Anticipating "A Feast For Crows" by George R. R. Martin (Nov. 9)

No way!

WHAT

omg

laura miller's (subscription-only) 'new yorker' article was awesome

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_miller

and this salon thing

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/game_of_thrones/index.html?story=/ent/tv/feature/2011/04/09/game_of_thrones_primer

makes the whole hbo series sound promising

maybe 'a dance of dragons' or whatever really will come out this summer

i understand it's now swelled to seven as feast for crows is only really half a book. whilst it centres on kings landing, events happening simultaneously elsewhere are left for the next one. which hopefully will not take another 5 years.

― mason_storm, Monday, October 31, 2005 7:13 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

haha argh

i just started feast of crows. little bit of a letdown after the nuts-exploding awesomeness of storm of swords, but i'm sure i'll get into it.

the new yorker article is good. the follow-up interview with laura miller is interesting too, where she talks about the differences between audiences of fantasy & lit fic. she's probably right when she says that a lot of contemporary lit fic writers don't have the skillset for this kind of serial storytelling

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/04/11/110411on_audio_miller

*feast for crows

"little bit of a letdown after the nuts-exploding awesomeness of storm of swords"

It's still a little bit of a let down for me all of these years later.

Not stopping me from being super excited for the new one though.

The let down is mostly just that a lot of the interesting threads/characters are even addressed in Feast. I didn't really have a problem with anything in the book itself.

NYer article was depressing for me. What the fuck is wrong with Fan ppl. Are they still human? As I wrote on the NYer thread already:

"It's rly rly weird psychologically and the GRRM profile is far from the first time I have noticed it; basically, Fans with a capital F have this weird seething RAGE toward the creators of the narratives they want. Like this impotent rage. The creator(s) don't even have to be late on delivery of new work like GRRM has been, the Fans just are constantly teetering between deification and dehumanization of those who CONTROL "their" characters. There DOES need to be a new book abt [this neurosis] because the internet has exacerbated it severely"

Yeah, that's exactly it - the storylines I'm most interested in seeing explored aren't even in the book. I kinda knew that ahead of time though.

I am pretty angry at GRRM for not getting around to finish this series. I still suspect he's going to die before concluding it.

i'm sympathetic towards the author in this case but I can understand fan disgruntlement if I imagine myself following his blog posts for 6 years waiting for this supposedly nearly-finished half novel to come out - all these little things about selling water-damaged calendars and making the convention circuit and writing about the nfl draft must seem like borderline insults to some people

There's probably an element of "*I* have to go to work every day, why isn't *he* accountable for his productivity?" in there somewhere.

I do like that George R R Martin basically raged about L O S T in that New Yorker thing.

Also maybe that he "got famous" on the wave of fans he has hooked with his great story, and now that he gets to travel and be interviewed and be propped up by models at sci-fi conventions and have TV shows made about his work, he's betraying the readers who made him by delaying.

I'm not thrilled about the wait myself.

xxxpost Yeah and Cuse fired back at him on Twitter. Sorry cowboy, you are gonna be an object lesson for decades to come, now stfu.

Yeah but have you guys actually read the article and the level of venom involved? I've been waiting with bated breath for this fucking thing just like everybody else but this is like mentally ill behavior...

"Yeah but have you guys actually read the article and the level of venom involved?"

No I haven't, but have there been actual attacks on him? Or is these just message board threats?

yeah i read it. most of that mentally ill behavior just sounds like people running websites & forums with snarky names?

this is my fav btw:

http://isadancewithdragonsoutyet.com/

well it's kind of the same idol-hatred thing that happens with fans of a lot of authors, TV runners, movie directors etc. It's not that exceptional but this phenom always ooks me out. Like, there is some kind of snake in the brain which unfurls when someone goes from being a fan to a Fan.

is he a Giants or Jets fan? can't remember now

x-post LOL!

Wait - which article are you all talking about - The NYer one?

LOL was at the isadancewithdragonsoutyet.com btw

"is he a Giants or Jets fan? can't remember now"

Both.

christ

lol

he could chill out with that stupid wildcats shit he does

Yeah I think the shitty Wild Card's series is the worst thing about Martin.

Oh, I never took him seriously until Game Of Thrones came out. DNW wildcards.

First Wildcards book is decent. Some good writers helped him jumpstart it.

I will stand behind the original Wild Cards anthology but it did go downhill pretty quickly.

Dude whose powers were fueled by sex was hilarious tho

Fortunato! The kundalini pimp. I always liked Sleeper.

Sleeper was the Zelazny character, right? That first story was good (a little weird that the BIG thing didn't get explored better in it, but a decent enough concept.)

i haven't even read the wildcards stuff i just hate reading about it when i'm waiting for the next real book

Haha yes.

I have read the first couple of Wild Cards books and I hate reading about them period.

Shared-world anthologies, I just can't. I never ever them.

Liked the first couple of Sanctuary books and Medea: Harlan's World but that's about it.

Seems like the difference between Martin and, say, Robert Jordan is that Jordan seems to have just kept on doing his thing at his preferred pace where Martin is apparently living out a ComicCon geek fantasy.

The major difference is that Jordan sucked.

Hahaha.

the wheel of time is so much better than martin's series its not even worth arguing over

the new yorker article was p lol tho, tbh its hard to feel all that sorry for martin idk

I agree it's better than Wild Cards.

well i guess i do think its worth getting into: jordan wasnt a great writer & his books are often a lot less outright exciting than martin's but over the course of their respective series its p easy to see how much better a plotter & worldbuilder jordan is, & how much more care & considertation he puts into his story. one of the big knocks on jordan is how slow & repetitive his books get but hes never anything less than purposeful whereas martin often feels to be just meandering w/o purpose or design. with jordan its possible to see where all the puzzle pieces fit w/ martin theres just a lot of fat, partic daenyrs & bran.

plus jordan's characters are better developed & more interesting & more dynamic most of the characters in a song of ice & fire are just a couple of ideas lazily glued together. i like both series ok & they both have p major flaws but jordan is really the only one you could say achieved something 'great'