A Song Of Ice And Fire

books are important. a dying art. please, please, let me know that there are still people out there that read more than just magazines.

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RoIIo Tomassi
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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I liked that he was using the Red Comet to show everybody's differing religions and how they all thought the Comet was a favorable portent for them. Thus making everybody equally full of shit. It was a commentary on the bullshit of religion.

As I told Mssr. Reason, Feast for Crows is the driest of the books. If you slogged through ASoS, you're gonna come to a complete halt in AFfC. Primarily because all the fun characters (Jon Snow, Dany, Tyrion) aren't in the book. At all.


And let me add my obligatory critical drubbing of anarky for STILL not having started these books.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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New sample chapter, which I'm sad to say seems to have replaced the awesome last one. Read up, but not you Chux because you're busy licking windows.

http://www.georgerrmartin.com/if-sample.html
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by Diabolical »

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN IS “STARTING TO WORRY” THAT HE’S NOT WRITING FAST ENOUGH. YOU DON’T SAY?

http://www.themarysue.com/george-rr-mar ... s-prequel/
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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Just watching season 2 now and I every time I see one of the characters I feel misty. I almost don't want to see the critical event play out on screen.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by Tom Foolery »

They're splitting the Third Book into two seasons arent they? That'll be a fucking downer of a season cliffhanger.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by Diabolical »

:lol: :cry:
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by anarky »

Wow, you guys (read: Rollos) love to add comments about me to the end of posts that I'm not reading, don't you? :lol:

I've found that trying to amuse myself with silly cracks about brotherfucking just isn't very much fun now that I've actually been trying to read the books. Okay, one book. And actually reading it, but, damn, I'm going to have to have a major difference of opinion with the entire world. I'm not trying to be a wiseass here; I just genuinely find this to be an incredibly dry work that just keeps throwing out new names and I really cannot develop much of a "give a shit" about anyone. Yeah, I kept up with the stupid cracks because I genuinely thought "As much as literally everyone raves about these books, it's going to be a Harry Potter situation where they're the best thing since hot sauce." (I have a tendency to do that with stuff that I suspect I'll enjoy. I don't know why.) I'll give it a shot for another hundred pages or so, hoping this is an incorrect first impression and it's one of those stories that starts slow and really gets going once it hits, but, if it doesn't, I can't see myself going through almost 800 pages of it, much less four (five?) (so far, with probably thirty more to come) books of that size.

Go ahead and rag on me. I am clinging to the hope that it's just a slow start, because out of sheer curiosity I searched and could not find a single negative review or criticism that didn't start with "I don't like fantasy, but...," so it is pretty much literally the entire world here. Granted, it is a lot better than the TV show, which I still think was some boring-ass shit that played too hard to the lowest common denominator, but I also feel that's kinda like saying Revenge of the Sith was better than Attack of the Clones at this point. :?
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by Diabolical »

I struggled at first also, especially when it came to the amount of characters and all the stuff that seemed superfluous.

From September 2001:
Rollo Tomassi wrote:
Diabolical wrote:With the massive cast of characters I was a little intimidated at first, but once I realized you don't need to remember each and every character, what they did and what side they are on, it made following the plot so much easier. I was fliiping to the appendix every couple of pages for a while just to remind myself who was who.
Actually, the farther you get into the series, a lot of those "minor" characters become major players. And many more of them die. You just never know. But my point is, you DO have to pay attention to every character. :lol:
I think we are both right here. I didn't necessarily keep track of everyone right off the bat, and I rarely (if ever) felt lost. I had the the overall gist of the various plot threads and caught up quickly when a minor character reappeared.

At times, this series can be a little too wordy, with possibly too much going on. But at the same time I think it really fleshes out the world and gives you a look at every aspect of a story through several character's eyes (something you rarely see).

And I'm kind of the opposite with Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. I really struggled with HP. It just didn't grab me at all. I finished the first book and thought it was a decent kids book, but I couldn't see what all the hype was about and I had absolutely no desire to continue the series.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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Chux you won't "get it" until someone you've met in story gets it. Then, it literally feels like open season - every page you turn has the potential to be some character's last. Keep reading.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by anarky »

I will keep reading. I know I've read books before that took a while to really get going, but, bam, once they get you, you're in. I generally figure that, unless the writing is really, really bad (like The DaVinci Code, sorry), you've got to get through at least 1/4-1/3 of the book before you should give up.

DB, you've probably heard this before, but I'd give the HP series another shot. The first book is a little "fluffy," and seemed like escapism for young readers. But they do sort of grow up with the characters and get darker (starting at the end of Goblet of Fire, it's pretty much The Empire Strikes Back with English wizards). Also, even though it doesn't seem like it at first, there's a definite game plan from the very beginning, down to the smallest details, and Rowling deserves credit just for being able to keep it all straight.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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anarky wrote:DB, you've probably heard this before, but I'd give the HP series another shot. The first book is a little "fluffy," and seemed like escapism for young readers. But they do sort of grow up with the characters and get darker (starting at the end of Goblet of Fire, it's pretty much The Empire Strikes Back with English wizards). Also, even though it doesn't seem like it at first, there's a definite game plan from the very beginning, down to the smallest details, and Rowling deserves credit just for being able to keep it all straight.
When Adam told me "It starts getting good in the 4th book, I was officially done. I wasn't about to read two more of these before it gets good.

Besides, its been a few years, so at this point I'd have to read the first one again.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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I wouldn't go that far. The second book starts getting fairly dark in its own right. The first is pretty tame; I guess they had to balance out the sheer shock of this world and how Harry was orphaned with a minor, fairly ineffective threat.

The thing about HP that bugged me most was the whole "cupboard under the stairs" thing, because what the English people call a cupboard is a little (that's an understatement if I ever saw one) bigger than what Americans call a cupboard. Kinda funny they dropped the "Philosopher's Stone" in the title because they thought Americans would be too dumb to get it, but left that in.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by jjreason »

The third HP book is the best use of time fuckery I've ever experienced. Clean as a whistle. I would suggest every book in that series is much better than the one before it.
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Post by anarky »

The way she establishes the chronology, playing around with it a bit before you have a single concrete date, is amazing. I'm going to spoiler tags in case you change your mind, DB, but still, feel free to read it.

Half-Blood Prince pissed me off badly at first. But then, as I thought about it, it came to me that what she'd done wasn't sloppy, it was genius. The reference to Dudley's Playstation seemed like the clumsiest line in any of the books, since they'd previously seemed rather timeless. But it was her way of subtly tossing in something to date the present. Combine that with Dumbledore's flashbacks, where, IIRC, there were horses and very few cars, and it hits you--Dumbledore is fucking old. This was more fuel to the "Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's own orders" notion, since Dumbledore was weakened, old as shit, and knew he wouldn't survive disabling another horcrux... but needed Harry to carry on. Which turned out to be pretty close to the mark. I'll bet most kids wouldn't think anything odd about mentioning a video game, and a particular video game, but those who did, and the adult who definitely would, would start thinking really hard about what time meant. All the clues about what really transpired with Snape and Dumbledore were there, and not even all that subtle; they were just tossed in as if unimportant details, but there are no unimportant details in HP.

Also, the epilogue of Deathly Hallows is like the end of Old Yeller. If you don't get a little misty-eyed, at least, you have no soul.

Sorry, we can switch back to I&F whenever. :)
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Re: A Song Of Ice And Fire

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I always appreciated how the Potter books 'matured' at the same rate as the characters, and also in many cases, the same rate as its target audience. The first book is written for younger kids. It's not too dense or dark. And the series got more serious and adult as it progressed. That's how my little sister read the series. She got the first one when she was 12 when it came out and by the time the last book hit stores, she was in college. She's also the one who introduced me to the series, right before the Fourth book hit. I read 1 thru 3 fairly quickly, and when Goblet came out that summer while we were on vacation, I bought a copy for me, one for her, and one for my nephews and we were all reading it simultaneously. That was a fun memory for me. 8)


DaVinci Code did suck. It's like somebody wrote a mystery in the style of the first grade pre-readers. If a sentence started getting too long, like five words, Dan Brown felt compelled to add a period and move on to the next one.

Tom Hanks was in Paris. Paris is in France. Tom studied religion. He was very good at it. He got a phone call. It was the police. They found a body. The body was at the Louvre. They wanted Tom to look at the body. Because he was a teacher. And teachers are the best choice for solving murders. Tom went downstairs. Tom hailed a taxi. The taxi pulled over. Tom got inside. "Take me to the Louvre." said Tom. "Okay" said the taxi driver....etc etc.

I can only assume its mega popularity is due to the fact that everybody in the world has an IQ of 68 and is mildly retarded. I'm surprised it didn't have pictures in it. Oh wait, later on they released an illustrated version with pictures...
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