Is "A Song of Ice and Fire" the best epic fantasy since "The Lord of the Rings"?

[Mystery Man]

we thought it was decent but it realy only amounted to 3 novels about traveling with a bit of plot thrown in.

...with a bit of plot thrown in...

...with a bit of plot thrown in...

...with a bit of plot thrown in...

...with a bit of plot thrown in...


It's echoing in my brain!

No, I don't think you read the books, or at least not the same books I read. Sorry if I may seem confrontational but when the b.s.-o-meter starts ticking I just can't stop meself.

 

[Felonious Ntent]

Realy I am serious.
It read like a travel log with a plot thrown in to keep things intersting. But bare in mind this was years ago. I can't recall the conversations exactly but they were to this efect.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I'd go with Tad Williams' Sorry, Memory and Thorn and Janny Wurtz' "Wars of Light & Shadow" also. I like Song of Ice and Fire. "Best" is really a tough thing, though. I'd probably also go with Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionovar Tapestry before SoIaF, too, but probably only because I think Kay captures Tolkien's "feel" better for me.

 

[Pants]

You don't want to know what I think about Robert Jordan.

No, please... indulge us.

 

[ajanders]

Admission about A Song of Ice and Fire

I've been told I should like this better than Robert Jordan.
I don't.
I've read A Song of Ice and Fire: I've read the Lord of the Rings, I've read Robert Jordan.
I remember details of the Lord of the Rings well enough I could correct the movies.
I remember details of the Robert Jordan books well enough I don't need the appendices except to start guessing at the meanings of the prophecies.
I haven't looked at either of those series for eighteen months.
I finished A Song of Ice and Fire six months ago. I remember somebody pushed a little kid off a tower. I remember there's a Big Black Wall that keeps out the bad stuff. I remember there's a guy who taught some girl how the Tao of rapier dueling.
The biggest thing I remember is some frickin' moron apparently thought it would be a good idea to put a castle two days above timberline on the fantasy version of Mount Everest. Like the man says, "Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for bad thinking."
So I've stopped with Martin.
I'm seeing a lot of good fantasy come out for children and young adults: very little for us older types.
Harry Potter is good fantasy, but it doesn't feel epic.
Ghormengast is epic, but not really fantastic.
I've got to track down the Dark Materials trilogy: I understand that's supposed to be very good.
I'm also finding the works of a man named William Hope Hodgson to be very good: one story of his called The House on the Borderlands is fantastic, but not epic.
Currently I'm going through a different one of his called The Night Land. This looks both fantastic and epic.

 

[frandelgearslip]

I heard so many good things about these books and I tried them out and I have to say that I am seriously dissapointed. While its cool to kill main characters, his books are only slightly above average. And thats before I dock points, because he seems at times intent on writing a porno not a science fiction/fantasy series.

Between the incest, pedophilia, and every other kind of sex he has in these books its boring the hell out of me. I am no prude but after the hundredth time reading about a character thinking about sex, having sex, talking about sex, wanting sex...Its just boring. My breaking point came when 5+ pages were spent on theon trying to convince some woman to have sex with him. Thats nothing new about these books thats just where I got tired of it all. He spends more time on sex than on anything else in the books.

Maybe if I was thirteen I would love these books, but I got better things to do than to read through scene after scene of the authors perverted fantasies. The only thing missing was S&M but I guess one can always count on terry goodkind for that.

 

[SynapsisSynopsis]

You first have to assume the Jordan is ever going to finish his series.

It being The Wheel of Time, maybe it's less a question of when he'll finish and more of when he'll begin.

Fantasy is so over-stuffed with people who just can't write solid prose.

Tolkien could. The Lord of the Rings is filled some of the greatest English prose in the 20th century. I'll put Eowyn vs. the Witchking (or even better, Eomer's discovery of his sister's body) up against ANY writer in the last 100 years.

I've never heard this one before. I'm sort of tempted to take you up on this, but I think ultimately the argument would evaporate into different notions of what "good" prose is.

 

[Zweischneid]

Well, as with Jordan, I think you cannot really judge Martin till he finished his work.

Tad Williams Sorry, Memory and Thorn for example is one series that I think started off strong but got a bit repetitive and weak in the end.
(For example, Simon tends to get lost in the Underground somewhere, starving and dying with thirst in just about every single book of the series - not good.)

Likewise, Jordans tale would, I believe have been better with a nice and crisp finish a few books ago.
Moorcock tale of Elric also got a bit to confusing for my tastes in the final books.

Martin, I'm getting the feeling, is starting to fall for the same bloating and recycling of old concepts.
The series already gut bumped up by a couple of books a few times and he'll be hard pressed to keep the pace and novelty of the first three books fresh and going in four more of them.

Given all that, I still voted yes. Martin's series has, IMO, the potential to be the best out there since Tolkien.
One has yet to see if he can life up to it though.

 

[edbonny]

Definitely a "no" for me. I read about halfway through the first before the plot, the characters and everything else became terribly transparent to me. I knew what each character was going to do next... I knew what was going to happen... which made reading the rest a predictable chore best avoided. I did enjoy the clean writing style.

Among my gaming friends, I am alone in this. They all absolutely loved the SIF books.

My picks for far better books are the Chronicles of Narnia and the Shanarra books (which I read long ago but still have warm memories of).

- Ed

 

[KnowTheToe]

I've got to track down the Dark Materials trilogy: I understand that's supposed to be very good.

I really enjoyed the first two books in this series. There were some fun characters, lots of interesting facets to the story and many mysteries. I did not like the conclusion of the series, but that often comes down to personal taste. I thought the end was too clean, but that is common in books written for the teen audience.