I probably shouldn’t post here, since I haven’t even tried to read his big series. But I did want to mention the Wild Cards series, which he edited and wrote for. It used a ‘mosaic novel’ format, so many authors contributed.
The problem was that Martin was so busy with TV projects that he didn’t write enough stories for his main WC character, The Great and Powerful Turtle. I liked that character much better than many other author’s guys that seemed to get half the paperback devoted to them. But the editing was masterful–so many shared universes end up ruined when one author writes something the others can’t deal with. Martin managed to actually get his stable to work together most of the time.
He bored the piss out of me. It may have been that I was on some serious pain meds when I tried to read him - this always screws with my reading ability.
But man, I just didn’t care about the characters. It was a slow, heavy read.
After the last book, A Feast for Editors, I pretty much joined the “don’t care, they can all die in a fire” camp. I think Martin made a bad decision around book 2. He should have ended Book 1 and then started the next book 10 years later. At that point, all the interesting characters would have grown up/come into their powers. Instead, you’ve got 3000 pages that should have been compressed into a 1970’s style training montage.
Tuf Voyaging, on the other hand, is very well written. Wish he’d do more Tuf stories.
I only discovered this series a couple of years ago, so this is the first one I’ve had to wait for. Are you you guys joking, or is there really a good chance it will miss the Sept. 30 release date? Wouldn’t the publisher have the completed book in their hands 4 months before a release date?
While I like the idea that bad things can happen to the characters in the Ice and Fire series, what really made it for me was his ability to take a character like Jaime, who anyone who reads the first book despises and actually induce some grudging acknowledgment from the reader that there are, in fact, two sides to his (and every) story.
I agree that A Feast For Crows was more chore than not to read, but I think the main problem with it was that he chose to focus on characters who, though important, are not particularly sympathetic. The lack of Tyrion or Daenerys or Jon was a serious problem, considering they are probably the three most appealing characters still drawing breath in the series. Brienne is a minor character who just can’t carry her own plotline, and Sansa’s story was less compelling here than it had been before her “rescue” by Petyr.
To make a Lord of the Rings analogy, I kind of consider Book 4 to be the “Frodo in Mordor” part of the series – annoying and largely unneccessary, but part of a fantastic story, overall.
The general history has been thus:
GRRM, circa 2002: Here’s the third book. I’ve got great ideas for the next one, so it won’t be long!
GRRM, circa 2003: Yep, almost got the 4th book finished. This 5 year gap sure is sweet! It will probably be another year.
GRRM, circa 2004: Crap, this 5 year gap is hard. I’ll just right another book into the series instead. It will probably be another year. George Bush won the election, and I just can’t go on at the moment. I need a few weeks to deal.
GRRM, circa 2005: This 4th book sure is going to be a whopper. It will probably be another year, before it’s done, though.
GRRM, circa 2006: Well, I’m still not done with the book, but my publisher wants to release it. So I’ll just cut all the filler and boring stuff out, paste it into a new book and publish that now. I’ll finish up all that fun exciting stuff and have it out next year as the 5th book.
GRRM, circa 2007: Hey, have you guys seen what I’ve been doing with fantasy figures and Wild Cards? Yeah, I’ve been real busy!
GRRM, circa 2008: Yay! Giants won the SuperBowl!!! ASOIF? Is that a character from Dilbert? I don’t know what you are talking about!
I had a brief email correspondence with GRRM a few years ago, and told him the same thing. He said he’d always liked Tuf, and hoped to write some more about the pale, bald, mushroom-loving giant and his psionic cats after finishing up his Westeros tales. Obviously that might be a loooooooong time yet.
Actually, he started the series in a conscious attempt to cash in on Big Fat Fantasies like Jordan’s. When he started planning the series and writing the first book I was on a forum he frequented. He asked people there exactly what they did and didn’t like about Wheel of Time and other series. So while he was trying to create a cash cow, he hasn’t been turning it into one, he was doing it on purpose from the start.
Personally, I have enjoyed the series, but his Wild Card and Tuf Voyaging stuff is much better.
I join in the hails of derisive laughter. There are always release dates, and then they get pushed back 6 months. Then they go away entirely. Then they come back. Then they’re recanted. Then they’re extended. Book 4 was supposed to come out, what, a few years before it actually did? With Martin a release date is a bigger fantasy than his plot lines.
That said, I love the series and can’t wait for the eventual release.
Weis and Hickman, and to a lesser extent Robert Jordan, taught me not to read stories by living authors. If they aren’t dead, they’ll come back and either continue the continuation(how many Dragonlance books are there now?), ret-con the whole thing(Jordan), or just drag it on and on until I’ve lost interest(also Jordan). My wife picked up a new fantasy book for me one day at the library and said it looked cool. It was cool, till I found out it was book one of three(projected) and the second wasn’t due out for a couple more years. Now the book has slipped my mind and I can’t even remember enough to look up if the second book has come out or not.
I stick mostly to the classics these days. Mmm, Project Gutenberg-y goodness. Although it should be noted that even dead author’s series aren’t safe. c.f. Dune, Robert Ludlum’s “Bourne” series, and the tragic case of Douglas Adams.
Okay, okay. So the 5th book isn’t actually coming out in September.
Traditional fantasy isn’t my favorite genre, so one of the things I like about this series is that it reads more like medieval historical fiction than fantasy, particularly in the first book, where there’s actually very little magic.
