posted
I feel like I read the books due to the good writing rather than the story. The story itself kind of bored me. Every time I saw a character, I knew they'd die soon, so I stopped caring. Then by the fourth book, probably 80% of the "main" characters had died and it had basically reset to make the secondary characters the new main characters. I bet most of them die too.
The plot seems to be the main aspect of a Song of Ice and Fire, and he uses characters to move it along and throw them away. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does make me not care about them. This is probably why so many people love Arya. She isn't a whiny baby, and she is alive.
Without the loss of all the other characters, she might not have stood out so much.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
Thank you, RobED, for helping me better understand why I couldn't bring myself to keep reading.
If I can't make myself care about the characters, very few books, no matter how well written, will keep me going (unless I have to read them because they are review copies or some other such external constraint).
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Forgive me for being blunt: the fact that characters aren't immune to danger is the one thing I like about ASOIAF. In majority of books and movies, the protagonist and the important characters have a force field around them that bounces all the danger harmlessly away from them. That's not what real life is like. ASOIAF gave me what few other books could: immersion. The chance of characters dying makes me care that much more about them. People we love, die. People we hate, die. That's life.
Posts: 1271 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
It is life, but not everyone reads fiction to get a large dose of reality.
Like I said, the world and the story is great, and you can immerse yourself in it, but you can't immerse yourself in the characters the same way, because they die (or become zombies).
ASOIAF is a good rendition of Britain in the middle ages (with zombies and dragons), but for people who love plot, setting, and characters, there is a large hole. Yes, you might love the characters more because they die, and that is real, but those characters are gone, and even if you love them, you don't get to hear more about them.
Other people love to see a character do things. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone say, "I didn't really like Rob Stark, but then he died and I realized how awesome he was for dying.
People like different things in books, and I don't think there's anything wrong with people not liking ASOIAF because it lacks character growth (because they all die before they can really grow). I also don't think there's anything wrong with people liking it for the very same reason, and I don't think it's anything to do with being blunt.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Dec 2011
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As to why you might hate him for it. If I read it right the chapter isn't going up 'till June. That is a long time to wait if you like him.
It's good because it is evidently a lot earlier than his pervious books. Evidently(again) he is a slow writer.
I was going to say that some around here like his writing for various reasons but it looks like that has been dealt with already. Personally I believe I would go with what RobEd said so I haven't read any of this series. I have read a couple of his short stories that seem to treat the MC alright. But as stated already there are those who love to read his stuff so we discuss it. And he does seem to know his way around the written word so we might learn something too.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
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I'm not sure I made it clear, but I did read all the books in the series (until the recent one, I'm waiting for paperback). I just had a strange time of it, where I wasn't enjoying it, but I couldn't put it down either.
I do love Arya though. She is awesome. Also her superman teachers.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Dec 2011
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quote:because ASOIAF lacks character growth (because they all die before they can really grow)
OK, that's just plain silly. Every single character in ASOIAF goes through some development. Even the mute executioner gets his moment.
Posts: 1271 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Seven-year-olds have grown up, but not as much as a twenty-year-old. Of course there is some progression, but not a lot. Yes, a few get an aha! moment or two before they die, but there is no long character progression that people can follow from beginning to end that some readers crave.
There are exceptions, such as Arya, Dragon girl, and to some extent Jon Snow, but their parts are so few and far between, that it isn't really a continuum. Even so, there is a reason that the people who live are generally the "favorite" characters in the books.
I don't really understand why you're being so defensive. There is nothing wrong with his books. There are a lot of people who have issues with his series, and this is one of the major issues. No one likes everything, and he went out of his way to do something different. Clearly he is successful and a lot of people have read them, but not everyone has to necessarily like what he's done.
Posts: 24 | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
I personally see a book, especially fantasy, as being about someone. Maybe other people can accept a book, or a series, where the plot is the thing. But to me the story should be about someone. Or some group. Hamlet is about Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet is about R&J. Harry Potter is about HP and his friends.
The problem to some extent with Martin's series, from what I have seen is that it's not about anyone in particular. It's about a place and a nifty premise. This is true to some extent in the Wheel of Time as well. I quit reading the WoT series several books ago out of sheer boredom. I stopped giving a care about that world or anyone in it.
What was it Twain wrote when he was lambasting Fenimore Cooper? Something about the reader was supposed to love the good people and hate the bad ones. But the readers of the book he was criticizing hated the good people, was indifferent toward the bad ones, and wished they would all get drowned together.
I won't say that I go quite that far. But if I don't have the feeling that this is (fill in the blank)'s story I see no reason to care about it.
As far as death and survival, that's different. I thinks it's perfectly acceptable to kill off the main character, if you have a good reason. Killing off a bunch of people just because you can, to me, is just as disagreeable to read as a book where the hero is invulnerable.
One thing that you seldom see, and I wish you did see more of, is a realistic portrayal of what the details of life are like. You wouldn't have to make so much of a deal out of suffering and torture, if you could give the reader a realistic idea of what daily survival is like under primitive conditions.
Things like, try to make the reader see, feel, smell (whew), taste what it's like to walk across a barren area with limited water and no food for three days in high summer. Who needs enemies? Anybody ever gone camping without a dependable supply of clean water nearby? Now picture trying it for a month. Athlete's foot and jock itch anyone?
Sitting in front of a fireplace on a snowy evening is romantic, ain't it? Unless that is your only source of heat, and you have to cut the tree with an ax, section it with a hand saw, and split it with a maul. Suddenly the prospect becomes less romantic, real fast. Especially since fireplaces are the single least effective source of heat ever devised. Want to freeze to death while laying next to a roaring fire? Try to heat with a fireplace during a real cold spell.
You don't need much realism to make a story's character suffer more than enough.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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Realism is for the birds, at least sometimes...I read a review of a book (haven't seen the book itself) which brought up the argument that at lot of historical writing about the Civil War is nonsense, 'cause most of the historians have never fired off a period-piece gun or cannon or even been in the army, and that the massive casualties in Civil War battles were not the result of advances in firepower as claimed, after all...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I'm with Robert on this one. What you want as a writer is to be *credible*, which is entirely different from realistic.
Reality can teach us things about credibility. Writing that just made me laugh out loud, but the serious point is that there are many ways to be credible, but presumably only one correct way to be realistic.
Some ways of being credible entail catering to the preconceptions and tastes of the reader. One pet peeve I have about a number of manuscripts I've critiqued recently is that they feature Arab characters who speak in what I call the "dog-of-an-infidel patois." It just strikes me as *stupid* to have characters walk around talking like the Cliff's Notes version of an Al Qaeda manifesto, because even *Al Qaeda manifestos* don't sound like that. But "dog-of-an-infidel" spells instant credibility with some readers.
Another preconception which is common among authors and readers is that life is a miserable, unremitting slog through a pit indignity and misfortune. That viewpoint has no more exclusive claim on "realism" than the one in which everything works out for the best. *Actual* realism would be this: the events of our lives seldom amount to anything like a coherent and compelling narrative. So, do we take coherence off the table in pursuit of realism?
The "life is misery" viewpoint is merely a canon of literary taste marching under the false flag of realism.
So what *can* we learn from reality that could make our stories more credible? Well, take Robert's example of casualties in the Civil War. Wars entail people picking up weapons and using them on each other, so you'd *think* that wars are about people killing each other. But if you look at the *facts*, what kills the most people in war is *fever*.
According to the records kept by the Union Army in the Civil War, 67,058 of its men were killed in action. 43,012 died of wounds received in battle. 224,586 died from disease and infection. Excluding a handful of men who were executed, died by mishaps like drowning, or who simply disappeared, only 1/3 of the deaths in the Union Army were due to hostilities; 2/3 were due to disease.
That's a surprising fact. It's ironic that while we try to kill each other in a war, our efforts are outstripped by microscopic pathogens. But while surprising and ironic, it instantly makes sense when we hear it. Men under stress crowded together in unsanitary conditions, often undernourished and unrested... what else would you expect if you described that situation without the added detail that other men were shooting at them?
So what really makes *me* believe a story is a few surprising but amazingly just-right details. For me that's what elevates a logically constructed story from mere consistency to credibility.
Now as for *Song of Fire and Ice* -- well, I'm not surprised Kathleen didn't make it through. *Game of Thrones* was more than enough for me. It's a book with excellent prose, finely crafted scenes, well thought-out characterizations, and elaborate yet skillfully handled world building. Altogether it's a very tastefully written book, but alas, "tasteful" and "well-crafted" just aren't enough for me.
I tend to side with Tolkien, although I don't go so far as to demand a eucatastrophe in every story. I do expect food for thought.
Posts: 1459 | Registered: Dec 2010
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posted
I was looking forward to reading the complete saga...but some of what's been said about it, here and elsewhere, is kinda offputting...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I don't advocate trying to portray the world as a miserable place. But for example, someone in an earlier thread (not sure if it was this one or another thread) mentioned that they don't bother describing their character defecating. Now, I see no reason to forcefully shove a mention of it in there without a reason. But for example, in my novel the hero is wounded in a fight and catches a fever from the cut. He is so weak that the heroine, who is nursing him, has to help him urinate - which he finds humiliating.
I don't mean to say that life it all bad or all good. I just want more flavor included. I want to feel the character's fatigue at the end of a long day's wood chopping. I want to smell the cooking odors from a wood fired kitchen. The grit and straw on the floor of a medieval tavern would crunch as you walk over it, but how often do you hear that mentioned? Or how often do you get mentioned the fact that if there are dogs running underfoot, there are going to be dog droppings between and under the tables while people eat?
The reader should be given the chance to submerge into the story and experience it, not merely scan over it like a newspaper report.
Edit:
RE: credibility vs. accuracy. I must respectfully disagree. If there must be a choice, I vote accuracy every time. I would rather be informed than misled. Even by fiction.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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posted
I have to agree with MattLeo about credibility versus accuracy. In fiction you don't need all the accurate details of real life. There just need to be enough details to make the story credible.
rcmann - You mention showing the humiliating experience of a nurse helping a wounded hero urinate. You wouldn't simply be showing bowel movements for the sake of being accurate. You're choosing an "episode" of real life in order to further develop your hero and portray him as credible. In real life we go to the washroom often, but in fiction, unless it's relevant to the plot or character development I don't want to read about it.
Posts: 525 | Registered: Sep 2010
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So... if I understand this correctly it is better to deliberately portray something in accurately even though you know it to be false? Like pandering to the "dog of an infidel" stereotype rather than writing a realistic reaction? Or, for example, should I as a pure bred hillbilly portray my neighbors and family as inbred and ignorant, even though a substantial number of them are lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc? Because to do otherwise would be less than credible?
Credibility vs. accuracy, in the sense I am interpreting what has been written here (if i am wrong please correct me) seems to be merely a case of deliberately pandering to ignorance.
For example, if I write about a man who takes three bullets in the chest and still manages to close in and kill his attacker with his knife, would that be credible? I could offer case history after case history. Or what about a man who kills a mountain lion with a pocket knife. It has been done in the real world. Is it credible? If not, should it not be included in a book because the reader would not accept it?
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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posted
This is the way I see it (it is simply my opinion)...
Just because something happened in the real world, doesn't mean that it is credible in fiction. It is the writer's job to make things believable - give causes and effects . So yes, as unbelievable as it would seem that a man with three bullet wounds to the chest could somehow kill his attacker with a knife, in fiction you could make that scene believable, in other words credible. Maybe that man is a cyborg, or he has a lot of body fat to protect him, or the caliber of the bullets were small, and so on.
Posts: 525 | Registered: Sep 2010
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@Rcmann -- keep in mind that the point about credibility vs. accuracy was made by somebody who once consulted the nautical almanac's tables to figure out what the sky would look like through the windshield of a car driving west in Ayer MA at 6PM in the evening, Friday March 24, 1939.
But I don't expect the *reader* to notice. It's to fire up my imagination so I can picture the sky change in the late afternoon turn from a springtime powder blue (#B0E0E6) to tawny (#CD5700) and silver, then fading from cerulian (#007BA7) to cobalt (#0047AB) then finally Prussian blue(#003153). Then I've got to describe it in words rather than hex triplets.
I don't expect a reader to consult meteorological records to see whether or not there'd be debris from the Great Hurricane of 1938 in Chestnut Hill MA on September 23, 1938. But I checked. What hopefully makes the scene credible is that readers are aware on some level that there *are* remarkable weather events, so if one or two crop up in a story that takes place over the course of several years it *feels* like a realistic detail. Also, a small number might remember vaguely that there was a hurricane in '38 (it killed 800 people).
Looking up the weather reminds me to put that kind of thing in. It also helps me with the imaginative conceit that I'm writing history. But if I have a literary reason for Chestnut Hill to be devestated by a Hurricane that actually didn't do much in that neighborhood, I'd change it.
Well, OK. Actually *I* wouldn't be able to bring myself to do that. But I wouldn't mind if somebody else did.
Oh, yes, and about the three bullets to the chest. In the 1971 movie *Shaft*, the title character gets shot in the shoulder, and after a little bandaging, the shoulder is good as new, and it's totally credible because Shaft is the black *superman*. If you can get somebody to believe something they know in their logical minds is impossible, that's great storytelling.
Posts: 1459 | Registered: Dec 2010
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posted
I personally have love hate relationship with Martin. His prose is masterful. He writes with such authority, conviction, and passion that I couldn’t help but get swallowed in. I am of the camp that enjoys ambiguous, conflicted characters, and there’s certainly no end of them in his Song of Ice and Fire. But somewhere around the fourth book I began to lose interest. Part of it was the fact that years would pass form one book to the next, and the thought of diving into that world and trying to pick up all the thousands of loose ends from the previuos books at some point seemed more like work than enjoyment. Related to that, but also as an unintended consequence of the scope of his books, I began to lose sight of the story. I read books because I like stories. His was more like a history unfolding, or maybe like watching a soap opera or reality show. I deeply cared about the characters and believed in his world but no longer understood where he was taking me. Suspense became almost irrelevant. I never finished the fourth book and feel little compunction to pick it up again. I still uphold him as one of the most brilliant fantasy writers of our times, one who very much changed the game. But the magic of the story was lost when I felt like it was beginning to slip from his own fingers.
Posts: 2185 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
I agree completely annepin. You said what I was trying to say, but more eloquently.
As far as Shaft being able to shrug off a bullet in the shoulder? That always bugs me. In real life, a man *can* take three bullets and still kill his attacker with a knife. But afterwards he is going to hit the floor.
The military developed the .45 caliber automatic pistol specifically to stop the blood mad charge of a berserker, and still some men have been able to take hits from one and keep coming. This is simply the way things are. But there are consequences afterward. Everything has a price.
Unfortunately, too many stories gloss over the price. Like having a character undergo rape (male or female), or having them watch their entire family slaughtered in front of their eyes, or similar psychological trauma, and never display any evidence of it.
The reason this ties in with the thread topic is that to me, unless you are telling me the story of "Fred's incredible journey" or "Cynthia's amazing discovery" or "How the Flibber clan gained their patron dragon" I just can't make myself care. And if a story is about someone, or some group of someones, then there should be a realistic presentation of what happens to them and the consequences therof.
Maybe my background in tech writing makes me this way. I spent my career obsessing about clear and accurate presentation of information whether in written, graphic, or numerical format. The idea of deliberately distorting, or outright faking something, just because the reader might not be able to cope with an accurate description is anathema to me.
In the tv version of Game of Thrones, I watched a scene where a man had several fingers bitten off by a wolf. He laughed it off and made a joke. Really?
quote:Maybe my background in tech writing makes me this way.
...
quote:In the tv version of Game of Thrones, I watched a scene where a man had several fingers bitten off by a wolf. He laughed it off and made a joke. Really?
I'll bet you accept things a lot more improbable than that when you read or watch something you're really enjoying.
Does the lack of any provision for carrying reaction mass put you off *Iron Man* flying? Why don't Captain Kirk's ears pop when he beams down to a planet? If Professor Lupin is so good at magic, how come his clothes and belongings are so raggedy?
If you really read or watch *any* sci-fi or fantasy story with your critical faculties fully engaged, you'll find it's full of whoppers. Suspension of disbelief is either incredibly robust or incredibly fragile. When an author has you eating out of his hand, he can get you to swallow *anything*. When the magic is not working, it doesn't matter how painstaking he is, it won't be *credible*.
Posts: 1459 | Registered: Dec 2010
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posted
Actually, I never watched the Iron Man movie. As a kid I loved the cartoon, but I haven't watched any superhero show since I was about eleven.
As far as Capt Kirk, you are right. Star Trek is full of holes. I notice them. I got some chuckles out of them, too. It threw me right out of the story, but I still enjoyed watching it for the corn factor.
For an author to get me eating out of his/her hand, they need to give me something that is either within the bounds of current scientific possibility, or explain why their alternate world allows it. As for Lupin, I figured he was a slob like me.
Edit:
Fantasy is something else. Like Game of Thrones. If I once got started on the implausibility of a planet with an orbit that caused seasons to last for decades developing a Class M type ecosystem, much less one where humans could survive, I would bust a blood vessel. It is an alternate universe, obviously. One where the laws of nature are different. Another reason I didn't care for the series much is the way that idea is just tossed at us.
Alan Dean Foster did something similar with his Icerigger series. But his alien planet was going through a series of short term ice ages, rather than long term winters. He made it plausible.
I know i am unreasonable, wanting my fantasy stories to make some kind of not-completely-whacked-out sense. But there is a limit to the amount of disbelief I am capable of suspending.
One more edit:
About the fingers. I spent several years working on a highway crew. One time a friend of mine was helping install some guard rail, when a backhoe bucket lost hydraulic compression and dropped, catching his hand on the top of a post. When he rushed him to the hospital, he wasn't laughing. When I see or read characters getting injured, I can't help remembering similar things I have seen in real life. If the difference between story and real life is too extreme, I sigh and put the book down, or change the channel.
posted
The point of that man in GoT laughing off the missing fingers was that northmen are tough as hell. And there was the ego thing to consider: the whole collection of neighbours was there watching him. If he were to whine about it, they would think him a wuss. If you take a good look at the man's reaction when this happens, he takes a long look around himself, then decides to laugh it off. And that laugh of his was part howling in pain.
Can't compare modern behaviour with that of the old days. Remember that it used to be normal for a man to don armour and march into battle where he killed people with his bare hands. Then h returned home and kept working on his land or shop. Today, such a way of life is unthinkable. Standards have changed.
Posts: 1271 | Registered: May 2007
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Somewhere along the way yesterday I lost some comments somewhere in cyberspace...well, I'll reconstruct them best as I can, maybe improve on 'em.
*****
Of course, as anyone who read my comments must know, I haven't read this series...but I read a lot of Martin's stuff from the time he started to appear in the magazines. (It was around the time I started to read the magazines.) Even then, a lot of Martin's characters had a certain, well, element of moral and ethical bankruptcy. I remember one early story, I forget the title, about an alien team wanting to join a human football league...and the lead POV character, the guy in charge of the league, was basically concerned with "what's in it for me?" Essentially taking a bribe of some sophisticated zero-gee (I think) athletic equipment, and abandoning the original league for a new one formed of other aliens, and taking the bribe equipment with him. Disconcerting...
This wasn't the only example. A lot of Martin's stories that I read (and admired, and attempted to emulate in my own work) had somewhat rancid characters. I wonder if this went on in this series...I suppose I'd have to actually read it to be sure...
*****
Somewhere in the depths of the argument, I put up another comment about unreality, but it was a response to something I've failed to spot this time 'round.
I think somebody mentioned bathroom breaks---of course you hardly ever see or hear or know of anybody going in the course of these things. Feminine hygiene is another boldly ignored topic. You never see these lusty barbarian women going into battle being felled by cramps, do you?
Me, I like some kind of realism in these matters, so I make quick mention of it---and, also, try to fudge things with some pseudo-scientific comment about why it's not happening or would be awkward to have happen, also relating it to contraceptive matters---which, usually, disappears into one paragraph at most and is forgotten and ignored.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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One thing Poul Anderson mentioned in "Thud and Blunder" was the way fantasy women can screw like minks and never get pregnant. Unless it fits the plot of course. Might convenient. And of course, nobody ever gets herpes or the clap either.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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posted
There is a scene from Richard Adam's novel SHARDIK that shocked me as a young reader (SHARDIK is not a bunny book), where a sick girl child the protagonist is trying to save passes a thick string of pus rather than urine before she dies. That image has stayed with me for nigh forty years.
Thus, "reality epic fantasy" is not something I found "new" with GRRM's THE GAME OF THRONES, but I did find it as disturbing.
Btw, I do recommend SHARDIK. The novel also had an impact on Steven King who adopted the title's eponymous character for his DARK TOWER series.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
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Don't remember that scene, but it's been more than thirty years since I read it...on the other hand, Watership Down isn't a "pastoral" book in the "unrealistic" sense, either...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You guys might have heard that "Game of Thrones," the series, made the news these past couple of days, for something done with a prop plastic decapitated head in one scene. I'd fill you in, but the discussion would be political in nature.
*****
Somewhat less political is that A Game of Thrones, the book this time, has been parodied. It's called A Game of Groans: A Sonnet of Slush and Soot, by one "George R. R. Washington." I've seen it in stores...
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