Game of Thrones begins....

[crazy canuck]

I cant think of ten that are equivalent to the ones we have identified.  I can think of three -   The war of the Roses (with all its various branches), Winter is coming, and the return of the Queen.  What other 7 are you thinking of?

Are you seperating the Stark children? It's not clear why one of them is now becoming a blind assassin, and another one is on some vision quest with the native americans of Westeros.

Ok, Blind Assassin is a fourth.

Vision quest is tied in with Winter is Coming isnt it?

[Valmy]

Are you seperating the Stark children? It's not clear why one of them is now becoming a blind assassin, and another one is on some vision quest with the native americans of Westeros.

This is one of my 'yeah so?' moments.  If lots of sidestories and branching plots of branching plots is intolerable for you and you need to be told constantly how each thing fits together you are reading the wrong series.  It is not a bad thing to me, I love the scale of the story.  If you do not there are plenty of tighter and more focussed stories out there.  If the story did not have these elements it would be a different story and not the one I enjoy.  'Turgid' works great for me but it does not have to work for everybody.

[Josquius]

IMO a main motivation of George seems to be world building, he sends people off to the seven corners of westeros and beyond purely because it then gives him a chance to describe those places.
But meh, the books are still good. Except the 4th, that's a bit too fan fictiony and merely so-so.

[garbon]

Are you seperating the Stark children? It's not clear why one of them is now becoming a blind assassin, and another one is on some vision quest with the native americans of Westeros.

This is one of my 'yeah so?' moments.  If lots of sidestories and branching plots of branching plots is intolerable for you and you need to be told constantly how each thing fits together you are reading the wrong series.  It is not a bad thing to me, I love the scale of the story.  If you do not there are plenty of tighter and more focussed stories out there.  If the story did not have these elements it would be a different story and not the one I enjoy.  'Turgid' works great for me but it does not have to work for everybody.

Are people not allowed to voice criticism, just like you voice your love?

[Valmy]

Are people not allowed to voice criticism, just like you voice your love?

Huh?  No.  I was saying that his criticism is accurate just that I think it is an essential part of the thing.  It is not a bug but a feature

[garbon]

It is not a bug but a feature

wad?

[Valmy]

It is not a bug but a feature

wad?

[Martinus]

Fuck, I'm all excited. This trailer is also awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qJsSEnhsuI

Also, the guys who play Renly and Loras are hot. 

[Slargos]

Raz, why are you so full of hatred for the greatest story written since the LOTR?

[Slargos]

I"m fine with the war of the roses stuff, but if you are going to focus almost exclusively on that, why have ice monsters at all?  It's like the author doesn't know what to do with it.  It's similar to the dragon chick across the sea.  It's an interesting story, but in the first book it has almost no bearing on the rest of the plot.  A few characters make some references to it but that's about it.  As the books go on you can kind of see where he's going with this plot thread, but for the most part it doesn't add a great deal to the main story.  For me, it's a problem of focus.

I see it like the black death approaching during the Hundred Years War.  An outside force of nature about to roll over society while the leadership is busy doing their petty noble crap.  They are so distracted by their petty problems they are not able to see the approaching cataclysms of Ice and Fire coming right for them.  I rather like the way he does it in the books because you the reader get caught up in the petty noble rivalries yourself.

[Martinus]

It is not a bug but a feature

wad?

Exactly. He could just as well complain that the book is set in middle ages style world or that it has dragons.

[Barrister]

You know, I would have enjoyed the book more if Martin actually focused a bit more on the monsters in the North.  The preview sets us up for a supernatural threat, but through out the 700 page book very little happens on that front.  While I do like the politicking and war, if you are going to set up a monstrous threat in the prologue you really should try to follow through with it.


Also, what the fuck do the wildlings eat?  They live in a land where it's always snowing!

The Sami, Canadian and Siberian natives manage.

Only the Inuit live in perpetual snow, and they had a stone age society of hunter-gatherers.

Inuit do not in fact live in perpetual snow.  There is a brief arctic summer.

[grumbler]

I cant think of ten that are equivalent to the ones we have identified.  I can think of three -   The war of the Roses (with all its various branches), Winter is coming, and the return of the Queen.  What other 7 are you thinking of?

Let's see:  there's the female knight searching for Stark kids, there's Tyrion plotting against the various people, there's the blind assassin thing, there's the crippled kid going north, there's the other female Stark kid and her "protector," there's the Iron Island or whatever invading the North, there's the zombie Stark mom doing whatever she is doing (after the zombie duke or whatever zombified her), there's the plot in whatever that southern kingdom is (the daughter of the Duke down there or something)...

and that's off the top of my head.  There are probably more I cannot recall.

It is all interesting enough, I suppose, but by the time you get back to any of the main plot threads you have forgotten what was happening.  The series could use some serious addition by subtraction.  Publish the scrubbed portions as side stories on the web.  It's nt like the size of the book determines the cost or royalties, anyway.

[Slargos]

Isn't the Iron Island itself also getting invaded? There's some sort of ruckus there.

What I like about the whole setup is that it would work marvelously as a setting for an RPG or a whole series of books. He's created a wonderfully rich world and if he was the kind of guy who actually wrote, there could come good things out of it.

Erikson has a similarily large number of concurrent plotlines but he manages to tie them off in an entirely different manner.

[Martinus]

Isn't the Iron Island itself also getting invaded? There's some sort of ruckus there.

What I like about the whole setup is that it would work marvelously as a setting for an RPG or a whole series of books. He's created a wonderfully rich world and if he was the kind of guy who actually wrote, there could come good things out of it.

Erikson has a similarily large number of concurrent plotlines but he manages to tie them off in an entirely different manner.

Yeah, I have always said that the books read like something from an author who started as a game master. You create this rich world with lots of interesting characters and an open-ended plot and then lose interest in the middle of it and fuck off to play Vampire the Masquerade.