I’d mostly agree with Little Plastic Ninja. I’ve enjoyed each of the books in turn and now wish GRRM would just get off his butt and finish the series. I find the setting realistic (given the genre), the characters mostly complex and interesting, the backstory detailed and engaging, and the dialogue far better than most of what’s out there. But then, I’ve liked just about everything I’ve read of Martin’s: Fevre Dream (vampires along the Mississippi before the Civil War), Tuf Voyaging (sf/environmental satire), Sandkings (terrific sf short stories), and Dying of the Light (sf tragedy), especially.
Ok, I do remember the FR as being pretty uneven. A couple I was thinking of in particular were Douglas Niles’ Moonshae Trilogy and most of Salvatore’s Drizzt books.
It’s been a really long time, but as I recall, The Moonshae books were great when I was 16, interesting story and characters. Going back and re-reading them later, none of the characters behaved in any realistic way whatsoever, and a lot of things I liked about it when I was younger seemed really absurd and contrived when I got a little older. There was a bit where one of the family’s advisors or servants or something gets killed because of the main character’s stupidity, and there is much sadness…for a few pages… Then everything goes back to preparing for some festival or other, and it is never mentioned again. It just that this guy had been built up as a major long-time mentor, advisor, and friend to the prince, was stupidly killed, mourned for a page and a half, and after that everyone’s all happy again. :rolleyes:
One of my major problems with Salvatore is how he keeps pulling the “I didn’t really die!” bit over and over and over, with every one of his characters. Bruenor falls off a cliff fighting a dragon, and the reaction was “oh my god, I really loved that character, I can’t believe he died!”. Then he comes back half a book later and there’s a huge sigh of relief. A book or two later Cattie Brie “dies”, same thing. Hmmm, well it wasn’t exactly the same thing, so it still had emotional impact and all that. Then Regis dies, and you pretty much know he’s going to come back. Then Wulfgar dies, but actually stays dead for a couple books. Then he pops back up again, and the reaction is :rolleyes: “for pete’s sake, doesn’t anyone actually stay dead in this series?”. Then someone else gets flung off a cliff or something, at which point I literally threw the book across the room and vowed never to read his dreck again. Drizzt also has to be one of the most unrealistic and poorly written characters ever. There’s absolutely no way anyone raised in the kind of environment he was in could be that much of a goody two shoes. You’re talking about a culture where torture, deceit, scheming, backstabbing, etc, is not just the norm, it’s all there is. Yet Drizzt is purer than most “good” elves? riiiiigght… I do think Salvatore has some writing skills, unlike Ed Greenwood, but he re-uses too much stuff and some of his writing really isn’t that well thought out. His Cleric Quintet was pretty decent - as good or better than the Drizzt books - with the bonus that he actually knew when to end it, but I lost the books a long time ago, and I’m afraid to go back and buy them again as they might hold up as poorly as the Moonshae books.
Also, Ed Greenwood is a talentless hack with absolutely no writing skills whatsoever. He may have created the Forgotten Realms as a gaming universe, but his characters are paper thin, his plots are absurd, his dialogue is laughable, and his writing skills in general would be shamed by a fairly bright 8 year old. The person or people who green lighted his stuff should be locked in a little box for the rest of their lives with a big pile of Ed’s crapfests.
Dave Eddings is another one that I remember liking at one point, and going back later and trying to figure out why. Most of his characters were sooo one dimensional - Sephrina (sp?) in particular was just awful. His plot seemed to me like they were written backwards - Think of a horrible situation for your characters to be in, and how they would get out of it, then write a book building up to that situation. I can’t explain it any better than that, it just seemed horribly convoluted and contrived on the re-reading.
And don’t get me started on Terry Brooks. I’ll just say he has a horrible obsession with the phrase “red hair flying”. :rolleyes:
I haven’t read the Dark Sun books since they were first published, so I can’t comment directly on them. But a few years back, I did attempt to re-read the Dragonlance books, and was astounded by how bad they were. This was five years ago, so my memory isn’t exactly crystal clear, even for those, but the things I recall that made me finally toss the book were things like:
A total lack of economy of character. There’s about ten times as many characters in the books as there is characterization. Half the cast could have been easily cut without damaging the overall narrative. It was painfully clear that the majority of the characters were only in the book because they had been in the modules.
Hugely derivative. This is hardly a unique problem to the Dragonlance setting, of course: about 95% of the fantasy novels out there are pale imitations of Tolkien, and about 4% of them are pretty decent imitations of Tolkien. Which is a large part of the reason I don’t read a lot of fantasy anymore. But with D&D novels, you’re actually dealing with a derivative of a derivative.
Poorly written. I can’t quote chapter and verse here, but overall, the writing was just poor. Not to the point where you can’t figure out what’s going on, generally, but simply flat and uninvolving. In scenes that are meant to invoke some sort of strong emotion, you generally have to figure that out by inference: “This was a major character, and now he’s dead, so I guess I’m supposed to be sad.” The prose itself utterly failed at inspiring any sort of emotional response in me.
Poor characterization. Most of the characters were thinner than the page they were printed on. Their dialogue felt tinny and artificial. Characters that were supposed to be witty, weren’t. Characters that were supposed to be intimidating, were ridiculous. Characters that were supposed to be ridiculous, were insufferable. Believable motivations were rarer than hen’s teeth. So were likable characters, and so were hatable villains. No one in the book had enough personality to inspire any sort of emotion towards them at all.
Fucking kender.
I don’t recall how many of these applied to the Dark Sun books, because I honestly can’t remember a damned thing about them. But I do remember that, even when I first read them, I thought they sucked. Big time. And that was during a period where I’d re-read the Dragonlance books about once a year. So I imagine that the Dark Sun books shared all or most of these flaws, and either amplified them, or multiplied them.
It’s currently the 50th aniversary of Alan Garner’s “The weirdstone of Brisingamen”.
If you want a truly excellent fantasy book that is not a Tolein derivative … read that. It and it’s sequel “The moon of Gomrath” are just wonderfully.
Occasionally I go out by Shining Tor and I always look for the old straight road …
I read the series as an adult and I think they’re great. As literature - a solid B-. As a gripping story - A+
…of course, the series will probably never get finished. And that is heartbreaking. But the existing books are good solid fun reads.
Yeah, you’re probably right about that. It makes me shudder to imagine what I’d find if I read the other ‘great’ fantasy and science fiction that I remember from my teenage years.
Jack Vance would be the first author that I can think of. His books do have some of that vibe of trying to please the teenage male market with lots of violence and one-liners. When you peer beneath the surface, however, you can find that most of his books have a decent amount of thematic meat, which Martin’s series generally does not. In a Vance book, you know that the good guy will win. Nevertheless, I find that his plots are genuinely full of surprises, and there’s nearly always a major plot twist in the middle that I didn’t see coming.
Lois McMaster Bujold would be another author who I think steers clear of the problems that plague Martin’s books. She can keep the surprises coming and also provides closure to the plot and the character arcs at the end of each book, even when it’s part of a lengthy series.
I think his best quality is his ability to blindside you when you first read the books. Every time I lend someone my copy of his first book, I always get it back with a “Whoa, I didn’t see that one coming!” comment. And it’s not restricted to one or two instances, either, but spread evenly throughout the series.
However, Martin’s star has been eclipsed these last five years by other authors, like Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson (whose last book is a must-read), Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, etc, etc. As a writer he has a lot of qualities, but he’s kind of a jack of all trades in that none of them stand out. His characterizations are well done, but few characters are allowed the necessary elbow space to charm you. His prose is good, but not great - he’s better than Tolkien, but not as good as, say, Rothfuss. His worldbuilding is solid and thorough to the bone, but it’s not evocative; the series has memorable moments, but not really memorable locations or back stories.
And he makes mistakes. Bringing up Dany as a “growing out of her weaknesses” character when we’ve already endured four other characters “growing up” is redundant and boring. The Dorne subplot would have been a lot better received if it had been started a lot earlier. The death of the rebellion’s leader would have been a lot better if it had had some sort of natural stepping stone to his successor. And so on.
I still think it’s a great series, but it’s not really one of those I’d reread (except when you’ve just discovered the series) for fun’s sake, after you’ve had most of the “aha!” experiences. And, of course, Martin’s delays in bringing the series further has crossed from the acceptable to the unacceptable to the off-putting.
GRRM really did nothing for me. I read the first book as an adult, found the characters vomit inducing, except for Ned, who was tolerable but stupid, and then dies at the end of book one. The various Big Secrets weren’t very interesting to me, and the so-called “grittiness” of the world was more annoying than intriguing. There’s far, far better political fantasy out there, far far better heroic fantasy out there (for them who like it, which includes me, and probably not most people who like GRRM), and probably far, far better “realistic” fantasy out there. I think most of the praise for GRRM comes from the fact that most people who read him have only consumed fantasy that is either atrocious (of which there is still quite a lot) or simply not their “style” (The various Tolkien non-fans in this thread. Let’s face it - Fantasy is not a unified genre.) so when they stumble upon GRRM it’s like they’ve found this great gem, when in actually, they’ve found a decent example of the subgenre they enjoy. (And that many people don’t.)
Like Little Plastic Ninja, I too am baffled by this idea that Martin writes better prose than Tolkien.
I got into Ice and Fire just a couple of years ago; once I started I read all four books in quick succession and enjoyed them very much. I found the story fairly gripping and the constantly shifting set of characters engaging. But the one thing that did not impress me was Martin’s prose style. If I had to choose one word to describe it, that word would be “generic.” It was technically competent and not at all unpleasant to read, but it was no more than that: plain and effective, but never beautiful in itself, nor particularly distinctive.
I recently read The Lord of the Rings again, for what it’s worth. I have to admit that its story and characters do not hold up as well as they did for me when I was younger. (The Hobbit, on the other hand, was as good as it has always been, or better; easily a superior book to Rings.) But what does hold up is the prose. Every time I read it it seems I gain a new appreciation for Tolkien’s unobtrusive but powerful style. The man had a mastery of the English language that Martin, at least in Ice and Fire, doesn’t approach.
ITR just linked to his thread, so I’m bumping it.
This comment is the one that resonates the most with me. Martin is a great storyteller, IMO, and gets me involved with his characters more than many other authors.
Well, my reading is both voracious and fairly genre-specific: probably about 70-80% of what I read is fantasy (or, to a lesser extent, SF). I used to read the World Fantasy Award winner every year, and I’ve typically read most of the nominees for the award. I’ve read a significant portion of the works of Rothfuss (who IMO wrote a real craphole of a novel with his latest, a real letdown from his first), Lynch, Abercrombie, Mieville, Butcher, and Hobb, as well as a host of other authors both modern and from last century or before.
So I’m not talking about Martin devoid of context. Martin’s not the best author out there (Mieville, for my money, is), but scenes from his books stand out in my mind, stick with me, more than scenes from just about any other work of fantasy. When he’s bad, he’s forgettable; but when he’s on, he’s amazingly good.
Stephanie Meyers writes better prose than Tolkien. As a novelist, Tolkien was a great linguist.
Most of the rest of your OP basically comes down to personal subjective preference, but I feel that in this, you’re flat out wrong. An enormous number of people were caught completely off guard by Ned’s death. They didn’t see it coming. They didn’t predict it. Ergo, it was unpredictable. You can go back 10 years later and say “well, that seems kind of obvious now”, but if you didn’t see it coming when you first read it, that’s what matters.
As for comparisons of Martin’s writing to some others that have been mentioned, I’m not enough of a literary critic to really feel like I can point out “Three Things GRRM Does Better Than Anyone Else” or anything like that. But I enjoy his books more than those of basically every other author mentioned in this thread (almost all of whom I’ve read some or many of the output of, many of whom I consider myself a fan of) I guess because he really hits a sweet spot for me… not too predictable, but not unpredictable for its own sake (not just like “oh, look, I’m going to subvert another fantasy cliche now”). Characters you can care about who are heroic and admirable without being perfect. Sad events and setbacks that feel natural, rather than just “screw you, I’m killing of some main characters”. What it really comes down to is that while I thoroughly enjoyed, say, The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss or The Blade Itself (and sequels) by Abercrombie, I never ended up with anything like the emotional investment in those characters or worlds that I have in ASoIaF.
I’ve been dragging my feet on reading the books, so I can only talk on plot based off the TV series. What I like about ASoIaF is that it isn’t nice. Like mentioned above, we get Jaime as a protagonist! I’ve never felt the need to have a relatable main character. A huge chunk of fantasy is ‘young protagonist growing up on big adventure’, which I’m sick of. Another chunk of fantasy has morally strained but still good men. Sometimes it’s nice not to be working on the good/neutral/evil scale.
This seems like a good thread topic. I think I’ll start one. In the meantime, I highly recommend Bujold’s Chalion novels (not really a series, though), which I think are absolutely amazing and blow Martin out of the water; and Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet, which I have recced to friends as “like Martin, but with actual likeable characters!”
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Martin’s novels would be pretty much unreadable if all those horrible things kept happening to people I liked.
sort of contains spoilers
I bought the first book after complaining online that I didn’t like the TV series… I found the book equally loathsome.
Someone insisted “they get better” I decided that I wasn’t going to bother buying them to find out. Then I won €10 on the Lotto. So I bought the second book. Didn’t like that any better. Swore I wasn’t buying any more of them unless I won money on the Lotto again
Then I won €20, and dagnabit I bought the third book[s].
Nope still not liking them.
I haven’t won anything on the Lotto since, so I’m not buying any more of the books (yes I am buying Lotto tickets!)
There are many reasons why I didn’t like the books - they are fantasy books, that lack severely in fantasy elements for most of the books, then you’re suddenly slapped in the face with zombies, or dragons or whatever… as fantasy novels is there some reason the author felt the need to be quite so ‘precise’ with his depiction of Medieval times (specifically the female characters)?
The random deaths every other chapter got annoying.
As did the not actually dead fake outs
The whole thing reads like a movie screenplay - the descriptions of things are sparse, I noticed somewhere along the line the author had to include a note saying that months pass during chapters and events are taking place hundreds or thousands of miles apart. You couldn’t have said so in the chapters…?
When I was finished reading I literally felt dizzy from trying to keep all the characters and plot lines straight.
I’ll be dropping my copies off at the nearest charity shop in due course.
No, because, as you probably noticed, each chapter is from a certain character’s point of view. We never see or know anything from a particular chapter that the POV character doesn’t see or know. That style is actually one thing that I really like about the books.
What’s that mean?
Yes I had noticed that, my point [that I clearly failed to make] was that people must have been complaining about the lack of “where and when” things were happening…
All lowborn women are fat, ugly, stupid (or a combination of those) and those who aren’t become whores. Highborn women are forced to marry some man her father chooses for her. 13 year old girls are married off … young girls are raped by dozens of men, then ridiculed by others …
There doesn’t seem to be one female character who was independently wealthy, titled, or capable of anything more than wittering.
And Brienne doesn’t count, she’s only a “knight” because she was too ugly to be married off to someone.
Nor that Wildling woman (I forget her name) she wasn’t a subject in the seven kingdoms.
I suppose you have to be a “touchy” woman to not like the way he treats his female characters
Spoiler alert in the OP, so no spoiler tags
[nitpick]She was engaged at least once I can directly recall (though I seem to recall two or three times) and finagled her way out of it. She’s her father’s only living child, hence heir. Appearances notwithstanding, she should have no shortage of suitors.
The highborn, male or female, are often entered into marriage for reasons other than physical appearance [ref. Tyrion Lannister], including property, politics, or other considerations (occasionally love). Recall even Eddard and Catelyn’s marriage was not one that either would have originally chosen for themselves.[/nitpick]