Game of Thrones: Why I Quit After Book Three

Cafe Society
1

First, let me make one thing clear: George R.R. Martin is a brilliant writer and his stuff is powerful, fascinating, compulsively readable and incredibly imaginative. I’ve read all of Dreamsongs Volume I and most of Volume II, and if you have not read these collections of his numerous and wide-ranging works outside the GoT world, I strongly recommend them.

And that very talent as a writer is why I can’t read any more of the Song of Ice and Fire series. I started it with enthusiasm, galloped through the first book rapt by and wrapped up in the amazing saga, read on, and on, and on…

And by the end of the third book I’d had enough. Enough of cruelty, enough of brutality, enough of a world brimful of savagery, merciless, thronged with loathsome characters, where anyone evoking the least flicker of sympathy in the reader is viciously mauled at some point, beaten down into sick misery and suffering. It’s too much, it bothers me too much, to go on wallowing in such a world.

I had a similar reaction to John Sanford’s “Prey” series of detective thrillers. They too are compulsively readable, fast-paced, intriguing – and the criminals Lucas Davenport confronts are horrifying monsters. I think it was the one that ended with the little girl in the well that did me in – just couldn’t bear to enter his world any more.

Am I a weakling, then? Too sensitive? Heaven knows I’ve read some mighty gruesome stuff over the decades and never flinched – though I find my tolerance for such content waning in my waning years. Do I want only fluffy puppies and kittens? Oh, hell, no; I’m currently making my enthralled way through the Vorkosigan Saga, and that’s by no means all sunshine and rainbows. I’m also reading Adam-Troy Castro’s collection of short stories “Her Husband’s Hands”, in small doses; those are harsh and difficult stories too, powerfully affecting because so well written; but by spacing them out between other people’s works I can very much admire and enjoy them.

I’m getting old, time is running out, there are so many books, so little time – maybe it’s just a matter of deciding, don’t waste what time is left on worlds that I find repulsive. I can admire the craftsmanship that created worlds so brilliantly realized that they disturb me, but I don’t have to go there.

2

I don’t read GoT, but I like mysteries. I also want good to win in the end. A psychopath mutilating and murdering 12 kids before finally getting shot by the good guy is not a “win”. Between work and family I have very little time to devote to personal entertainment. What little time I have should be fun, and not depressing.

3

I totally get it.

The likes of GRRM and Steven Erikson I can tolerate. I do think their wallowing in misery borders on the gratuitous at times, but the have a genuine “life is brutal and hard and good guys often lose badly” writing POV, which can be refreshing in ( smaller ) doses. The reason I can tolerate them, aside from interest in the story lines, is that at the end of the day they will usually reward a precious few of their characters with happy or semi-happy endings. They do not completely up-end traditional fiction in that sense - they will come to a conclusion which you can at least take some grains of pleasure in.

But I just don’t tolerate writers like China Mieville ( gratuitously cruel to his characters on a whole 'nother level) or unrelentingly bleak films anymore. Life is too short and I really do want that happy ending. It doesn’t have to be one of unrestrained and unrealistic joy, but damn it some character I like better come out of it settled and at peace or I’m going to be annoyed. I realized this about myself long ago as a young man when I decided I despised the writing of Thomas Hardy - he can take Jude the Obscure and go fuck himself :D. And if that makes me a literary wimp, I can live with that ;).

So my tolerance level is higher than yours, but we all draw a line somewhere. I can’t fault anyone who dislikes cruelty and bleakness in fiction without being a hypocrite.

4

If you are a sensitive weakling, EddyTeddyFreddy, then I for one say we need more sensitive weaklings. I don’t know much about Martin’s writing process, but I’m tempted to think that it’s part of a culture-wide disdain for the traditional “happy ending” that has somehow spread to loathing of anything the least bit positive. While I may not agree that Martin’s at quite that level, I do share your distaste for the general trend.

Perhaps the two of us should team up with Tamerlane and form some kind of superhero league.

5

Well, there are themes and stories that do call for a tragic rather than happy end, I don’t deny that – but there are ways and ways of getting there. I suspect that GRRM intends to end his world in the collapse and annihilation of Westeros under an invasion of the ice monsters, and that’s a legitimate conclusion; it’s the unvarying loathsomeness of the route he’s taking to get there that bothers me.

6

The callous violence of the books doesn’t bother me, but you were absolutely right to stop after the third one. It’s the best of the series, and 4 and 5 just don’t stand up. Rambling, boring, introducing too many new characters. I wish I’d stopped at 3, also.

7

I bought A Dance With Dragons when it came out and I still haven’t read it. I can’t bring myself to do it.

Here’s my problem. I started reading this series when it first came out, which was forever ago. He’s never going to finish it, and I stopped caring once I figured that out. Much like I did with The Wheel of Time (which I also started reading when it first came out and then gave up on, so my tolerance for this sort of thing is not what it once was.) It pisses me off. I doubt I’ll buy another book. I’ll watch the show to find out what happens and call it a day.

8

I think you’re being a bit sensitive. Go read some history. Kings and other noblemen got killed ALL the time by each other. Peasants got killed, robbed and raped like crazy. Warfare was horrid, and people did die of infected minor wounds. Prisoners were routinely tortured, and all manner of other horrible things were perpetrated in the name of the King, or Christ. A rather heartless and cavalier attitude with respect to the value of human life was de rigueur at the time; Arnaud Amalric (the originator of the saying “Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own”) seems like he’d be right at home working for House Lannister.

I kind of read that stuff as more that GRRM was trying to make a legitimately realistic world, and that a lot of this violence and grim deaths were more a consequence of the governmental/social system, in that power pretty much always corrupts, and that even legitimate power is still backed up by armed force, and that war sucks… pretty much always.

I do agree that the 4th and 5th books were the weakest so far, but more in the way that they’re leading to something (I suspect) more interesting and more shocking in the 6th and 7th (and possibly 8th?) books. We had the same sort of buildup/climax in books 1 and 2, with the 3rd book being the climax. And I doubt it’ll be the white walkers winning; I suspect we’ll have another Battle for the Dawn, and someone really will be Azor Ahai, but not Stannis, or if so, not in the way he or Melisandre imagines.

9

I get the feeling that GRRM can’t really end his series, because it reads like a history, and history never ends.

It reminds me a bit of Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. She first wanted to write novels about the late republic–Sulla and Marius. But then young Caesar is a character in the later books, which means we need to write another book about Caesar’s adventures, which means you can end on the Ides of March, but then you have to deal with Anthony and Octavian. Octavian defeating Anthony is a pretty good place to end the series, and luckily she died this year so there won’t be any further “just one more…” books in the series.

GRRM might have an outline in his head for the series. But that doesn’t mean he would ever finish it, because even after the supposed climactic ending, you still have the survivors digging out of the rubble and trying to rebuild, and you can just keep on telling their story.

10

And they say GRRM is harsh! (Bolding mine.)

11

Henh? Book 3 ends with some semblance of vengeance for ‘the good guys’.

12

"Some semblance"s about right – and I skimmed over random pages of book 4 before bailing out, enough to see that any reprieve from horror would be short-lived. In any case, the overall gestalt is so horrific I just want no further part of it.

13

You made the right decision.

GRRM can be an excellent writer, but once he launched into GoT I washed my hands of him. I’ll just go back and re-read Armageddon Rag or Fevre Dream or Tuf Voyaging instead of wasting my time with unremitting pain.

14

“Go read some history”? Try not to be so patronizing, please. I have in fact read a lot of history. I read somewhere that GRRM was channeling the Hundred Years War in writing GoT, and that period was certainly rife with a comparable level of schrecklichkeit. I studied medieval Europe in college and hoo boy but that was also a time of great violence, chaos and cruelty. Dig into pretty much any era of human history – as I have – and you will find things that will sicken you.

Here’s the thing, though: I don’t have to live through it in my era, and I can choose not to live through it vicariously.

15

By the end of the first book I took the violence as a technique GRRM was using to shock. By the end of the second book, I decided there was no point in forming any emotional attachment with any character in the books. No one was “safe”. I didn’t make it to the third book.

I don’t read fiction to get stressed out of my mind. Real life takes care of that just fine.

16

I thought I was the only one. Gosh. I read the first book of GOT when it came out in paperback, whenever that was. I read the next two when they came out and I was just done. Done with the violence, done with the gore. Just done. It wasn’t fun anymore.

When friends ask if I’ve been watching the series–No! Of course not! If I couldn’t take the gore in print, why would I want to SEE it?? No. But I did check out the casting, which was incredible. I could pick out the characters instantly. Well done. But nope, not watching it. Or reading anymore.

Ditto liking GRRM’s other stuff. He wrote Sandkings, didn’t he? And Tuf Voyaging, that was a good one too. Oh well.

I can’t get through a China Mieville book either, and I tried twice. And it always seems like the kind of thing I would like.

17

Yup. You get the Oldtown prologue and then dive right into the Lovecraftian (IMO) Iron Islanders.

18

Well, I personally thought that Victarion Greyjoy was about the most amusing character in the series so far. I mean, in terms of the Ironborn way of life, the guy’s the equivalent of a church going, rotary-club attending successful businessman.

19

I’m exactly with you, after Ned Stark I couldn’t find anyone to root for, so I wasn’t enjoying them anymore. I didn’t make it to three.

20

I’ve read the whole series. The last 2 books were weak.

What bothered me the most (other then the glacial waiting periods between books) was the monotonous repetition of lame catch phrases such as “the night is dark and full of terrors” and “you know nothing blah blah.” It started to feel like mental torture when they were said for the umpteenth time.