Anticipating "A Feast For Crows" by George R. R. Martin (Nov. 9)

x-post LOL!

Wait - which article are you all talking about - The NYer one?

LOL was at the isadancewithdragonsoutyet.com btw

"is he a Giants or Jets fan? can't remember now"

Both.

christ

lol

he could chill out with that stupid wildcats shit he does

Yeah I think the shitty Wild Card's series is the worst thing about Martin.

Oh, I never took him seriously until Game Of Thrones came out. DNW wildcards.

First Wildcards book is decent. Some good writers helped him jumpstart it.

I will stand behind the original Wild Cards anthology but it did go downhill pretty quickly.

Dude whose powers were fueled by sex was hilarious tho

Fortunato! The kundalini pimp. I always liked Sleeper.

Sleeper was the Zelazny character, right? That first story was good (a little weird that the BIG thing didn't get explored better in it, but a decent enough concept.)

i haven't even read the wildcards stuff i just hate reading about it when i'm waiting for the next real book

Haha yes.

I have read the first couple of Wild Cards books and I hate reading about them period.

Shared-world anthologies, I just can't. I never ever them.

Liked the first couple of Sanctuary books and Medea: Harlan's World but that's about it.

Seems like the difference between Martin and, say, Robert Jordan is that Jordan seems to have just kept on doing his thing at his preferred pace where Martin is apparently living out a ComicCon geek fantasy.

The major difference is that Jordan sucked.

Hahaha.

the wheel of time is so much better than martin's series its not even worth arguing over

the new yorker article was p lol tho, tbh its hard to feel all that sorry for martin idk

I agree it's better than Wild Cards.

well i guess i do think its worth getting into: jordan wasnt a great writer & his books are often a lot less outright exciting than martin's but over the course of their respective series its p easy to see how much better a plotter & worldbuilder jordan is, & how much more care & considertation he puts into his story. one of the big knocks on jordan is how slow & repetitive his books get but hes never anything less than purposeful whereas martin often feels to be just meandering w/o purpose or design. with jordan its possible to see where all the puzzle pieces fit w/ martin theres just a lot of fat, partic daenyrs & bran.

plus jordan's characters are better developed & more interesting & more dynamic most of the characters in a song of ice & fire are just a couple of ideas lazily glued together. i like both series ok & they both have p major flaws but jordan is really the only one you could say achieved something 'great'

Of all the ways I've heard Jordan defended, I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone call him a great or purposeful plotter.

That's not meant to be snarky, by the way! I'm legitimately startled.

asoiaf deffo couldve benefited from martin being a more careful planner, stuff like rickon completely vanishing for a thousand pages seems pretty sloppy and probably precipitated by grrm changing his plans multiple times, but i'd say his plotting is very accomplished in more important ways - the twists and turns are rarely predictable (for me, anyway - the series is constantly confounding my natural attempts to extrapolate where it's heading, which i think is great) and he's amazing at building up to big OH HOLY FUCK moments, which is what the series is all about imo.

the characters - not particularly rich & nuanced, but he does do a great job of making sure even the most unsympathetic characters have believable/understandable motivations, and puts them in situations that play off those motivations in interesting ways.

this is my first crack at any kind of epic fantasy and i was thinking of trying wheel of time next, i know there isn't really anything else like asoiaf out there but that's probably all i really want too so ehh

asoiaf deffo

Love this guy's stuff! (Took me a lot longer than it should've to parse this)

Haha same here. Sounds like it should be the sequel to Asterios Polyp.

"and he's amazing at building up to big OH HOLY FUCK moments, which is what the series is all about imo."

Yup. Jordan is tedious as all get out.

http://jezebel.com/#!5792290/in-game-of-thrones-review-new-york-times-explains-women-hate-fantasy-novels

Jesus christ

All The News That's Fit To RONG

so I am about 3 seconds away from ordering HBO for this

I'm not going that far, but I might actually get around to watching this thing at some point. And trust me, that is v. rare when it comes to me and TV in general now.

Should I read these books? I like science fiction/supernatural fiction/world building but haven't read any fantasy in a bazillion years.

read them!!!!!

yeah sure, read them! they're not Great Literature by any means but they are incredibly engrossing w/ complex plots, tons of characters, and lots of intrigue. also there's none of that cliched elves and dwarves and wizards shit, 95% of it is just humans with swords, and the occasional supernatural bits feel more folktale-inspired than Tolkien-inspired to me.

the one caveat is that they are LONG, 4 books in and it's probably 2-3 times the length of Lord of the Rings already

I always end up tearing through these though, despite their length.

Okay. Long, engrossing, complex books that are not great literature and involve ppl with swords sounds pretty good. They are on my list. Thanks!

I was really sceptical of this series when I started reading but I ended up liking them alot. The timeframe reminds me of Wars of the Roses era England.

Ugh @ that Jezebel link. I hate so much when writers do that whole "I talked to three of my sheltered friends who've never heard of this thing/trend/book/film/band, so there is no way that anyone exists out there that could actually enjoy this thing/trend/book/film/band".

Re the Times article: Booooooooooring! Also, wrong.

I was really sceptical of this series when I started reading but I ended up liking them alot. The timeframe reminds me of Wars of the Roses era England.

― brownie, Friday, April 15, 2011 10:19 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

hah, the war of the roses was the exact inspiration for it

Oh damn, I'm really sold now.

Oh God that Times review. :(

it's odd that the heroic fantasy poles have become jordan and martin, jordan representing what the douchebags in the new yorker article think of as trad fantasy and martin the new-school gritty hotness, when like when jordan came out he was the new-school gritty hotness and terry brooks was the trad tired old fantasy dude.

the grittiness escalation race is dangerous, grrm is gonna end up the frank miller of never ending fantasy doorstops and we are going to enter early 90s image comics land. joe abercrombie is nu rob liefeld.

nyer article so annoying, OF COURSE grrm owes his fans what they want. they made his fat ass rich.

dude spent decades editing those awful wild cards books and pushing his c-list short stories. he hits the jackpot with ASOIAF, lives it up and is suddenly too good to hold up his end of the unspoken-but-totally-there nerd-culture-producer/consumer bargain? fuck him.

I think your two posts just outlined why I'm glad I stepped away from all this.

Ha, that Times review. Just imagine sitting in with that book club of hers for a minute. Scarier than Martin's White Walkers imo.