Dark Jezter
First Post
frandelgearslip said:
Quoted for truth.
Tell me about Terry`s Goodkind books.
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Quoted for truth.
Desdichado
Hero
I'm not really a Martin fan either, but I don't believe that at all. Sure, Martin does seem have a lot more sex (I only read his first book though--so what do I know) but 1) it wasn't gratuitious, and 2) it didn't involve a character that was a very transparent author-insert character getting his rocks off on writing them.frandelgearslip said:
Dark Jezter
First Post
Joshua Dyal said:
Having read both the complete Sword of Truth and A Song of Ice & Fire series, I am not exaggerating when I say that George R. R. Martin packs more gratuitious sex in a single book than Terry Goodkind has in his entire series,
I mean, if repeated graphic sex scenes between a 13-year-old girl and a Genghis Khan-like barbarian warlord isn't gratuitious, I honestly have no idea what is.
Pants
First Post
Erm, well not to start THAT debate again, but it depends on what you consider gratuitous.Dark Jezter said:
Martin has more sex, but Goodkind has more gratuitous sex, that's how I see it. That doesn't mean there weren't a few spots in the books where I thought Martin could've toned it down.
Anyways, even ignoring the sex, Martin writes better, his characters are better, his plots better, everything is better. Most of Goodkind's characters are 1 dimensional, poorly thought out, with nebulous ambitions that usually exist not to add any depth, but to further a tissue-paper thin plot.
Also, add in the fact that 'Goodkind's' world seems to change at the whim of the author. With every new book, some new place is added that just messes with continuity.
Basically, Goodkind is Badkind.
Dark Jezter
First Post
Pants said:
See, I can't even really agree with that sentiment either. Goodkind does have sex scenes in his book, but most of them happen "off camera", and even the ones that are described go into far less detail than Martin uses (in fact, I don't think that any one of the last 2 or 3 Sword of Truth books have had any sex scenes that were actually described). The only truly explicit sex scene I can recall from Goodkind's works was near the end of the fourth book, Temple of the Winds.
Even the S&Mish Mord-Sith torture scenes from the first book mostly focus on the torture with only a small amount of any sexual description.
My experience is that Martin's writings contain far more sex scenes both in quantity as well as level of gratuity.
Particle_Man
Explorer
I think the difference is that Martin sex scenes have correlations in historical reality. That is, things like them really happened on Earth. There really WERE young royal brides (too young, by modern standards). There really WERE rapes. There really WAS incest (even deliberate royal incest, such as with the the Egyptians). Martin is writing a historical novel with a light dash of magic (although the "dash" turns into more than that, as the novels progress). Thus the Martin characters are believable. Effectively, we are reading about events with historical correlates, and reading about them through the eyes of viewpoint characters.
Goodkind sex/torture scenes have no historical correlates. No man, in the history of Earth, has ever been involuntarily tortured by the leader of a crack team of female torturer/warrior/assassins.
And certainly no man has been so tortured during sex AND managed to later become the absolute leader of these female torturer/warrior/assassins. The closest correlate is the Amazons (and they never tortured anyone, as far as I can remember), and modern S&M scenes (which themselves are based on sexual fantasies, not historical realities) and maybe schoolboys being hit with rulers by nuns. Goodkind's writing is just Goodkind wanking himself through his pen.
Goodkind sex/torture scenes have no historical correlates. No man, in the history of Earth, has ever been involuntarily tortured by the leader of a crack team of female torturer/warrior/assassins.
And certainly no man has been so tortured during sex AND managed to later become the absolute leader of these female torturer/warrior/assassins. The closest correlate is the Amazons (and they never tortured anyone, as far as I can remember), and modern S&M scenes (which themselves are based on sexual fantasies, not historical realities) and maybe schoolboys being hit with rulers by nuns. Goodkind's writing is just Goodkind wanking himself through his pen.
Desdichado
Hero
Farganger said:Good to know.
I haven't read any Goodkind, but I object to fantasy novels that depict historically unprecedented sex scenes as a matter of principle.
Moving aside from the historical precedent, which may or may not have any utility on the judging of a fantasy novel that takes place in a fantasy world...Martin includes his sex scenes to emphasize the grimness and grittiness of the setting, and the dark and twisted nature of the characters and societies that allow them. These scenes really aren't erotic at all, nor are they meant to be.
Goodkind, on the other hand, always comes (no pun intended) across as masturbatory sexual fantasies that the author is indulging in. It's like he used his fantasy novels as an excuse to dust off all his rejected letters to Penthouse and integrate them into the narrative.
Trying to make objective arguments about something as subjective as a book is always a pain. That said, I'm in with J-Z-Jazzy-Dyal on this one. Martin had sex, sometimes graphic. Sometimes it was there to shock, or sometimes it was there to titillate, and almost always it was there to advance the characters involved. Goodkind has a whole lot of masturbatory torture.
I've only read Goodkind's first book, and only finished it because I had a massive fever and couldn't leave the house and had nothing else to read. It was, I thought, insultingly bad in some places, and very much *not* my kind of book. To be more specific:
Goodkind seems to be a writer very much into ideas. As ideas come quickly and easily to me, I am generally unimpressed by ideas alone. I need significantly more than just ideas to enjoy something.
His ideas are supported by characters who didn't work for me -- they felt one-dimensional and bland, and every once in awhile he'd try to inject some life into them by having them declare that they weren't usually so one-dimensional and bland ("It seems like I've done nothing but cry these past few days. I've always (not in this book) been so strong..."). So I didn't get character.
His images and setting were fantasy cliche without any depth drawn in. I recall being surprised when a given monster turned out to have arms, because he'd described it so badly that I'd been thinking "Wyvern" when he was trying to write "Ogre". As for his setting, I felt most of the time like Goodkind just wrote "castle" and left us to fill in the blanks. I never got a real sense of place. Mind you, this didn't bother me hugely, because I don't really get into settings... but if even I noticed it, that's bad.
His plot was inane. Foolish problem complicated by foolish decisions by the main characters, and a foolish result.
Needless to say, I didn't go for his sequels, so if he addressed some of those problems later, his other books could be decent.
I've only read Goodkind's first book, and only finished it because I had a massive fever and couldn't leave the house and had nothing else to read. It was, I thought, insultingly bad in some places, and very much *not* my kind of book. To be more specific:
Goodkind seems to be a writer very much into ideas. As ideas come quickly and easily to me, I am generally unimpressed by ideas alone. I need significantly more than just ideas to enjoy something.
His ideas are supported by characters who didn't work for me -- they felt one-dimensional and bland, and every once in awhile he'd try to inject some life into them by having them declare that they weren't usually so one-dimensional and bland ("It seems like I've done nothing but cry these past few days. I've always (not in this book) been so strong..."). So I didn't get character.
His images and setting were fantasy cliche without any depth drawn in. I recall being surprised when a given monster turned out to have arms, because he'd described it so badly that I'd been thinking "Wyvern" when he was trying to write "Ogre". As for his setting, I felt most of the time like Goodkind just wrote "castle" and left us to fill in the blanks. I never got a real sense of place. Mind you, this didn't bother me hugely, because I don't really get into settings... but if even I noticed it, that's bad.
His plot was inane. Foolish problem complicated by foolish decisions by the main characters, and a foolish result.
Needless to say, I didn't go for his sequels, so if he addressed some of those problems later, his other books could be decent.
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