George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire BOOK Discussion thread-Book 5 out July 12th

You could double wrap the spoilers.

Still, 6 years for two books is incredibly ambitious given his pace and other commitments. If he pushes himself like that, quality could suffer. Plus, they'll basically be writing scripts off of edited manuscripts for the last season. Would be a hell of a cross promo to release the book right before the show, though.
 
[quote name='Strell']I barely had the strength to quote this part.[/QUOTE]

How do you think it felt writing it? The only thing that's scarier than him not finishing it is him finishing it shittily (see last two Dune books Herbert's son wrote).
 
[quote name='Anexanhume']How do you think it felt writing it? [/QUOTE]

This is an extremely complex question, all things considered, and I could write pages on what I think may or may not have been in his head (and may still be).

In short - as I've expressed here - I think he lets his exposition get in the way, and is now trying to bolster his writing to live up to the label of "high fantasy" by creating a juggernaut that has since broken free of his control. This would explain a lot of things - the droves of characters, this need to create history and constantly remind everyone about it, the endless details, etc.

Part of that is acceptable, but the majority of it does - in my opinion - make his writing suffer, because now he's got to inch all these tiny extrapolations forward, and if any one of them gets left behind, it starts dragging all the others backward, and then you functionally can't progress.

See also: Stannis's march toward Winterfell. That's a good allegory and it's right there.
 
[quote name='Strell']This is an extremely complex question, all things considered, and I could write pages on what I think may or may not have been in his head (and may still be).

In short - as I've expressed here - I think he lets his exposition get in the way, and is now trying to bolster his writing to live up to the label of "high fantasy" by creating a juggernaut that has since broken free of his control. This would explain a lot of things - the droves of characters, this need to create history and constantly remind everyone about it, the endless details, etc.

Part of that is acceptable, but the majority of it does - in my opinion - make his writing suffer, because now he's got to inch all these tiny extrapolations forward, and if any one of them gets left behind, it starts dragging all the others backward, and then you functionally can't progress.

See also: Stannis's march toward Winterfell. That's a good allegory and it's right there.[/QUOTE]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I think Martin is scared of the high fantasy label because it is ridden with tropes and other expected things he doesn't want or feels he needs to conform to.

In regards to the level of detail he provides, that's a bit of personal preference there. I certainly don't mind the level of detail in describing the food, for instance. But I could also definitely do without. However, I appreciate the level of detail when it comes to characters or back stories. I also think it adds to the story. So many little nuggets in there to gain a greater understanding of character motivations, pick up on foreshadowing and other things that enrich the story in my opinion. Because of it, every character feels "real" and you can sympathize and understand their position, even if you don't regard them as good or a hero in the traditional sense. I get annoyed with Dany's chapters not because of poor writing, but because I think she's being a moody little indecisive bitch. But it's with that repetition and living inside her head that I can be driven to have that opinion about her that may be changed completely later. Martin could have simply glossed over her for this book and we wouldn't lose much story wise. But then the opinion would be "What's happening with Dany? Why is Martin developing her more" versus "I don't like reading Dany's chapters. I don't like how she's acting."


I'm not sure what you mean about Stannis.
 
I think the level of exposition is worthwhile. More often than not, it is very rewarding. I think anex has hit it on the nose, the characterization is so strong in the series. It's the appeal of ASOIAF. You can't separate it from the exposition.

I disagree strongly that the level of exposition, or any other facet of his writing, is an affectation to meet some genre-imposed ideal. GRRM is definitely going for medieval fantasy, but not because he's concerned with the genre so much as he enjoys the medieval setting, the customs, creating escutcheons and family words and court intrigue and whatnot.

In fact, he's been happily operating within multiple genres for decades, and because of that I can't imagine how you can assert that he's deliberately trying to "live up" to anything. People at the level he operates are way, way past that. If we're talking about the Kvothe author and his wish fulfillment protagonist, that level of author is definitely trying to "live up" to a genre. But GRRM is too old and too good for that bullshit. He's a pro.

This isn't to say I don't have my issues with certain chapters, or that I believe the so-called Meerenese knot ever really existed, but it's inconsequential.

As for the series being out of his control, I agree only in the sense that he underestimates the amount of space he'll need to cover all the multi-layered threads in his head. I don't think that much of the layering and exposition merely "comes out on the page," as they say. I think that's one of his skills that's hard for us mortal planners to understand: the dude just has a lot of strands in his head. Lots of ins and outs.

Anyhow, if he falls ill and/or dies, nobody's finishing it for him.
 
[quote name='dothog']Anyhow, if he falls ill and/or dies, nobody's finishing it for him.[/QUOTE]

The books. The show is its own beast and Dave & Dan know how it ends.
 
[quote name='Anexanhume']I'm not quite sure what you mean. I think Martin is scared of the high fantasy label because it is ridden with tropes and other expected things he doesn't want or feels he needs to conform to. [/quote]

My point is that when you start getting accolades, people start expecting more of you. For the most part, he's avoided a lot of the usual pitfalls, so he gets some credit there.

characters
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It's all fine and good until you set up nearly two books full of 1) uninteresting characters and/or 2) made up characters that no one gives a shit about, which he just did. I'm being a bit unfair/hyperbolic here, yeah, but I can't stand the on-the-fly generation.

Did anyone really give a shit about Quentyn?
Does anyone give a shit about the people Tyrion ends up running around with?
Did Dany do a damn thing AT ALL in the fourth or fifth books?

I'm not sure what you mean about Stannis.
Click to expand...

In the fifth book, he begins a huge march in the dead of winter, and people are dropping like flies. Pack animals run off and they have to chase them down. People are miserable without food and trodding around in unforgiving wilderness. What should have taken X days (I want to say ten) ends up becoming thirty, and then Martin didn't even finish saying what happened to them.

I.e., a really good allegory for the way the story is going so far - a bunch of details all bungling over each other and halting the whole story because oh look, let's talk about some other family from the far south that barely figure into the story until Martin says so even though they were ignored up until some page.

Dothog I'm ignoring because the mofo likes all that shit with Dorne and the Ironborne and all the other cultures that take up 20% of the novel but add 0% to the story.

Don't make me hash up PM-given details in this discussion, I see you deliberately not bringing them up in here.
 
Well, you're pushing the buttons just about anyone can agree on.

  • Q-mart definitely felt extraneous from the start.
  • Tyrion and the Non-European, "Ethnic" Name, Rough Ridin' Crew certainly enjoys GRRM's creative use of da alfabit.
  • While I'll defend a lot of Dany's stuff, the Life Lessons of DwD did get a little old.

I'm not denying that I've nitpicked at GRRM's methods, but this is real talk, son. And the real talk of it I have yet to re-read one of the ASOIAF books and not be more impressed by that book than I was the first time around. How many fun, absorbing books can you say that for? That compliment wouldn't exist without all that exposition.

GRRM's not doing it because he wants his book filed under F for Fantasy, he's doing it because he cares about the characters. He doesn't want them to inhabit a world devoid of the detail he imagines for them.

So Q-mart is a good example here. I don't like the boy, and I was tapping my foot impatiently throughout all of his chapters the first time through. However, I think GRRM wants a "life" for the dragons as much as he wants one for Dany. He doesn't want the dragons to be cutouts. I would guess that's why Q-mart is there, in part to show Dorne's impotence (no Red Viper jokes!), but also to show the extent of dragon-related violence beyond reports to Dany and perhaps change the Targ-Dorne dynamic in a more interesting way.

And I liked that the situation with Stannis wasn't resolved. To me so many other things about Winterfell came up that I felt Stannis was just one part of that. There's Reek, the Manderly Dinner Party Surprise, the King Beyond the Wall, the Greyjoy girl. That's a lot of material. It feels arbitrary to pick on the Stannis narrative.

In the end, I guess that in the moment, when I want to see-what-happens-next-let-me-turn-the-page-dammit, some of the exposition can be tiring. However, on re-reading these things, they're very rewarding, and it becomes more clear that the exposition is worth it.
 
You want an example and I picked one.

Here's another: How many stupid rhymes did Reek need? Be honest now. That's padding and everyone knows it. It was the Apply Directly to the Forehead of Westeros. Good shits.

You could bring the magnification back another notch and argue that the Boltons are just as unneeded. It's like this weird obsession with Winterfell when I thought the whole lesson I was supposed to learn was that the Starks aren't the main characters, or perhaps aren't as central under a traditional definition. Winterfell has been taken over, then burned to the ground, all of its original inhabitants are gone, the stepchild is stuck there in the hands of a maniac who doesn't functionally alter the story anymore...so why is so much time and effort there?

You're telling me - in a way - don't hate the playa, don't hate the game, don't hate what I don't hate. Which is odd because what I'm hearing is that someone else's acceptance invalidates my general distaste, which seems like a strange argument to make when you just got done saying it was invalid from the other side.

That stuff just gets under my skin. It's being called history and perspective and depth, and that's fine. But no one is going to remember any of it. What did Illyrio eat when he met with Drogo?

Note: I get I'm being a bit unfair. Really I'm not out for argument. I'm just kind of surprised that there's all this ...ah, this insistence that GRRM should keep on keepin' on, but what if he dies, but he needs to finish, but what if the quality suffers, but it hasn't suffered yet, but what if IT DOES, HOLY SHIT, no way that's not gonna happen, he'll finish when he's finished, but WHAT IF THE SHOW CATCHES UP OH SHIT...

None of that resolves unless you start analyzing what already exists, and what already exists in my head is 60% good and 40% bad.

Q-Mart, though. That's good. That's almost as good as Khal Jazzy Jeff.
 
I'm not asserting some variation on "don't hate the playa, hate the game." I'm just defining the Game, and for GRRM, rich characterization and exposition in a medieval fantasy setting is the Game. If you're trying to convince people that his exposition is arbitrary, that the Boltons just developed out of describing a leaf on a tree near Winterfell, I disagree. The exposition is intentioned, just as the repetition is a stylistic choice.

It feels like the picking of nits to enumerate instances of exposition/repetition/other stylistic choices you don't enjoy in ASOIAF relative to the fundamental flaws in other popular works. I may not enjoy some of his choices the way he desires, but I don't think of his choices as worthy of strong derision -- for instance, his repetition is not grossly superficial in the way that the T&A in the HBO show is. If anything in his works were as superficial as the tittays in the HBO show, I'd stop reading the same way I stopped watching the show after a half of the first season.

As for the "WHAT IF HE DOESN'T FINISH" point you added, I'm not sure what the resolution is that you're referring to, nor can I follow the 60/40 breakdown. Anyhow, while I enjoy the exposition, I do see your point for other issues, including the repetition. Is he ever really gonna tell us where the whores go? Because I'm sick of guessing at this.

At first I thought Whoreville but that was too obvious. Of course they'd go to Whoreville, right?
 
Yeah, I'm with dothog here. The exposition, detail and characterization are the things I like most in series. Same reason I love the LOTR books so much--super detailed, amazing amount of history etc.

That's what sets books like these apart from say stuff like R.A. Salvatore's books that are just a lot of action. Basically the equivalent of popcorn action movies. I like those too, but get more enjoyment out of books/films with more artistic/literary merit.
 
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Exactly, Tolkien's a good example. I had a friend who decided to read the books after seeing the movie. He kept complaining to me about how "talky and boring" Tolkien was, and I'm like, Muchacho, this is what Tolkien does. If you don't like descriptions of the Shire, you gotta get out now.

I'm not suggesting it's Capital W Wrong to be impatient with GRRM and to dislike his devotion to every character and setting. I'm just saying that if you honestly dislike it beyond its being a minor annoyance on the first read-through, you'd probably be happier reading something else.
 
You'd think that with all that description that it would make it easier to picture certain things in your mind, but not really.

I mean if I have to read one more description of what someone is wearing I'm going to bash my head against a wall. Boiled leather? Really? A doublet? you don't say!

Fuuuuuuuuuu
 
[quote name='confoosious']Is it just me or did GRRM discover the word nuncle between books 3 and 4? So annoying.[/QUOTE]

I noticed that too, but I don't have a problem with it. Or the exposition for that matter. I read high fantasy, and fantasy in general, to learn about the worlds. It just wouldn't be the same without it.
 
I don't mind exposition. I don't know who is jumping into a middle of a series mid stream but I guess it's for them and to be a refresher if you're reading the books how they're released.

As for the words, I don't mind strange spellings and the like. It adds to the book in my view and is part of the creative process. I just don't like when an author falls in love with a word all of a sudden and decides it's really awesome. In the middle of the fucking series. nuncle. so dumb. But I guess you win some and you lose some.
 
I'm starting to notice that Martin has a certain style, wherein not much happens until the last quarter or so of the book.
 
[quote name='confoosious']I don't mind exposition. I don't know who is jumping into a middle of a series mid stream but I guess it's for them and to be a refresher if you're reading the books how they're released.

As for the words, I don't mind strange spellings and the like. It adds to the book in my view and is part of the creative process. I just don't like when an author falls in love with a word all of a sudden and decides it's really awesome. In the middle of the fucking series. nuncle. so dumb. But I guess you win some and you lose some.[/QUOTE]

That and maester piss me off. I actually pronounce it master in my mind.
 
I'm actually used to Maester, having played Final Fantasy X so many times, but yeah, I can see how that can often times be confused with master unless you've seen the word a lot.
 
The "three-and-ten" age crap bothers me too. There's no rhyme or reason why characters started using that in book 4. It's not like a certain class or geography of people use that style. Everyone and their nuncle just starts saying ages that way.
 
His usage and syntax can really drive you nuts. As usage goes, I think he's trying to put Old English back into circulation. (And I'm not being cute, a lot of those words can be found in archaic Modern English or OE, including nuncle.)

Let's not leave out his turns of phrase that he'll get hung up on for half a book or so. Anyone tried to put nipples on a breastplate lately? I guess it's pretty tough.
 
[quote name='dothog']His syntax can really drive you nuts. I think he's trying to put Old English back into circulation. (And I'm not being cute, a lot of those words can be found in archaic Modern English or OE, including nuncle.)

Let's not leave out his turns of phrase that he'll get hung up on for half a book or so. Anyone tried to put nipples on a breastplate lately? I guess it's pretty tough.[/QUOTE]

I think he wrote that right after seeing Batman Forever.

I don't nitpick too much on turns of phrases and style. After all, that's what makes an author unique.

But for some reason, after reading "nuncle" for 4 chapters straight, even the ones that didn't include Asha, I wanted to punch someone. He falls in love with phrases and then every characters starts using it. As if it were some westeros meme the ravens are spreading. Words are wind makes sense for one person to use it as a personal mantra. But all of the sudden Arya uses it? Bah.

I hope Book 5 is better.
 
Words and phrases can certainly be overused, and I think Martin does tend to do that. The first time I read "nuncle" I thought it was a typo, until the third, fourth, and fifth times. Oh and "coz" kinda bugs me too, Jaime uses that a lot. I think if he'd used it from the start we'd be more sued to it, but most of it seems to have come about when Martin suddenly realized how awesome those words were.
 
ok so I'm a little lost at the end (probably cause book 4 bored me -- i skimmed the dumb drowned men chapters) ...

is the Pate that's at the end of book 4 the son of one of those lords that's been lost and they're looking desperately for him?
 
Actually, the Pate at the end of book 4 is most likely
Jaqen H'ghar. Reemember at the beginning of book 4 how Pate and some other boys are talking about that girl at the brothel and all? At the end of that, Pate supposedly ended up dead, killed by the alchemist he met. It seemed like pointless story at first, but at the end of the book you end up back in Oldtown and meet those people again. Only Pate is now somehow alive again. Well, the description of that alchemist who killed Pate is the same description of the man that Jaqen H'ghar turned into when he left Arya. It's assumed he killed Pate and took his identity, I guess to get into the citadel.
 
Just hoping the series will get a kickstart now that he finally got through that horrible split. It dragged too much for two books which were technically one book. Next one should be back to normal for everything.
 
I just finished Dance and I'm starting to hate GRRM. Love the characters and want to see an ending but he's killing me with his writing.

My complaint from book 4 about the westeros memes continues into book 5.

"Words are wind" is now uttered by everyone and somehow two (3?) characters with no contact at all simultaneously saw Batman Forever and adopted the phrase "useless as nipples on a breastplate."

Luckily nuncle was only used once.
 
[quote name='confoosious']I just finished Dance and I'm starting to hate GRRM. Love the characters and want to see an ending but he's killing me with his writing.

My complaint from book 4 about the westeros memes continues into book 5.

"Words are wind" is now uttered by everyone and somehow two (3?) characters with no contact at all simultaneously saw Batman Forever and adopted the phrase "useless as nipples on a breastplate."

Luckily nuncle was only used once.[/QUOTE]
I actually laughed at the breastplate joke. I think it was Batman nd Robin you were referring to though.

I'm really sick of the Martells, damn that family.

edit-Someone needs to tell GRRM his website looks like something from 1996.
 
Far be it from me to dig up an old topic, though I've finally managed to pick up from where I left off in Game of Thrones now that I had all five books gifted to me on Kindle.

I'm about halfway through Clash of Kings and have noticed a number of things that they shortened/removed/adjusted between the HBO series and the book. 

There were more than a few things that I noticed that were different/missing from the books:

* Sansa is beaten pretty badly and regularly by the Kingsguard and Joffrey until Tyrion steps in.  I was shocked how bad it was getting for Sansa at the point Tyrion steps in.

* Joffrey does show quite a few more outbursts of sadism via his crossbow that I'm sure lead up to the events in Storm of Swords / as shown in Season 3 with Ros and killing her (which I know is only done for the show as she's not really in the books).

* There's lots of great bits with the hill tribesmen when they're at Kings Landing with Tyrion, which is missing from the show.

* The Blackfish shows up much earlier than he does in S3 of the show, as he shows up multiple times during Clash of Kings.

* Obviously there's a number of minor characters they didn't bring over, though I was surprised how many there were.

* The transition from Arya going along with Yoren and the crew he's bringing to the Night's Watch to being captured at Harrenhall is much longer in the book versus what happens in S2 of GoT.

* Arya has a pretty crappy time of it from Kings' Landing to Harrenhall.

* The Reeds show up in Clash Of Kings at Winterfell versus meeting them north of Winterfell as Bran/Rickon/Hodor/Osha leave Winterfell after the Ironborn show up at Winterfell during S2 of the show.

* The trip of Danerys and her khalassar from where Khal Drogo dies to ending up at Qarth has that little stop at the abandoned city where they find some solace for a few days.

That's just some of what I remember, though it's quite surprising to see what didn't make it to the show and how much more they could have included if they weren't so fixed on a 10 episode season limit for GoT and their other shows. 12 shows/season would certainly bring up quite a bit more from the book.

Glad I managed to get it on Kindle as it's much easier to spend a few minutes with it via the Kindle App on my cell phone than having the books on-hand.

 
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Hello, dusty old thread.

Ran across this thread on Reddit that has a theorized end to GOT (spoilers to the Nth power if not up to date on the books):

http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/23p48r/the_true_nature_and_purpose_of_the_others_and_the/
 
I've gone through most of the discussion points and it make a whole lot of sense.
 
Supposedly a fan has guessed correctly the ending to GOT from the clues left behind in the books to date, which ties into the above thread:
http://www.businessinsider.com/fans-guess-game-of-thrones-ending-2014-8
 
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