Song of Ice and Fire question

DanMcS said:


So did you chuck the Dragonlance book across the room after the High Clerist Tower?

1) I wasn't the one who mentioned chucking a book.

2) I haven't read dragonlance since college, are you talking about the cataclysm? if so, you are confusing the tradgedies of characters vs story.

When good guys always triumph, and nothing really bad ever happens to them, /that/ marks the book completely as "fiction". Bad things happen to people. If anything, this should make it easier to believe the story. Your reasoning doesn't correllate with your response.

I doubt you can honestly see no room for stories that take place between "nothing bad ever happens to them" and major characters dying sudden, pointless, futile deaths. If you are just being argumentative I don't have a use for it, and if you aren't there's not much I can say on our difference in literary taste.

My 'response' to the red wedding was to lose all suspension of disbelief for the story, and thus all interest. I was not angry even for a moment at the Frey's or whoever. I was annoyed at Martin for wasting the time I'd invested already and angry at my bf for recommending the books when I had clearly described how little I liked that exact sort of behavior from another writer. I don't know what reasoning you are drawing from what I wrote, but my comments were a simple statement of fact about how my attitude towards the story changed, not a point for argument. The moment I realized what was happening at the wedding, the entire thing stopped being a story that I could lose myself in and became whatever this guy had chosen to write down on paper. Obviously it didn't strike you that way, but I didn't make the comment to tell anyone else how to think.

kahuna burger
 

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Kahuna Burger said:
My 'response' to the red wedding was to lose all suspension of disbelief for the story, and thus all interest. [/B]

I am glad to hear someone say this, and it is the most concrete explanation I have heard for dislike of Martin's work. I can sympathize with your opinion.

That said, I am Martin's love slave, and am in awe of him. The red wedding pushed me very close to the same reaction, but after teetering on the edge I managed to pull back. I did have to reread the next couple of chapters, as my mind was in a fog the first time.

From what I have read, Martin has a fairly detailed outline for the series. I don't think he just decided to jerk the rug out from under our feet, I believe this was in the plans all along.

Just like in an RPG, when the threat of death and failure is very real, eventual success tastes so much sweeter.

On Jaime: I agree with those who have said incest is the least of his evil acts. Keep in mind the setting, the Targaryens regularly practiced incest, and this was generally accepted.
 

Kahuna Burger said:
2) I haven't read dragonlance since college, are you talking about the cataclysm? if so, you are confusing the tradgedies of characters vs story. /
He's talking about the death of Sturm in book 2.
I doubt you can honestly see no room for stories that take place between "nothing bad ever happens to them" and major characters dying sudden, pointless, futile deaths.
But the deaths in Song of Ice & Fire aren't pointless.

You say Martin is "F***"ing up the plot by killing characters, which is a silly statement - the plot is what the author defines it to be, not what the reader wants it to be. And I haven't seen anything in Martin's writing that points to him as a lazy or weak plotter. Just the opposite, in fact.
My 'response' to the red wedding was to lose all suspension of disbelief for the story,
...because characters died?

If you want unchallenging fiction that conforms to a set pattern of heroes, villians, and good triumphing over evil, the Song of Ice & Fire isn't for you. Personally I appreciate a story that has an interesting story with interesting characters, and that has the capacity to shock and surprise me. I personally find that most fantasy fiction that follows your guidelines for "good" fiction lacking in all of the above. No surprises, boring characters, and trite & cliched stories.

Perhaps it could be said that Martin's work is there to appeal to the jaded fantasy reader. Or to those that enjoy reading non-fantasy, non-genre fiction, and aren't as attached to the standard fantasy genre conventions. I fall into both categories, and I love Martin's work with these books. But of course, tastes vary.
 

Spatula said:
If you want unchallenging fiction...

Is there really any need to insult someone because they don't agree with you on a single book or author? I've seen the "This writer is good and if you don't like him it means you're not good enough as a reader/veiwer" thing before, and it was bad enough with the Church Of Joe.

Ice and Fire is not "challenging." Its just a story. Fast paced writing, engaging characters, I think I blew through the last halves of the first two books staying up late nights to finish the last few hundred pages before I went to sleep. Picked up on everything, discussed it with my martin-worshipping bf. Nice world, well put together convergence of events, yadda yadda. I didn't laugh, I didn't cry, it wasn't better than CATS*. It was standard low magic "gritty" fantasy, until he got too hung up on the "and then things go terribly wrong" kick and lost my interest.

I want fiction that I enjoy. As does most everyone. You enjoy Ice and Fire, I did for a while but won't be pursueing it further. I wish I'd realised what kind of author Martin was before I read two and a half books, but I am very greatful I didn't have the agonized waiting before being disapointed...

*on the advice of legal consul I will note that I may have laughed a couple of times during the books and have not in fact seen CATS.

Kahuna burger
 

JoeBlank said:
That said, I am Martin's love slave, and am in awe of him. The red wedding pushed me very close to the same reaction, but after teetering on the edge I managed to pull back. I did have to reread the next couple of chapters, as my mind was in a fog the first time.

Heh... The fact that I read all three books at a wack without the anticipation and fan bonding in between probably makes it easier for me to "give up" on him. That and I had had a fairly recent very similar expereince with another author who I kept at it with, buying the last book in the series after having the others loaned to me and I was... well, punished for my tenacity. :eek:

That and there's so much else to do, read, write, watch, play... I don't feel the need to force myself through something which I should be enjoying. :(

kahuna burger
 

Kahuna Burger, it was not my intention to insult you. LuYangShih wrote:
I prefer a world where there are clearly defined heroes, who fight the good fight, defeat the dragon, rescue the damsel in distress, and at the end of the day nobly triumph over the villians in black, and then ride off into the sunset. And that goes for fiction of any kind.
And you replied with, "my feelings exactly." A story that meets your expectations exactly, even if it does so in an entertaining fashion is... not a challenge. I don't mean challenging as in reading (for example) James Joyce. I mean challenging in terms of what the reader thinks a story (fantasy or otherwise) "should" be.
 

Spatula said:
I don't mean challenging as in reading (for example) James Joyce. I mean challenging in terms of what the reader thinks a story (fantasy or otherwise) "should" be.

well, there's levels of challange to assumptions thats all well and good, and then theres a level where I simply feel I've been sold a false bill of goods.

Here's a weird but maybe helpful analogy. If I go out to a sushi bar and all the sushi is wrapped in shredded cucumber isntead of rice because its the atkin's sushi bar, that would certainly challenge some asumptions about what I was going to be eating. At the same time, it would be an interesting challenge, and a acceptable switch. In the same way, when barely pubescent girl is sold to a barbarian for an alliance, and he turns out to be a more considerate first lover than she would have gotten in a royal marriage, thats a nice challange to assumptions and worth reading. Sushi doesn't have to be about a specific ingredient, novels don't have to play to all archetypes.

Now, if I went to a sushi resturant and was served sushi rolls made entirely out of playdoh and beads because this resturant wanted to challenge my assumptions of what dinner is by presenting a lovely image without nutritional substance, I'd get my money back and be righteuously tweaked off. In the same way, my assumption that a novel will be about a group of characters overcoming challanges rather than, say, being killed in a meaningless, pathetic way by some random guy with no really good reason to do it... thats not open for enjoyable "challange". ;) Dinner is about food, novels are about vicarious enjoyment of others' stories.

IMHO YMMV AFAIC etc, etc....

Kahuna burger
 

Kahuna Burger said:
...and all the sushi is wrapped in shredded cucumber isntead of rice
Not to nitpick, but wouldn't you be eating sashimi wrapped in cucumber? I thought the vinegared sushi rice was what made it sushi:)

As you say, to each his own, but I really don't think its fair to liken Martin to eating Play-Doh... I mean, despite the all the dead once-central characters, there's plenty of good, wholesome, old-fashioned novel-meat in those books. Now the novels of Samuel Beckett {I thinking of the trilogy that begins with "Malone Dies"} are pure grey Play-Doh, flavored with a hint of alkalai... Or Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", that's kinda like a banquet, various fast-food lunches, garbage, wire, bits of jagged glass, a used V2 rocket, and a bunch of used things I can't mention here all mixed up ...

I just find it really weird that people would called Martin "edgy", or describe "Ice and Fire" like its some kind of experimental novel. Its so far from that. It's very conventionally structured. The only deviation from the "norm" is the high body count of {sympathetic?} POV characters. I think it remembles nothing so much as an actual historical account of Europe during the time of the Medicis or the Borgias. The vilest of Martin's characters have nothing on certain Popes.

Which is no reason to like them, I suppose. Its always a fine line between giving an audience exactly what it expects --and I'm not suggesting there's any shame in that. I'm a proud reader of unchallenging books, like the Belgariad-- and challenging their expectations.

Practically every author in every genre has to walk that line. Well, unless they want to make it into the classroom of 300 level college English courses...

Hey, where's that damn weekend whistle-thing? I'm still at work...
 
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Kahuna Burger said:

My 'response' to the red wedding was to lose all suspension of disbelief for the story, and thus all interest. I was not angry even for a moment at the Frey's or whoever. I was annoyed at Martin for wasting the time I'd invested already and angry at my bf for recommending the books when I had clearly described how little I liked that exact sort of behavior from another writer. I don't know what reasoning you are drawing from what I wrote, but my comments were a simple statement of fact about how my attitude towards the story changed, not a point for argument. The moment I realized what was happening at the wedding, the entire thing stopped being a story that I could lose myself in and became whatever this guy had chosen to write down on paper. Obviously it didn't strike you that way, but I didn't make the comment to tell anyone else how to think.

kahuna burger [/B]

A tangent: I always liked Battletech novels, but Stackpole's "good guy/badguy" writing got tiresome. But the real interest killer was a character called Katherine Steiner-Davion. No matter what occured, she got away with it. No matter how STUPID the plot's she hatched, she kept winning.

I wasn't rooting for a villains defeat. I was hoping the plotline went away as tedious and irritating.

So, back to Martin:
I read the first book, then bought the other two (a couple months ago) so read them all at once.

After a while, I really just skipped over most of the stuff in the Catelyn chapters. They didn't endear the character to me, they irritated me on a level of "why do thse stupid things keep happening in her chapters".

It didn't help that they chose to raise her.

The Frey's betrayel just didn't feel like good plot to me. It was just blah.

I REALLY wanted the wolf to survive. The Red Wedding could have been better had we later heard the Frey's were afraid of leaving because a great wolf was stalking them.

I liked Arya. She's the only character I liked. (by the end)

A lot of the stuff in the novels started to feel like filler. I don't really want to read the next novel, since I'd much rather have Arya's training and Dany's ruling told in flashback. I fear it will be tedious.

Overall, I liked the books, and they served their purpose. They were entertainment during reading. I'm just not sure I'll bother with the rest.

(least of all because I hate waiting years between books.)
 

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