Okay. So, I admit I run hot and cold on fantasy and sci-fi stuff. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to read and sometimes it bores me to tears. I have a few favorites, but I rarely get into the multi-volume, never ending stuff that categorizes most fantasy fiction these days.
I had never read anything by George RR Martin (henceforward Martin because his name is too freaking long) before I heard about the HBO pilot. I am currently reading the second volume in his Song of Ice and Fire series, "Clash of Kings", and have the remaining two volumes sitting by, waiting.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE ARE POTENTIAL SPOILERS IN THIS MINI-RANT, SO IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON READING THE BOOKS - DON'T READ THIS!!
I know that some of you have read them all - and quite like them. I'm still not convinced. Here's why:
Too many characters. It's nice to have a lot of characters to play with, but the more you have, the more you run the risk of ending up with poorly developed central characters. This happened in "Game of Thrones". With the exception of Tyrion and Ned, the remaining central characters remind me of the false fronts on Hollywood sets. At initial glance, they are very realistic and detailed, but the innards are just shells. Martin obviously loves the Tyrion character and has given him a soul, which is great and makes him a really interesting figure. Ned was pretty stereotyped, but Martin did a good job of creating a man whose sense of honor and morality made him more mighty oak than tender sapling, with a rigidity that blinded and eventually broke him - so he was interesting, also.
The rest of them? They're almost caricatures. For example, what do I know about the evil center of the devious plots, Cersai? Nada. She's pretty, she's evil. End of story. No trouble with that, every story needs it's share of conscienceless evil, but Martin didn't really want her to be that way (evidenced by several short takes up to the promise of Ned's life) - he wanted to create a character who was evil, but complicated. He failed because he didn't give her a backstory.
Why? Probably because the book is already so damned long that had he colored in all the major characters, he would have ended up with a book twice that length . . . which leads to the next issue.
It's too damn long. He's got TOO much going on. When I find myself needing to take notes to keep track of the characters, where they are, and what they're doing - it's too long.
Most of the characters are too young to be believable - and before anyone says "that's the way it was in the Middle Ages" - don't. That's NOT the way it was except in particular circumstances. Just because they died earlier doesn't mean they matured earlier. I read a comment yesterday on the WiC blog that indicated that Martin is actually pleased they have 'aged up' the characters, because he realizes, in retrospect, that the very young ages are not just a little creepy, they're not believable.
He wanders. I'm not reading a diary or a journal. I'm reading a story. Don't keep wandering off little side-paths to nowhere. It's like listening to my mother, who starts with one story and ends with a completely different one . . . and then comes back to the first one about three hours later - out of the blue.
With all that said, I admit I didn't dislike the first book. It kept my attention (often painfully as I backtracked to remind myself of who and where someone was). I thought the best part of the story, continuity wise, was the Dany bits. Knowing that no good was going to come out of it for Ned made it hard to read, as I liked the character - he was flawed in a very human way. I don't like Ned's wife - she's WAY too self-absorbed to be likable, and her moments of retrospection in the second book are - so far - too little, too late. And she's STILL too self-absorbed, even after recognizing that it was her fault hubby got offed. The Tyrion character is, of course, the most interesting because he's the most three-dimensional. As an excellent and avid visualiser, I found that I had to rely on Martin's somewhat skimpy descriptions of most of the characters to give them form in my head - Tyrion has enough personality that I don't have to use his description. The essence of the character is full enough to allow for true visualisation.
He's good with dialogue, which saves the books. His descriptions of place are sorely lacking, though - very skimpy, indeed. In GoT, I felt like he wrote something much, much longer and then - at the insistence of his editor, chopped out everything he could that would save space without sacrificing the actual plot(s). Unfortunately, he decided to give everybody about the same amount of space for character development, regardless of how much time they spend being central to the story - which meant that everything suffered in the end - particularly the landscapes.
Initially I didn't like the division into character chapters, just so he could write 1st person, but as he kept adding new people I started liking it more, just because it made it easier to backtrack when I needed to do so.
I was hoping that the second book would be an improvement, but honestly? It's boring me. He ended volume one with the big WOOHOO moment with Dany. I FULLY expected to see some bit of her story referencing early in the second volume, but nope . . . he's all over the place. Literally. Introducing new locations, new characters - geeze. Do something with the one's you've got, bud.
And it's simply not as interesting, nor as well-written. The dialogue is more stilted, the transitions are ragged, and the plot . . . is there one or is this whole book a microhistorical accounting of how things fall apart?
I'm continuing on, but I'm really sorry I can't like them more than I do.
Comments welcome (as long as no one tries to convince me that 11 year olds were way smarter and more mature in the 12th century).
