I have only nice things to say about the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. I am currently most of the way through the 4th and most recent book in the series, A Feast For Crows. I am a fan of fantasy to begin with: Yes, I am the dork who's been through the Lord Of The Rings extended edition on DVD 20 or more times. As you would expect, this series is marketed to the modern fantasy reader by equating it to Tolkein, and yes, this is medieval high fantasy, complete with dragons and wights and magic, but it is also an entirely different animal. It's lurid, gory, mystical, spiritual, huge in scope, and completely enthralling.
Four books in, the character arcs have had time to mature: some of these characters are little kids at the beginning, but time is passing so they're slowly becoming adults during a protracted civil war over the course of years. Martin is a gifted storyteller, and is able to move his nicely three dimentional characters through the bloody wartorn landscape of his well imagined world at their own leisure. He deals with it by jump cutting, and also by shifting perspective at chapter length, so the story is told as a series of vignettes.
Very ingeniously created, very human stories, great characters...
I am so looking forward to this as a tv series
1 comment:
I've been looking forward to starting this series based on your continued praise of it, and how thoroughly engaging you've been finding it.
It's intetesting to me that I've been drawn to the fantasy genre more and more of late when- with a few exceptions (the Tolkein books, the first Dune, some of the Susan Cooper books)- I found it uncompelling when I was younger. I think what's changed for me is that I'm less and less satisfied with the world I'm living in, and feeling almost powerless to change it I'm drawn to authors who are creating worlds where the struggle between good and not-good are generally won by the right side, in a way they're not always in our troubled times.
That said, I'm still drawn to the authors who allow their characters and heroes to be realistically flawed, yet still overcome evil in the end. Those are the books that make me feel just a teeny bit hopeful about our own future.
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