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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 123187" data-attributes="member: 3887">Hi. I'm new here. So......people with more knowledge than me have already chimed in on the subject of history. And I'm not sure I'm prepared to deliver a meditation on a specific kind of insular, comfort based moral absolutism that you find in the alignment rules in D&D {and which seems to underlie Son_Of_Thunders taste in book --no offense meant, really}But I will talk about the striking difference between 'The Song of Ice and Fire' and far too many of the other fantasy series I've read. Its dramatic. Not the false drama of a million bloodthirsty orcs laying seige to Castle Greyshmuck in which the heroes chances of survival are roughly 1 in 1. Or the false conflict between Lords of Light and Darkness that sound like a fusion between New Age Zoroastrianism and a fighting game where one character always loses no matter who plays him...Martin's books have conflict. Big, small, personal, historical. He lays these out clearly and efficiently --odd word to employ for a unfinished multithousand page epic, but fitting. The stories move. So much of fantasy have conflicts that are as intriguing as watching a ball roll down an incline... Martin arise out of well-crafted characters and a dense, beautiful ur-history.His themes are family, loyalty, ambition, love --with a canvas like that is it any wonder things get messy. These have been staples of literature since Antigone, through Shakespeare and Tolstoy, etc. By muddying and humanizing these fantasy archytepes he increases the sense of wonder in his world. We get not only dragons, but points of grace like Davos's story of loyalty to grim, flawed Stannis, who elevated and maimed him. Or just about every scene with Tyrion....Son_Of_Thunder implied that Martin's take on epic fantasy removed the wonder. If that true, there's little wonder in literature, period. Fantasy authors could do worse than looking into 'The Song of Ice And Fire'. As could a lot of DM's...Peace out</blockquote>

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