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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bramadan" data-source="post: 124658" data-attributes="member: 1064">Martin's books are by no means "feel-good fantasy" which many people have gotten acustomed to. They break the moulds of the genre and therefore cause consternation in those who buy the genre books in the expectation that those moulds will be obbeyed. As far as I am concerned, I have lost the taste for my childhood-love: fantasy/sf fiction after reading too many bland moralistic books. Moral ambiguity of SoIaF was the first fantasy I truly enjoyed in at least five years. It brings to mind such great (and moraly ambigous) works as Dune, Foundation, Amber, Gateway and, despite being low fantasy, Silmarilion (which for the record I always liked better then the "Rings"). As a matter of fact, the moral absolutism in fantasy is to a large extent a product of the rigid DnD allignment system (and incredible influence of Weiss-Hickman with their not-even-hidden religious agenda). It was much less accepted even twenty years agothen it is now and even Tolkien complained about it in the works of his friend and colegue Lewis.For those who think that descriptions of sex and violence in Martin's books are gratiutous I refer you to check out almost any literature outside the sanitized genre-bestseller type. For example check out James Joyce (in his more understandable bits), Umberto Eco (whose "Foucault's Pendulum" and "Name of the Rose" I much recomend to almost everyone), Edgar Allan Po, Alexandar Dumas, even such God fearing authors as Milton and Dante, not to even mention such works of classic mythology as Mabinognion, Nibelungienlied, various greek myths and the Bible.Suggesting that the well written death scene can be replaced with "and then he died" is an insult to the 5000 years of narative civilization.</blockquote>

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