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

i'd be more impressed maybe if i felt the world building was really striking and original but it's more like he took a lot of classic tropes (the hardened sea-farers, the woodsy tough northerners, the exotic orientals, the decadent capital city inhabitants) and just smash them together. I've read all the DnD sourcebooks, I'm not that curious about the lore + legends of the ranger clan in the north.

Again, I don't want to sound really harsh. There are a lot of enjoyable things about the book and I think when GRRM is writing plot/dialogue it's very strong. It's just... thousands of pages long. That's a huge investment of time and energy and I'm not sure the payback has been sufficient yet. Maybe I'll try the third book tho and see how it goes. I may eventually just wiki every character and find out what ends up happening that way.

hmmm i dont particularly want to argue into liking the books but i think if youre going to dismiss the pleasure in discovering the mechanics of how the fantasy world works than you maybe just arent going to like epic fantasy much?

i mean max is right a big part of what book 2 is doing (and book 4 is concerned with this to an extent as well) is filling in the black spaces on the map & trying to give the reader a better sense of what this world is like, what the rules are. ill agree that martin's not the greatest or most interesting world-builder but hes got some interesting things going on & its still an important part of the genre, i guess?

i dont know that you want the information for some kind of pure pleasure in world-building so much as learning more about the specific political/power dynamic in westeros, and speculating about, or glimpsing, how it might affect the storyline otherwise.

i mean this is not "the way" to enjoy GRRM, just a suggestion to help you get thru the jon snow storylines!

i dunno, im trying to put myself in your shoes and then argue otherwise, cause i really dngaf that the lannisters still held kings landing or whatever. and i never really got the sense that the 'status quo' was the same! i mean, it felt like a ton had happened. but i read books 2 and 3 right in a row and confuse them sometimes so maybe i just dont remember

like generally in modern epic fantasy 'the world' is just as important a character as any of the actual cast, its not really considered a 'waste' to spend a bunch of pages furthering the readers understanding of that character obv lots of ppl arent that interested in this level thats ok (xp)

but i think if youre going to dismiss the pleasure in discovering the mechanics of how the fantasy world works than you maybe just arent going to like epic fantasy much?

you're not wrong. i delayed reading these books for years bc i had no interest in fantasy novels (despite lots of friends pushing them on me) and only picked them back up bc of the show. fantasy on tv = excellent. in books not so much. maybe i shouldn't be surprised that my prior hesitations were well-founded.

id argue anyway that whats interesting w/r/t to GRRM's world-building isnt the... specific people, or even the specific institutions, or whatever. its the way those people and institutions interact, i guess? martin is certainly not a historian or political science guy but he has, broadly, a good sense of politics "works" in a world like westeros. (this is open to debate, obviously, but let's just say this is true relative to tolkein.) the war of the 5 kings is interesting not because the 5 kings themselves have boss powers or interesting backstories but because it feels kind of... "real." messy and political and cruel and sad. and one way of looking at bk2 and the semi-unchanging status quo (i mean its kind of a HUGE deal that the martells showed up and pledged fealty to joffrey!) is that, like, thats how it works, sometimes!

id say do yourself a favor and read the 3rd book because there are at least 2 really major "game-changers" as they say

see, you say that it's a huge deal that the martells showed up and pledged fealty and i google them bc i can't remember who they are or why they were important.

heh

we can talk about this all night and its going to end with me shouting at you red-faced "YOU'RE JUST READING THEM WRONG" and then storming out

fair enough -- i'm not really looking to debate it. i was just curious about soliciting some other ppl's experiences to compare/contrast.

oh yea sure. like i said, my advice to you is to just read the 3rd one, its what like 10 hours of your life? and then at least youll have more evidence when you want to argue with people about it. i bet youll hate the 4th one but its shorter than the other 3

yeah i guess what i sd upthread about 3 still stands. it will probably be a more rewarding xp at least finishing that one and then giving up than leaving things here (xp: i guess what max sd).

id argue anyway that whats interesting w/r/t to GRRM's world-building isnt the... specific people, or even the specific institutions, or whatever. its the way those people and institutions interact, i guess?

yeah he obviously brings a lot of care and attention to detail when hes on the political maneuvering stuff & hes got a creates a good sense of this vast interplay btw all the different noble houses & other institutions that are part of the 'game' so im always disappointed that he doesnt seem to bother with them same depth for most of the other parts of his world. i mean i dont need to know the byzantine political history of asshai by the shadow but in many other fantasy epics youd get the sense the author does.

(i mean its kind of a HUGE deal that the martells showed up and pledged fealty to joffrey!) is that, like, thats how it works, sometimes!

― ☂ (max), Monday, June 27, 2011 1:49 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh, you mean the tyrells! helping mordy's case here possibly

i will say that i thought book 1 was the best-written book in terms of the story it told from beginning to end - its just a tight piece of work. and when i was in mordy's place (finishing book 2, getting into book 3) i sorta had this feeling like 'i'm digging this, i'm invested in the world, but i dont think the series is ever gonna reach the height of book 1 again' - but then shit got real again and it reinvigorated how i was feeling about the series

whoops lol

shouldve just stuck w/ "the reach"

i wonder if i avoided the ennui by just buying books 2/3/4 at one time and jumping rite into book 3 after book two. its a lil easier to stomach treading water if youve got actual plot coming up right away--i feel like in retrospect book 4 will seem less annoying when paired w/ dance into dragons

*knocks wood* *crosses fingers*

mordy somewhat otm, i dunno. it may help you to learn that in the original plan for the series (when it was a 2,400 page fuckin' trilogy) the first novel covered all of book one and half of book two, which goes a long way towards explaining why the plotting and pacing starts to go increasingly awry -- i feel like a lot of all the other books has the terrible feeling of "i have major unresolved structural issues preventing me from getting to the next bullet point, but i guess i can spin out another 200 pages on the mud vikings or the spainishmen or whatever"

i feel like everything we 'learn' about how the 'world' of westeros 'works' is fairly arbitrary -- it's my contention that he decided his medieval england analogue was actually the size of south america somewhere between books one and two --

martin is certainly not a historian or political science guy but he has, broadly, a good sense of politics "works" in a world like westeros. (this is open to debate, obviously, but let's just say this is true relative to tolkien.) the war of the 5 kings is interesting not because the 5 kings themselves have boss powers or interesting backstories but because it feels kind of... "real." messy and political and cruel and sad

see this is kind of a weird thing because tolkien is so emphatically not concerned with how politics works? i don't know. but there is basically a sign posted outside lotr saying THIS WAY FAIRYLAND, SUSPEND DISBELIEF ABOUT LOGISTICS PLEASE; a lot of fantasy fiction works this way; & yeah to anyone who says tolkien is bad because the politics don't work i reserve the right to go "YOU'RE JUST READING THEM WRONG" myself, not that i even like tolkien

anyway i think the reason it all feels totally arbitrary to me is that the war-of-the-roses stuff feels messy and real &c. until i stop and think about how this is meant to be an entire continent it's happening on -- like, you can't just scale up and expect it to work! medieval england was already nowhere near as monocultural as martin makes westeros. this is why i'm harping on the food thing upthread -- like he's just slapped on a 'spanish' texture pack.

also just .. the war of the roses is the least interesting period of history anywhere in the world ever

im not saying tolkein is bad because of politics!!

im anticipating criticisms (like yours) that grrm doesnt _actually_ get politics (which i think is true) by saying that were talking in a relative way here

and anyway youre obviously right martin isnt nearly the historian/sociologist/political scientist he or his most fervent fans would like him to be. i tend to be a little more annoyed at his insistence that history is shaped by the decisive actions of a handful of nobles and that dynasties are won and lost in a single instant than by his cruddy geo-cultural sense

yeah i think that would probably annoy me more too, except i have an incredibly pedantic mindset

i might stop complaining about the olives and start complaining about the ravens instead

i've read about 3.75 books and it is pretty clear to me that GRRM is not my kind of nerd? in that what gets GRRM off is court intrigue and genealogy and the word "ser" (see it's not england it has an E) whereas i am more of a grain prices guy. that aside though he writes good !!!!! moments (book 3 has The Big One) and if his characters aren't "complex" in the shakespearian sense they do refuse to be placed firmly in a column. or at least they die unexpectedly. and in a few cases (most of them girls, actually -- dany, sansa -- but also samwell and maybe littlefinger) i really dig the arcs, partly because of how slow and painful they are, and how many times they refuse to satisfy traditional fantasy-epic expectations; i love for example how samwell goes on a big globetrotting adventure without actually Finding His Courage.

the prose is bad but it's pulp fantasy. much worse exists. for what it's worth mordy i do remember 2 being the boring one.

i guess what i mean re: "refuse to satisfy" is that all the characters start as cliches (weary noble warrior! restless tomboy! bratty minor princess! fat coward! bitch!) but the books make a point of frustrating their ideas of themselves.

yeah, i think that's probably the series biggest strength. Obviously grrm hasn't performed a full "deconstruction" of the genre (whatever that would entail) but he subverts it in ways that make the series 1m times more enjoyable.

so i'm enjoying the third book much more than the second. no complaints really about any of the major arcs/storylines except -- holy shit the Arya stuff is boring. i never thought her plot would become my least favorite but it definitely drags the most (well, Bran too). i don't know why there's all this focus on the super boring tedious Stark kids (Robb is okay, and Jon, and Sansa is a cipher but in interesting locations/interacting with interesting characters but the little ones...)

arya rules fuiud.

who are you

yeah arya chapters in that book best stuff among all four. the names list, etc

I'm just boggling that someone could be more interested in Sansa than either Arya or Bran

Bran is the most boring throughout, let's be fair. Nothing happens to him except for his emoing.

that's not really true...?

The Bran parts of book II are esp. great. Admit that his parts in the book III are not my favorites however.

HEY I GOT ALL MY BOOKS BACK, PREPARING FOR MASSIVE RE-READ OF 3/4!

i think grrm's biggest f-u moment is the bran/jon passing each other in the north bit

i just finished rereading 3 today, and i'm gonna try to read 4 by tuesday

i think grrm's biggest f-u moment is the bran/jon passing each other in the north bit

YES

Arya is probably my favorite character in the whole series.

HODOR is mine

#teampodrick

Tyrion 4 Life

Started a thread for the new book: Anticipating GRRM's A Dance With Dragons

maybe Arya gets better but so far it's just been "arya trying to escape / arya gets captured" beat played over and over again.

have you been keeping a "wench" tally

Finished Feast of Crows!

Really came to hate the Cersei chapters, partly for GRRM's less than sterling prose, partly for how thinly he fleshes out her character. Agree w/ Princess TamTam (Dornish?) upthread about her deal being paranoia instead of outright stupidity, but the way that he writes marked direct speech (i.e. what I allude to here) gets incredibly tiresome in Cersei's chapters -- mostly because GRRM seems more invested in having us look down on her all inna "lol @ her smug butt" way rather than focus on giving her more dimensionality (she's been WAY more interesting in the tv show). That said, very very happy where she ends up in the book, so clearly GRRM is doing something right.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARYA~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ;_; I am so ready to have her become a blind assassin though, which I no doubt will be able to read about in 2017.

I have to say some of the TWISTS, even in book 3, are telegraphed, even the Red Wedding, which for narrative-structural reasons (the way the chapters were set up) and plot reasons (why would Frey marry off what's her name to you know who especially when HE'S in a better bargaining position?) I saw coming. But then heheh I was all o_OO_o in the epilogue.

Also, a minor I've been wondering about the second book: why do Tyrion's mountain men hang with him in such an obedient way? These guys were on the verge of chopping off his manhood and feeding it to the goats in book 1, then in book 2 they're his unquestioning bodyguards. Were the splendors of King's Landing so, uh, splendid that they awed them into submission?

Finally: 3 > 1 > 2 > 4.

PS I figured that by the time I was going to finish book 4 that book 5 would be out in paperback, but clearly I'm going to have to splurge on the hardcover now.

yeah the way that for a few hundred pages people are going "hey remember the LAWS of HOSPITALITY which are REAL IMPORTANT which no one EVER EVER breaks" is kind of ..... nnnghh

like i'm not sure if this is inept foreshadowing or even more inept dramatic irony

oh well, see you on the book five thread