I’m about two thirds of the way through A Clash Of Kings, and it’s becoming… tedious. At first, the glee with which Martin kills or injures his protagonists was refreshing, despite the plodding pace.
But now, the idea of 5,000 more pages of one-dimensional character archetypes, completely unsubtle foreshadowing that isn’t resolved for 600 pages, and ultimately inconsequential diversions leading to dead ends makes me yearn for the superficial treatment that HBO is undoubtedly giving the story.
I broke my own rule, and looked up spoilers for the rest of the series. I don’t see anything happening that I should care about.
I’m so happy to see I’m not alone. I made it half way through Clash of Kings before giving up. There just didn’t seem that there would be any resolution any time soon and it was getting tedious. When for fun reading becomes a slog, it’s not worth it.
I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of fantasy and was hoping this would be a new series to dig into.
I still like it, but it does basically degenerate from a story that seems like it has a central plot to a series of tangentially related vignettes. So I can’t really blame people for abandoning it if they’ve been reading it looking for some sort of central story.
You’re not alone. I finished the first four books and found A Feast for Crows extremely boring. All the plot threads in that book resolve with everyone attempting to do things that fail, thus not furthering the plot at all. I have A Dance with Dragons and will read it, because at least some of the more interesting characters are being picked up again, but I don’t exactly have high hopes.
Did you not really care for A Game of Thrones, either? I’d recommend that if someone got 1/2 way through that and hated it, just stop. If you were just let down by the 2nd book though, A Storm of Swords, the third book in the series, is nearly unanimously agreed upon as the best.
I’m about 150 pages into his newest book and feel the same way. He really needed an editor, it just goes on and on and on. I don’t think he knows how to end it at this point.
Game Of Thrones felt like the first book in a trilogy. Yeah, it was long-winded, but Martin did a decent job filling in the background and setting up the major narrative threads. By the middle of the second book, he should have fully revealed at least the broad outlines of a few fabulous new powers and begun slowly drawing threads back toward each other.
Instead, we get what amounts to more background, and the subplots diverting even further.
I read the first four books. By the end of the third it was becoming really tedious but I liked four (Feast for Crows) a bit better because there were far fewer characters and room for a little character development. Then I picked up Dance With Dragons and I just cannot get into it at all- in three weeks of pick it up and put down reading I’ve cleared about 200 pages.
For one thing, YOU’VE GOT MORE THAN ENOUGH MAJOR CHARACTERS ALREADY- DON’T ADD ANY MORE AT THIS LATE DATE! And I get it, the Stark boys can merge with their wolves, we don’t need all the “and now for how a wolf smells and stalks” scenes. And did you always know [that character] wasn’t really dead or did you pull that out of your ass a couple of weeks before the deadline when you needed filler?
I’ll eventually finish it for completion and all but I’m probably taking a break first.
If you are getting bored in the middle of Clash of Kings this series really isn’t for you. Like most fans I zipped through and loved the first three books though I still think Game of Thrones is the best.
And like many fans I have been disappointed with FfC and DwD which have their moments but don’t move the story forward much. I am still glad I started this series but I would no longer recommend it strongly to newbies. I would tell them the first three books are still great and worth reading but the series runs into the ground after that and chances of a recovery are slim.
I wouldn’t mind “A Feast For Crows” (et al.) so much if I thought there was a chance the series would actually reach a finale some day. But without any hope of that, it just feels kind of pointless.
Yeah, I just noticed the DwD thread. I went ahead and read it because I don’t really give a fuck any more, and I think I’m making the right choice. There’s no sense burning more time chasing after sunk costs, especially since I have the new Reynolds, Stross, and Stephenson queued up.
I have found that I have no interest in picking up Dance with Dragons. It has just been too long since I read the last book, not one scene or character in *Crows *has stayed with me, and my life has moved on.
Same – I had pre-ordered ADWD, and the day it came in the mail I got about 10 pages in and realized I simply did not give a fuck anymore. I haven’t picked it up since.
I’ll continue watching the show, since I trust they’ll cut out all the chaff (and that’s most of the story at this point), but I won’t be buying the books anymore unless I hear the next book is miraculously good.
You need to shout this louder. Martin doesn’t need an editor, he needs of co-writer. One who can take some of those rich, detailed characters and actually weave a story with a beginning and an end.
The other thing Martin does that drive me crazy is, he tells the boring parts (wondering through the forest for days) then skips the interesting parts (the battles for example) and has the characters slowly leak details about those important events. It a cute device once or twice but he uses it constantly.
I’ve read the first 4 books and will probably go on. There seems to be an over-arching story there that I would like to read. Dragons, zombies, knights - it’s gotta come together somewhere, right?
I’ve watched some of Game of Thrones on HBO but I’ve never actually read any of the books. However reading this thread I had to stop and make sure I wasn’t mistakenly reading a Wheel of Time thread, because these are exactly the same complaints levied at that series. Too long, too meandering, losing focus, too many characters, in need of an editor etc…
And I have read the WoT novels, stopped around book 8 or 9, can’t recall the title. I gave up on that series for exactly these same reasons. I understand after Jordan died that the new author that was assigned to the franchise listened closely to fans complaints and fixed a lot of what was wrong in trying to wrap up the series though.
I don’t know if Martin is a young man or not, but maybe he needs to look closely at at what happened with Jordan.
Is this something that’s just becoming endemic with successful fantasy series? A few good books, they garner some mainstream attention then go completely off the rails trying to milk it?
It has always annoyed me that ASOIAF is constantly lauded as the best of the best in fantasy. It simply isn’t in my opinion, its a bloated load of crap chock full of pointless deaths and retarded geography. Only the existence of the Wheel of Time saves it from being the most overrated piece of crap in the genre.
I consider myself a litmus test in this regard. Not only do I read fantasy, but as a quick reader I reread it constantly. I cannot count the number of times I have read and reread every book in my collection, every Pratchet, every Fiest, every Erikson, every Lynch, every Cooke, I have read them again and again and again.
I have never and will never bother to reread ASOIAF.
