posted
I read this book because I was curious about GRRM's pre-Song of Fire and Ice writing. The first few chapters were a blast--think Aliens, mixed in with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. But then it got a little odd. Entertaining, certainly, but at times didactic, and ultimately kind of cold and removed feeling.
The curious thing is his style here is nothing like SFI. The predominant style I've come to associate him with, that is, action, and then a beat of internal dialogue, makes no appearance here. This is written somewhere between omniscient and third person limited, while SFI is very much 3PL. He does utilize multiple POVs, though, and shows no restraint in killing people off (albeit less brutally). He even has a character named Jaime.
Anyway, i'm not sure hwat inferences I can make about how he's grown as a writer (Tuf Voyaging was written some 10 years prior to A Game of Thrones), but I will say Game of Thrones is much more sophisticated and adept.
posted
Well, it's a bunch of novelettes strung together to make a patch-up novel. Most of them were first published in Analog, I believe. Probably the shifts in viewpoint come from that---Tuf, as I recall, was rarely the POV character.
There's a new hardcover short story collection just out, collecting a lot of George Railroad Martin's older stuff, including, I think, most of his award-winning SF work. I'll recommend that, since I've read most of it already. But I forget the title, even though I bought a copy two weeks ago.
I found Martin's work enjoyable, but, as time went by, it became more and more down, a really bitter edge. Then he went off to Hollywood for awhile, then he came back with "Song of Fire and Ice." I was waiting for the series to be complete before I even attempted to read it. (But I said the same of Harry Potter, and still haven't.)
posted
Ah, that explains it then (that they chapters are collected shorts). Well, I'd say SFI is pretty down and bitter, sometimes bleak. It's well written but I found I don't get the enjoyment i seek. I gave up after the fourth book. Maybe I'll try again when he finishes the whole series (like you, I haven't read HP--at least, not all of them).
posted
I dug the collection I mentioned above out of my pile. It's called Dreamsongs, Volume I, and, apparently, it's a reprint of a volume that came out from a small press in 2003. If you didn't get that volume, go for this one.
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posted
Dreamsongs, Volume II turned up on a prowl through another bookstore yesterday. I don't know if they were released together and I just missed seeing it, or one book right after another and I was seeing it for the first time along with everybody else. Either way, they're both good reads with a lot of my old favorites contained within. Buy both, if you can scrape up the money.
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