arc ends, the author must use all his skill to deal with themes and answer questions, providing a satisfying conclusion to a promising idea that his readers watched grow. Or just kill off a character central to the conflict and bury the plot arc with him. Then you don't have to worry about closure, you can just hook your readers by focusing on the mess caused by the previous arc falling apart. Make the reader believe that things might get better, get them to believe in a character, then wave your arms in distraction, point and yell 'look at that terrible thing, over there!', and hope they become so caught up in worrying about the new problem that they forget the old one was never resolved.
Chaining false endings together creates perpetual tension that never requires solution--like in most soap operas--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 clamoring for, and never have to meet the collective expectation which 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, breaking the spell of unending tension that kept their readers enthralled. Since the plot isn't resolving into a tight, intertwined conclusion (in fact, it's probably spiraling out of control, with ever more characters and scenes), the author must wrap things up conveniently and suddenly, leaving fans confused and upset. Having thrown out the grand romance 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 do it anyways, with dragons--the longer the series goes on, the more it starts to resemble the cliche monomyth that Martin was praised for eschewing in the first place).
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 works of romance, but to histories.
He asks us to believe in his intrigue, his grimness, and his amoral world of war, power, and death--not the false Europe of Arthur, Robin Hood, and Orlando, but the real Europe of plagues, political 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 these 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. Despite being fictionalized and dramatized, Martin's take on The War of the Roses is far duller than the original.
More than anything, this book felt like a serial melodrama: the hardships of an ensemble cast who we are meant to watch over and sympathize with, being drawn in by emotional appeals (the hope that things will 'get better' in this dark place, 'tragic' deaths), even if these appeals conflict with the supposed realism, and in the end, there is no grander story to unify the whole. This '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 blandly 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 Rey 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 a third of the way into 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?
A few 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, and superhero comics. People get into it, but it's neither revolutionary nor realistic. You also hear the same things from the fans: that it's all carefully planned, all interconnected, all going somewhere. Apparently they didn't learn their lesson from the anticlimactic fizzling out of Twin Peaks, X-Files, Lost, and Battlestar. Then again, you wouldn't keep watching if you didn't think it was going somewhere.
Some say 'at least he 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 at 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, knightly ballads, fairy tales, and their modern offspring in fantasy, I find Martin woefully lacking. There's plenty of grim fantasy and intrigue out there, from its roots to the dozens of fantasy authors, both old and modern, whom I list in the link at the end of this review
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, who simply took the pseudo-medieval high-magic world from Tolkien and the blood-and-guts heroism from Howard. 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 racism.
Tolkien wanted to make his story real--not 'realistic', using the 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 to make a complete 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 that 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. 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 on-the-nose remarks by Caleb Carr in an NPR interview on his own foray into fantasy), Martin's inability to deliver a book on time, combined with his strained relationship with his publisher means that literary agents are no longer accepting manuscripts for high fantasy series--even from recognized authors. Apparently, Martin is so bad at plot structure 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. The tagline is 'Winter is Coming'--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, excessively long soap opera with lots of deaths and constant unresolved tension, pick up the series--otherwise, maybe check out the show."
My Fantasy Book Suggestions
2354 likes · Like
∙
flag
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
A Game of Thrones.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Comments Showing 1,851-1,889 of 1,889 (1889 new)
date
newest »
message 1851:
by
Mackenzie
(new)
-
rated it 5 stars
14 jan. 2024 07:02
reply
|
flag
- A lord would go investigate a murder and bring both of his child daughters with him into enemy territory despite stating that they can't possibly trust the evil royal family that outnumbers their forces 4:1 in said enemy territory and despite the fact that both daughters can easily be kidnapped and used as leverage against him?
- The same lord would trust his children to raise monster wolves, but when approached by a daughter claiming she overheard suspicious men talking about how they could kill a 2nd Hand of the King, he discredits and ignores her immediately without a second thought?
- The same lord would immediately dismiss the fact he witnessed one of his beloved daughters being manipulated by the evil queen and carry on with his life as though nothing happened?
- His daughter also apparently trusts the evil queen no matter what and lives her life as though she's a fairy tale princess even though she should be painfully aware that her parents don't trust the evil queen and her evil family and that she must have had it nailed into her skull multiple times throughout her life?
- The old lord of the Wall sat patiently, listened, and took into consideration the words of a 14 year old bastard child explaining to him how to do his job instead of ordering his men to beat the living daylights out of him for his insolence?
-The very same 14 year old bastard child inherits a family heirloom from a royal family which isn't his own?
- A midget with quite possibly the most humiliating backstory in all of fiction has the strongest and most confidant personality out of every single character?
- A lord with no kingdom, hardly any loyal subjects and virtually no military and combat achievements to his name thinks that savages living in a land he doesn't care to learn anything about will listen to him, respect him, and go into battle for him purely because of his noble blood even though it's made obvious they only value a leader who shows strength in combat?
None of these things would have happened in any time period, meaning that Martin doesn't know have to write.
1st - Theodore Komnenos Doukas in 1230 brought all his family to an actual BATTLE of Klokotnitsa against the Bulgarians, only to lose and have all of them captured. And this is just one thing - people always brought half their family with them at this time. Take Darius and the battle of Issus. And those were battles, not visits to the capital for a court position! You, clearly, from the first note, have no idea of what you are talking about.
2nd - I don't know how this is related to history at all, and some shortcomings of Ned's character can be discussed elsewhere, yet it can be pointed out that some pets, perhaps not giant fantasy wolves, were common at medieval royal courts for obvious reasons.
3rd - Just plain bull, I have no idea how this impacts historicity in any way.
4th - Once again, i have no idea how this in not accurate for the time period. Females never were given much knowledge inside the court politics at the time, aside for a small number of individuals.
5th and 6th - those were weird, yeah, like the whole of Jon's plot.
7th - So, like, you mean, there were no people with ruined ego covered by bravado in the Middle Ages? Or what do you even want to say with this?
8th - It makes total sense for the character - he just doesn't know how it can be different. The man lives inside his information shell way less now then back then, yet, as we can see on your example, ignorance is still rampant.
However, there are other ways to write fantasy. Unveiling ancient beliefs, combining them with touches of wonder, and fusing it all with strong Characters' journeys.
Don't give up on fantasy, it evolves faster than expected.
Try: Helvetia amidst Celtic heroes. Myths are a powerful resource when you travel back in time to understand them!
I think commenting about GRRM's 'manboobs' as you put it is completely irrelevant and a pointless dig when your review is supposed to be about his literary works. I also disagree with your insinuation that Neds death in this book was sudden and pointless as without it we would have no war and no story, and the reasoning and buildup to his death was well done I found. I enjoyed the other aspects of your review but please refrain from personal insults towards the author.
1st - Theodore Komnenos Doukas in 1230 brought all his family to an actual BATTLE of Klokotnitsa against the Bulgarians, only to lose and have all of them captured. And this is just one thi..."
I didn't get a notification for this, so my reply is late. I'll elaborate.
1st: Yes. It was for a battle, so everyone involved knew the stakes, but what Stark did was completely different. He went to investigate a murder and didn't even bother to warn his daughters not to trust anyone they aren't familiar with. Why did he even take his daughters with him? Why would someone potentially take their own beloved and young daughters into a den of murderers where they can easily be captured and/or influenced?
2nd: The points I made are a jab at Martin's bad writing in general. It's not just about historical accuracy.
If they were just regular wolves, I'd understand, but they're direwolves. Creatures of legends they know nothing about. Why wouldn't Stark trust his daughters a bit more because of it? And he never even mentioned anything about the previous Hand to Aria, so her being dismissed as having had a nightmare about it just doesn't make any sense.
3rd: Again. It's about bad writing in general. No one would realistically let their daughter be manipulated like that unless they were demented or something and Stark wasn't.
4th: It's not about court politics. It's about looking after your own children. A simple "you can't trust the the evil queen, her brother, the prince, or any servant you are not familiar with" is out of the question all because Sansa and Aria are women? While Stark is investigating a murder? Why even bring them at all? There's no justifiable reason for him to do so.
5th and 6th: Agreed. John's viewpoint is something else entirely and 7 years after finishing the book, I still struggle to believe an author actually wrote all of that.
7th: It's just not believable that someone like Tyrion would have the strongest and most confidant personality in a world that's supposedly "realistic." He's a midget. His viewpoint feels like a punchline to a joke waiting to happen and it never does. A story with a midget who has the strongest and most confidant personality out of every character takes itself seriously to the point where it feels like the most cartoonish thing ever written. Martin practically skipped out on an entire character arc lasting many years. A writer can't just give a character the most humiliating backstory in all of fiction and skip out on portraying how said character slowly overcame his past and became confidant.
8th: Viserys' character isn't believable. His actions come off as unrealistically stupid rather than because he has a massive ego and because he "lives inside his information shell". Why would any savage serve Viserys when they only value a master who displays strength in battle? What makes him think everything in a different continent has to play out the same way as it would in his homeland? The narrative repeatedly enforces that no one cares about him and even punishes him and yet he never learns. It doesn't make sense.
1st - Theodore Komnenos Doukas in 1230 brought all his family to an actual BATTLE of Klokotnitsa against the Bulgarians, only to lose and have all of them captured. And this i..."
I know your comment is a couple of months old, but I had to reply, because this might be some of the most baffling stuff I have ever read. Your analysis of Tyrions character is a misconception on an insane scale. Yes, it makes no sense that a person who has been discriminated against their entire life is a confident and strong character. But the thing is - TYRION IS NOT a strong and confident character. At ALL. He is the single most insecure and self-hating character in the entire series, and that should be obvious to anyone who has read more than a one-sentence Chat-GPT description of Tyrion and the most basic understanding of human behaviour. He acts as if he is confident - of course he does! He has no choice. He suffers from incredible discrimination for literally nothing, if he wasn’t born into a noble family he probably wouldn’t even be alive, and he knows that. His father despises him, the people laugh at him, nobody respects him. But the thing is, he craves love, he craves respect, of course he does, he deserves it like everyone else. So he tries everything to win respect and to make people like him. He presents himself as insanely confident because he knows the despicable people around with him will exploit every weakness he shows. He presents himself as if everything is a joke to him, as if nothing they say can touch him, because he cannot show them that it actually does. Later in the books, he actually also does some really evil and cruel things, just like his father, even though deep down he isn’t a truly bad person, but he does these things because he feels like that is the only way that other people will respect him.
My main point is: People are not what they present themselves as. Basically never. Even narcissists (actually, especially narcissists) are insanely self-loathing people that don’t believe in themselves at all - and that’s exactly why they present themselves the way they do, they do it because they can’t cope with their insecurities. Narcissists aren’t actually confident, and neither is Tyrion. You don’t even have to have a big understanding of psychology to know that. And in that, Tyrion is not "unrealistic". The contrary, he might be the single most realistic character I have ever come across in fiction, and also the best. Actually, you can just watch the one hour analysis video of Alt-Shift-X about Tyrion, he says it better than I ever could.
It’s kinda hilarious to me that the same people saying "haha Martin things his stories are so smart and complex but actually they are simple, dumb and dull" say "uhhh Tyrion is confident and cunning and makes jokes so how can he be insecure very unrealistic" like they actually cannot comprehend a character being more complex than that.
Basically all you say comes down to this same thing: you completely misunderstand characters and their point in the story. Viserys is mad. That is pointed out multiple times. He is an absolutely mad, narcissist pathetic psycho. Only because people are born from a house with a super ancient and legendary bloodline or whatever doesn’t mean that they can’t be mad - actually, since nearly all Targaryans are born of incest, it is way more likely. "Every time a Targaryan is born, the Gods flip a coin." No, he doesn’t learn every time he is punished - I don’t know if you ever met people like this or can at least imagine how they work, but they do not learn. At least not through punishment. Instead, they just spiral further into their madness - and that’s exactly what Viserys does! The more he is treated like the pathetic narcissist he is and the more he is punished and the further away he gets from his dreams the more crazy he gets, until he literally draws a sword where no weapons are allowed and threatens to kill the Khal's wife, which is just suicide. Viserys story is a perfect little character story about a person who probably isn’t even genuinely evil, but simply incredible stupid and mad, but at the same time was put in a position where he is "the rightful heir to a kingdom". Like most of the books, it shows how non-sensical power structures like monarchy are, how even the most crazy people can be put in power simply because of their name, and also how power can corrupt and destroy people. Nothing about Viserys is not unrealistic except if you somehow have the opinion that stupid or crazy people do not exist.
So, now to Eddard. First off, there is one point where I kinda agree with you: Eddard bringing Arya and Sansa with him to King’s Landing. That is not very smart, even if it makes sense within the norms of this society - the houses of Baratheon and Stark are to be united, it probably would be very suspicious and disrespectful if Stark wouldn’t bring his family with him, especially Sansa, who is to be the future queen. But I still see your point that Eddard should value the safety of his family more than these societal norms. But even here, you should add that in Winterfell, his family technically isn’t safe either, I mean, Bran is crippled and shortly after almost murdered. In King’s Landing Eddard has the same household guards he has in Winterfell, and he is only defeated because of a coup he wasn’t abled to see coming at all. And, as soon as he did see even the signs of ANYTHING coming, he immediately ordered his daughters to be brought back.
And while I get that you criticize his decision for being stupid, it’s still not necessarily out-of-character. Because, yeah - characters are allowed to make mistakes. Actually, most of ASOIAF is characters having to deal with consequences of their mistakes. I agree with you though that this is a mistake Eddard probably should not have made.
So, for the sake of completion, now to the direwolves. Here you again ignore very important aspects of Neds character: He is VERY religious. You maybe could miss that since the followers of his religion don’t really do more than kneeling in front of a tree sometimes, but it is a big part of his life and influences a lot of his decisions.
Then, suddenly, five direwolf pups appear, two female, three male, exactly like Ned’s children. And they are direwolf, mystical creatures that are believed to be connected to the Old Gods, they are the sigil of house Stark, which is also believed to be deeply connected to the Old Gods. There is absolutely no way for Ned not to assume these where send by the Gods and meant for his children. His trust in these direwolfs may be naive, but that religion can make the smartest people incredibly naive should be nothing new to anyone.
Now, your analysis of Sansa is probably even more baffling. She’s an eleven year old child, it’s not at all unrealistic for her to think herself some kind of fairy tale princess. She is super naive because she is a CHILD. Yes, of course she shouldn’t trust the queen more than her parents, but since when do children exactly what they should? Especially since Sansa is shown to not have an as deep connection to her father as her siblings. She has basically been raised by a Septa, and what do Septa’s do but indoctrinating children? They teach the girls that they basically shouldn’t think, that they should be happy about being married off to strangers, and especially they teach them to never question the power structures of this society. Logically, the queen is for Sansa some kind of perfect Goddess who cannot possibly do anything wrong. Sansa’s story is the story of a naive, indoctrinated girl that slowly has to learn that things are not the way she dreamed and the way they where taught to her. It is actually so, so beautiful that while in the end, the people she naively admired because they seemed so perfect turn out to be monster, and in the case of the Hound a person she thought be a monster turns out to be the one of the only honest and well-meaning people there. Sansa’s story is inherently about the complexity of the world and things not being what they seem like on first glance, it’s about false idols and false horrors and a naive, indoctrinated girl who has to cope with the world being not the fairy tale she imagined it to be. It’s a wonderful story and just saying "umm but she dumb" doesn’t do it justice.
Also, I’ve no idea what your problem with Jon is, but Jon has a fantastic story about how to be a hero in a morally complex world, and it is absolutely amazing. Again, Alt-Shift-X made a fantastic video about him which is over two hours long. Of course, I’d never expect you to waste so much time on a series you obviously hate, but I think you should maybe consider the possibility that you failed to really capture the essence of Jon’s character and his story just like with Tyrion.
Now, I think this whole discussion started because the series supposedly was not historically accurate enough - but, honestly, I think that doesn’t matter at all. That is what I think most of the people hating ASOIAF fail to understand: Nobody truly likes these books because it’s "gritty realism" or "historically accurate" or even a "subversion of fantasy tropes", no, the people just like them because they are great books. Some of these things where maybe the original ideas that let Martin to write ASOIAF, but this series has morphed into so much more since. As Martin himself says, he’s a gardener, not an architect. He maybe once said in an interview that he wanted to kill Eddard off because "nobody expects it" but everyone who has read the series knows that is not the only reason. Eddard’s whole catharsis in the story is to die, and after his death, his spirit lives on, through all the books, most of the conflict, it all leads back to him. His persona is still a presence in the later books, his death is incredibly important, it is what nearly all that happens builds on - he didn‘t die for shock value, he died because this is a story about his death.
It’s actually kinda hilarious that 99% of the criticism literally is "I can’t put this series in a box". No, this series is not classic fantasy, but neither is it just a subversion of it. It’s just a story. And a wonderful story at that. And for me, it doesn’t have to be anything else
We deploy the article "the" with superlative adjectives in regular and academic language as such: "The best thing he could do was to[...]" et cetera, in which case, and you will grant, it means Keely's usage was perfectly grammatically correct.
Most of your feeble attacks evince a rather laughably coverted insecurity. I suggest you consult grammar books the next time you venture to pollute goodreads with your inordinate gibbering.
I've read a lot of fantasy. I found Martin's plot to be quite complicated compared to the rest of the genre. Throwing in sex and violence, as you say, doesn't make the b..."
Thank You!!
Martin's plots also don't make much sense. Being complex in that case is hardly an accolade, as admittedly the complexity has served no purpose besides confusing the author himself by masking the plotholes.
The thing is that the said litany also serves as a cover for the flimsiness of his plot, tone and characters. It is a sort of trick of cloying the reader's senses, where the cognizance of the glaring plotholes or the glacial pace become lost as the author flourishes a few more spinning plates into the air in the form of the myriad dress and food details, swords, lineages etc. but for those looking beyond the bland tricks of juggling, the claim of "realism" falls apart quite quickly.
Our esteemed reviewer, eschewing the mundane inquiries into entertainment value and literary merit, opts instead to pontificate on the book's originality and realism. Much simpler tasks – there’s nothing new under the sun, and realism is a subjective illusion. This allows for grand, yet conveniently vague pronouncements applicable to any work.
Thus, the reviewer commences by triumphantly vanquishing straw men. He declares that fantasy authors who claim to be "different" often are painfully predictable. This profound observation is illustrated by the groundbreaking reveal that - wait for it - stories have been told before. Pikachu Face!
Then comes the following intellectual tightrope walk: The book is both too cliched and too unconventional. It is just like every other fantasy book, and also, inexplicably, not enough like other fantasy books. Clearly, Martin failed to consult the reviewer's ever-shifting rulebook for acceptable genre conventions.
Having settled the phantom question of originality, our reviewer sets his sights on the elusive concept of realism. He laments the lack of "verisimilitude" (on a triple word score no less!) while simultaneously demanding more "unbelievable events." Because, you see, realism is about being unrealistically real. It's a delicate balance, one that only a reviewer with a library the size of a small nation can truly appreciate.
The reviewer digs deep for another well-worn insight: middle-aged dorks don't write sex well. Ever the champion of nuanced discourse, he decries the author's "hangups" and "fetishes." The only acceptable form of sexual representation is that which meets the reviewer's exacting standards.
Let's address the reviewer's profound distaste for one of GoT's defining traits: character deaths. These moments of collective emotional investment now enshrined as cultural touchstones are, he informs us, "boring and pointless." In another stunning about-face, he demands choreographed, neatly packaged endings. Don’t dare to inconvenience by expiring prematurely. Narrative structure must adhere to the reviewer's meticulously crafted rules – permitting a character's demise only upon preordained, satisfying conclusion.
The review culminates in a grand pronouncement: Martin has single-handedly "killed the long-running High Fantasy series." Like other end-of-the-world predictions, this one has aged like the finest milk.
In essence, our reviewer has masterfully demonstrated the following:
• The strategy of avoidance: Answering every question except "Is it a good read?" This allows sophisticated critique of any book without the bother of reading it.
• The art of contradictory criticism: Everything is both too much and not enough.
• The power of name-dropping: The more authors referenced, the greater the demonstrated intellectual superiority. Bonus for obscurity and tenuous relevance.
• The importance of personal preferences: If the reviewer doesn't like it, it's bad.
• The joy of empty verbosity: Why use a hundred words to say nothing when you can use ten thousand?
So, there you have it, folks. A review so profoundly insightful, it's practically a masterclass in literary pretension.
I'm sure you were in your arm chair thinking "He didn't FINISH the book?! GOTTIM!", but you just replicated this famous conversation:
CAMPBELL: What do you make of what David Aaronovitch has said? It is front page in the Independent. He says your [Richard Littlejohn's] novel is a 400-page recruiting pamphlet for the BNP.
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: What else do you expect from an overgrown student union leader who used to be a member of the Communist Party? I think it is a badge of honour to be attacked by people like David Aaronovitch to be perfectly honest. I might put it on the cover.
WILL SELF: Well he is right.
LITTLEJOHN: Is he?
SELF: I've read 200 pages of it and that is a 200 page recruiting leaflet for the BNP.
LITTLEJOHN: Well, you can't comment until you have read the other 200.
SELF: Why? Does it suddenly turn into Tolstoy?
LITTLEJOHN: You'll have to read it and find out, won't you.
SELF: Well it won't take me long.
Save for Mievelle, your list linked represents the very idealism *Martin Eden* preached against—I hope your education brought you to that book by at least Uni. You say you struggle to understand the infatuation of authors with Wolfe when any person of merit not wrapped up in the tropes of fantasy could see why. Wolfe's writing demands actual work of the reader—unreliable narrators with an encoding of theological or philosophical undertow. A person who actually thinks of how to make syntax represent an individual (not just use fancy language like you so idiotically found) can see how Wolfe bends the boundaries of fantasy from a literary perspective. That's why REAL writers like them.
At the end of the day, you're just an elitist reflection of George R.R. Martin; Still having literature be an escape, not a challenge. And no, characters and plot=/=challenging. Nor does simply creating a language, but actually having it be geared towards serving the theme and philosophy. It's honestly saddening, you're creative, but you're nowhere near an artist—even if you write paragraph after paragraph trying to have the mind of one. Worldbuilding, story, and all that are still beneath speculative literary fiction; Critiquing Wolfe only makes it apparent you are a pseudo-intellectual.
You have hit your ceiling—stop stomping on those beneath and above you because they don't fit your pathetic vision of fantasy. Go outside, get a therapist, and go on a date. You argue against ivy league schools that actually advocate for pushing literature to its limit. You reek of reddit.
There is nothing wrong with subverting tropes or writing shocking moments. It is bad when these subversive moments aren't believable, and justified. His subversion of the moral hero works because Ned's morals in an immoral world is what gets him into trouble. Also even though he does have a character arc, he is still punished for his shortsightedness, which is justified by the world. I don't see how being intentionally subversive is an issue as long as it is done well and it is done well here. Ned has a strict sense of justice which is admirable, but he fails to realize that King's Landing does not follow the same morals. It isn't smart, but it is justified. It isn't a "cheap" twist or a horror jump scare. It is telegraphed by a mile and believable.