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More on A Song of Fire and Ice....
"When Did You Get Hooked?" John Lanchester asks in a review in the London Review of Books.
Actually, I'm not. I read the novella when it appeared, long ago, thought it fascinating, and decided that I did not want to read something that violent. There's a quote from Renaissance Faire that I like to use, from the crier for the abbreviated Hamlet performed at the fair. The young man's patter always finished with: "Everybody dies, I die last!"
That's A Song of Fire and Ice. The people I like die, the people I despise die, and the very thing that Lanchester offers up as a selling point -- that Game of Thrones, the HBO hit, is a metaphor for our economic and climate uncertainty -- is what I hate the most. My life is filled with uncertainty. It's not recreation for me to read about that topic. After seeing Peter Dinklage playing Tyrion Lannister, "a worldly, jaded, funny, highly intelligent cynic" who is both a dwarf and possibly the most moral member of the Lannister family, I do root for Tyrion to win the Game of Thrones. But I won't watch that violence and debasement of everything we fought centuries to accomplish as a species.
A famous SF writer once suggested that she preferred SF to fantasy because the medieval age had nothing for women. That is an exaggeration...but not by much.
The review is interesting, whether you love the story or want to know why others like it so much.
Actually, I'm not. I read the novella when it appeared, long ago, thought it fascinating, and decided that I did not want to read something that violent. There's a quote from Renaissance Faire that I like to use, from the crier for the abbreviated Hamlet performed at the fair. The young man's patter always finished with: "Everybody dies, I die last!"
That's A Song of Fire and Ice. The people I like die, the people I despise die, and the very thing that Lanchester offers up as a selling point -- that Game of Thrones, the HBO hit, is a metaphor for our economic and climate uncertainty -- is what I hate the most. My life is filled with uncertainty. It's not recreation for me to read about that topic. After seeing Peter Dinklage playing Tyrion Lannister, "a worldly, jaded, funny, highly intelligent cynic" who is both a dwarf and possibly the most moral member of the Lannister family, I do root for Tyrion to win the Game of Thrones. But I won't watch that violence and debasement of everything we fought centuries to accomplish as a species.
A famous SF writer once suggested that she preferred SF to fantasy because the medieval age had nothing for women. That is an exaggeration...but not by much.
The review is interesting, whether you love the story or want to know why others like it so much.
no subject
I liked the first 2 volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire a great deal. Then there was such a long gap that I kind of lost track of them, and ended up picking the next 3 up as a batch, and reading all 5 in a marathon. By the end of book 5 I'd concluded that not a single one of those characters, with the possible exception of the crippled child, has any redeeming features, and I don't care if a single one of them lives through the series. In fact, "Rocks fall, everyone dies" might be a pretty good ending.
The other thing that really annoyed me was his habit of repeatedly ending a chapter in a way that makes it look like a character has just died, and then picking up several chapters later with the revelation that something intervened, and they're actually OK, at least until the next awful thing happens to them. Done once in a series, it works. The second time he pulled that trick, I felt jerked around. The third time I was thoroughly disgusted.
no subject
GRRM fan, but "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies" would make a great ending.
Or, "And then Winter Arrived and the dragons ate the world. The End."