Eh, I'm not particularly fond of his work. John Flanagan, Chris Bunch, and Barb and J.C. Hendee are more my cup of tea.
Has "A Song of Ice and Fire" ruined fantasy?
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Well, fans of any genera eventually find a writer or two they really resonate with and wind up comparing everything else to. Honestly I've never been a huge "George R.R. Martin" fan, and actually felt his best work has been acting as an editor and coordinator for other writers like he largely did for the "Wild Cards" shared world anthology. His "Song Of Ice And Fire" series happens to focus on areas of the fantasy genera (politics and maneuvering) a lot of people find fascinating, but others are less excited about. Overall it struck a chord with a lot of people though, became a best seller, and lead to a TV series, largely because I feel it's something that's fantasy, but keeps the fantastic so relatively limited (for the most part) that people who aren't fantasy fans can more readily relate to it. Not to mention that it works especially well for a TV series, where the budget for FX and such are always going to be an issue, so the more they can do with pure drama/acting the better, even with an initial high cost for production things like costumes, and sets can always be recycled and repurposed. Having a large ensemble cast of people who largely just sit around talking to each other on, and on, and on, for all intents and purposes with something else occasionally happening makes this perfect for TV (not that there is anything wrong with it).jademunky said:
Now, speaking for myself I feel certain series like Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series (his other work besides Dresden) tend to cut a better line between action and the political, though the budget for that one, especially towards the end, would be beyond what even HBO would likely want to put into a series to do it right. They tried to do the work of Terry Goodkind already (Legend Of The Seeker) and really they changes they had to make to that for television kind of ruined the entire thing.
That said this is a decent series, while not a personal favorite, it's a good choice, and you certainly aren't going to be alone.
If *I* had to pick my personal favorite writer it would be Roger Zelazny who has sadly passed on, and his "Amber" series (the second series of which was never finished) perhaps my favorite series. Some of his other stories like "A Night In The Lonesome October", "Dilvish The Damned", and others rank among my favorites. Indeed I've gone so far as to say everyone should read "A Night In The Lonesome October" at least once.... it's quite different.
I also consider myself a bit if a Piers Anthony fan, though I think he kind of peaked with his "Adept" stories (in my opinion). While I haven't checked in on them in a very long time, I grew up reading "Xanth" which pretty much defined "fantasy comedy/satire" to me especially as it advanced and became less serious with time. I think he started to lose it about the time he began working on things like the "mode" series (though I'm rambling now).
Harry Potter.
Read it.
It's that good.
(Except the first two books are kind of bad, but the remaining five are top notch).
Read it.
It's that good.
(Except the first two books are kind of bad, but the remaining five are top notch).
Well, the basic idea is that when something truly bad winds up becoming popular to the point where it starts impacting everything created from that point on which strive to be "more like it" and you start seeing things that were done previously "relaunched" or "rebooted" or "re envisioned" using those new standards and that style, something that is bad yet popular enough to be profitable can negatively impact and ruin an entire genera.lacktheknack said:
Typically it's an issue when something that has a niche interest is picked up by the mainstream, and then producers behind bringing it to the mainstream wind up gradually changing it even further to broaden it's appeal to more and more of the mainstream in order to make money, until it's the original fans that made something popular enough to be picked up who wind up being on the fringe of the community due to things being changed so much, and perhaps even missing the entire point of the work.
I'm not articulating this too well, but I guess a good example of this would be the movie "I, Robot" which thankfully didn't succeed beyond the point you saw. It took the name and a few basic concepts from a classic work of science fiction, but then ignored everything else, including the central point. A series of stories about humans and robots co-existing, working together, and even falling in love, turning into a "by the numbers" story of a "mechanical revolt" based deeply on modern technophobia was outright insulting to the original material... and even worse give people the impression that this is what those stories were about, when it was quite the opposite. Indeed while things go kind of wrong (for reasons I won't go into, but honestly have little to do with the robots) when Asimov ties "Robot" and "Foundation" together in the end, one of the things you find out is that despite everything the robots were protecting and guiding humanity in secret all this time... let's just say a truly beautiful concept was pretty much dragged through the mud by that movie and the neo-luddites that thought it was a good idea.
On a lot of levels it could be argued something like "Game Of Thrones" could ruin fantasy for a lot of people, it is after all one particular style of fantasy that works because it stands out among others. If they tried to turn everything into pessimistic low/dark fantasy, including things that were designed to be high fantasy it would be bad. Never mind if it got big enough where someone decided "hey, let's reboot Conan, but make it more like Game Of Thrones" so instead of Conan freebooting around and being Conan, you instead have him sitting in a room with a quill and an inkpot trying to outmaneuver his political rivals. Indeed that would be ironic because half the point of Conan is that his world had a lot of similar elements to "Game Of Thrones" but Conan was big on "trodding their jeweled thrones beneath his sandaled feet" or however it was stated. In short he'd walk into a kingdom where stuff like this was going on, fight for one side or the other (or perhaps all sides at different times), with whatever side he's on generally tending to win becaue he's bloody Conan (mighty, inspirational, a tactical leader beyond anything realistic...). Eventually he'd just get sick of all the simpering nobles and their plots and politics, and decide to take The Dragon Throne for himself after killing anyone who got in his way... and you know, this is Conan, "realistic" fighting ability isn't his thing, in Conan stories they weren't big on choreography or explaining how he did things it's just "with a final mighty blow, Jaimie Lannister's head flew off his shoulders to land atop the virtual mountain of dead bodies in the throne room, all comers defeated Conan declared himself king of Westros".... and you know he can do that because this is Conan and that's the style. You try and change that and say turn Conan into a politician you kind of miss the point, even as an old man/king in the stories half the point was Conan was still pretty much a butt-kicker at heart and solved most problems with a combination of cunning and ultra-violence.
Ahh well I'm rambling, though I think that kind of made sense when I wrote it. All I know is that now I want to actually see a crossover that ends with a scene of Conan sitting on The Dragon Throne, Stanza and Daenys in slave collars chained to the arms clutching his legs as they stare up at him in a combination of unbridled lust and gut-wrenching terror, as Arya Stark brings him mead in a mug crafted from Joffrey's skull.
Of course that would represent the same kind of affront, defeating the entire purpose of "Game Of Thrones". If say you know, Conan re-launched and became this popular it could also ruin fantasy if it started seeing everything changed to be more like it. The above scene would be darkly amusing though, as would a series "Conan The Librarian: Political Scribe" I'd imagine.
And for that I thank him. I like ASOIAF well enough, but I think in the end I prefer Abercrombie. I started with the Heroes before moving onto the The First Law series. Martin's books always take me a while to get into. Once I'm in, I'm in (Apart from A Dance with Dragons), but I think I like Abercrombie's sarcastic subversion of fantasy tropes a little better. He gets a bit mean occasionally, but it's almost always entertaining. And his stories are just engrossing. While I appreciate Martin's influence on the "realistic" fantasy, he still enjoys fantasy mainstays like the never ending digressions into discussions of food, or my least favourite, throwaway stories on unimportant characters. YMMV on the Quentyn Martell, but his sections were largely pointless to me, similarly, I couldn't get psyched for the intro with Varymyr. And urgh, Danyrous's chapters in ADwD can die in a fire. I don't need to hear more waxing poetic about how hot the freakish Daario is, nor the honestly disturbing references to certain bodily functions Martin employs. George R.R. Martin, you're a dirty, dirty man.BloatedGuppy said:
Joe might be my favorite author at the moment. He's not as technically proficient as Martin (although he is improving, and he paces better), but his tales are wildly enjoyable. And for such a prolific young author he certainly is turning out quality.Loonyyy said:
So basically, does it make all other fantasy books look bad in comparison? Nope.
While it is a strong series, there are a lot of things wrong with it. The atrocious pacing for one thing, and I can't overstate this enough. The plodding storyline, the utter inability to tie the plot threads together properly, a needlessly obfuscated and convoluted plot, with a number of characters that borders on mental diarrhea, etc. I'm not saying the books are bad, quite the opposite, I think they're great books. However, they are great DESPITE all their shortcomings and they are far from being the apex of the fantasy genre.
Shortly after I finished reading Feast of Crows I started reading the Dresden Files books. They were to polar opposite of the Song of Ice and Fire books - fast, well paced, tightly plotted, not bogged down in endless waves of pointless characters, etc. If anything, I'd say they are better written (by far) than the ASoIaF books. Then I went on to read some Gene Wolfe and his mindfuckery in Book of the New Sun. And not too long before all of that I went through most of the Wheel of Time books, which pretty much filled me up on long, plodding, multivolume epics.
Martin's work is decent, even solid, but not outstanding in general. ASoIaF is carried by a few strong characters and the occasional strong plot twist, mainly based around Martin's willingness to repeatedly do terrible things to his characters. However, his writing style and overall structuring of the books is often lacking.
Another thing worth noting is that Martin owes a lot of his popularity to bridging the gap between Fantasy and "regular" Fiction, to the point where a lot of people who don't normally like Fantasy can enjoy his work. He weaves the fantasy elements in to spice the fiction up, instead of making them integral straight away and asking readers to just suspend disbelief, which is the norm for fantasy (and which fans of the genre do without question, but it turns non-fans off). In fact, most of the "magical" elements of the first few books (dragons aside) can be rationalized away as superstition or coincidence. It slowly ramps up and that buildup is one of Martin's great achievements with the series.
Again, I love the books. I've read all of them twice so far and will likely do another run through them within the next year or so when my book backlog clears. But they aren't awesome to the point of making all other fantasy look bad. Granted, they may strike a chord with someone, but that's normal.
While it is a strong series, there are a lot of things wrong with it. The atrocious pacing for one thing, and I can't overstate this enough. The plodding storyline, the utter inability to tie the plot threads together properly, a needlessly obfuscated and convoluted plot, with a number of characters that borders on mental diarrhea, etc. I'm not saying the books are bad, quite the opposite, I think they're great books. However, they are great DESPITE all their shortcomings and they are far from being the apex of the fantasy genre.
Shortly after I finished reading Feast of Crows I started reading the Dresden Files books. They were to polar opposite of the Song of Ice and Fire books - fast, well paced, tightly plotted, not bogged down in endless waves of pointless characters, etc. If anything, I'd say they are better written (by far) than the ASoIaF books. Then I went on to read some Gene Wolfe and his mindfuckery in Book of the New Sun. And not too long before all of that I went through most of the Wheel of Time books, which pretty much filled me up on long, plodding, multivolume epics.
Martin's work is decent, even solid, but not outstanding in general. ASoIaF is carried by a few strong characters and the occasional strong plot twist, mainly based around Martin's willingness to repeatedly do terrible things to his characters. However, his writing style and overall structuring of the books is often lacking.
Another thing worth noting is that Martin owes a lot of his popularity to bridging the gap between Fantasy and "regular" Fiction, to the point where a lot of people who don't normally like Fantasy can enjoy his work. He weaves the fantasy elements in to spice the fiction up, instead of making them integral straight away and asking readers to just suspend disbelief, which is the norm for fantasy (and which fans of the genre do without question, but it turns non-fans off). In fact, most of the "magical" elements of the first few books (dragons aside) can be rationalized away as superstition or coincidence. It slowly ramps up and that buildup is one of Martin's great achievements with the series.
Again, I love the books. I've read all of them twice so far and will likely do another run through them within the next year or so when my book backlog clears. But they aren't awesome to the point of making all other fantasy look bad. Granted, they may strike a chord with someone, but that's normal.
It's not ruined fantasy at all. It just means you have a favourite, you have the one that you will hold up like a shining beacon of hope and greatness. I have read the books myself and I think they are absolutely brilliant. However, I still like to read other works of fantasy and I still think they are as good. At the moment I'm reading Queen of the Damned, and I think it's great and I'm very hooked on it.
While I don't entirely think of Harry Potter as a fantasy, I will defend it and say it's one hell of a brilliant series and I dearly wish I didn't leave my copies at home, I want to read them all again.
While I don't entirely think of Harry Potter as a fantasy, I will defend it and say it's one hell of a brilliant series and I dearly wish I didn't leave my copies at home, I want to read them all again.
I've loved the books for years but I really can't handle the social media shitstorm that ensues every weekend during Game of Thrones season. The Red Wedding was ridiculous. It seems like between season 1 and 2 it really took off in terms of fans. I really dread to think what GRRM will do for the ending. I can't see it living up to expectations.
Anyway that's beside the point.
I don't think it ruins it, and I've ploughed through a lot of fantasy series. It is perhaps irritating that A Song of Ice and Fire has absolutely dominated the genre recently, but it's by no means unbeatable. For instance the books had been around for years and only received the recognition when HBO produced a masterfully produced and acted show. You can be guaranteed there are many equally good series which you haven't heard of because the literature isn't backed by millions of dollars.
Love the books, but I really wish Martin would hurry up and write them. The fact its taken this long says to me that he had no idea where the plot is going specifically, and we're being set up for a fall.
Can anyone recommend me a fantasy book series actually? I haven't read anything good in a while.
Anyway that's beside the point.
I don't think it ruins it, and I've ploughed through a lot of fantasy series. It is perhaps irritating that A Song of Ice and Fire has absolutely dominated the genre recently, but it's by no means unbeatable. For instance the books had been around for years and only received the recognition when HBO produced a masterfully produced and acted show. You can be guaranteed there are many equally good series which you haven't heard of because the literature isn't backed by millions of dollars.
Love the books, but I really wish Martin would hurry up and write them. The fact its taken this long says to me that he had no idea where the plot is going specifically, and we're being set up for a fall.
Can anyone recommend me a fantasy book series actually? I haven't read anything good in a while.