I’m probably in a minority amongst science-fiction and fantasy fans in that I never got past the first book of George R.R.Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice”. the long-awaited final volume of which will be published this summer, and which has now been adapted for the telly.
I remember reading the first volume as part of the Book Club on the CompuServe SFLIT forum (who’s old enough to remember CompuServe?). Everyone else was gushing praise about it, but it left be a little underwhelmed. Yes, it was a page-turner, but I found it read too much like a daytime soap-opera in medieval clothes. One reviewer described it as “Dallas in furs”, which for me was precisely what was wrong with it. Far too many characters, and not nearly enough emphasis on the worldbuilding. It may be there was a lot more creative worldbuilding that’s revealed in later volumes, but in the first volume at least, GRRM didn’t show me enough to keep me interested enough in the series to want to read any of the following books.
For me. it was a stark contrast to Frank Herbert’s classic Dune which we’d read previously, which is a book where the worldbuilding is very much centre-stage. I remember the sysop saying how much better Game of Thrones was than Dune, and the patronising way she kept dismissing my attempts to defend Dune still rankle a decade later. The line she kept parroting, which she claimed came from the TV industry, was “If you care about the characters, nothing else matters. If you don’t care about the characters, nothing else matters”. I took that as an example of how SF and Fantasy must be watered-down for mass audiences, and her repeating it showed a very strong preference for character-driven books, and no interest in worldbuilding at all. “How on earth can the planet be a character” was another line.
And that’s my problem. The sort of fantasy and science-fiction I prefer is always driven by the worldbuilding, in the broadest sense. Not just the physical environment that’s so centre-stage in Dune, but the back-stories, history and cultures. For me, the setting is far more than just background, but rather the context for both the characters and the story. Instead, “A Game of Thrones” takes as it’s plot a retelling of the Wars of the Roses, and takes it’s characters from the archetypes of American soap opera.
Not that I’m suggesting characters the readers can strongly identify with, or gripping plotlines don’t matter. Any worldbuilding is wasted if the world the author ends up with isn’t one in which he or she can tell a great story. But I read SF and Fantasy to have the author take me toanother world. It’s got to be a story which couldn’t have been set in suburban Bracknell.
On this subject, Charlie Stross agrees with me. That’s why I like his books.
I prefer character-driven stories (which is why I like Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which is a great tale with interesting characters in a very bland, generic medieval fantasy setting). I read Dune many, many years ago and liked it at the time, because I also like great world-building, but I just recently read some classic Asimov and Heinlein, and the difference between them is that Heinlein’s characters are interesting and his world-building is just there to serve a purpose, while Asimov’s stories are all about world-building, and his characters are flat actors on a stage. I think Heinlein is the superior storyteller.
I’ve never read ASoIaF. Maybe I will start once the promised book is finished. (It’s not the conclusion of the series, is it? I thought it’s just book five in what Martin plans to be an eight-book series.) I’ve never started it because I’ve heard there’s a whole lot of rape and beloved characters suddenly dying gruesomely, and I had enough of that in Martin’s Wild Cards series. (He edited it and didn’t write all the stories, but he was responsible for a lot of the bloodbaths and other atrocities in the series.) I mean, I like some grittiness, but I think he started the trend of GrimDark Fantasy in which a lot of lesser writers have gleefully reveled in unleashing their ids.
(It’s too bad I was not reading as much back when I was on CS — I do a lot more book reading and reviewing nowadays.)
I think it all boils down to a matter of taste – stories set in bland generic medieval fantasy settings just don’t appeal to me, just like Napoleonic wars in Space military SF doesn’t. The books I’ve read recently include a lot of Charlie Stross and Alastair Reynolds, plus China Miéville, Iain (M) Banks and Tim Powers. There are some strong characters in most of those, but there’s solid worldbuilding too. Probably fair to say that Stross’ Merchant Princes series is what I wanted Amber to be, but wasn’t.
As far as Heinlein and Asimov goes, from the Heinlein I’ve read, the worldbuilding is always there, just not centre stage; he only shows you enough of the world as is necessary for the story, and no more. That’s a sign of good writing.
I read a lot of Asimov in my formative years but I’m not sure I want to go back and re-read it now; he had some great high-concept ideas, but wasn’t a good enough writer to make them come alive and seem real. Still, he’s better than Larry Niven (cough!)
I really enjoyed the first three books, but got fed-up with the increasingly long waits for further installments. In the end, faced with the prospect of having to re-read a zillion pages of the earlier books just to remind myself of the characters and backstory, I gave up. Looking forward to the tv series, though.
I’ve gone back to David Gemmell recently (his final series on Troy is very strong) and I very much enjoy Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell.
Glad to see I’m not the only one. I liked Game of Thrones, but I didn’t love it the way other people I know do. Your comment that people compared it to soap operas resonates with me as a negative (the characters are well developed, but still archetypal) and the world building, for me, failed. It’s supposed to be swords and sorcery, but there were too many swords and too little sorcery, to the point where it almost felt like a historical fiction novel-a historical fiction novel with over-the-top characters and situations (incest, violence against children, dwarf sex) that draw an audience due to their salience and not due to any real depth.
The books are good, but aspects of them, to me, felt cheap.
I like the series, on of the better fantasy series I’ve read and I’ve read a lot. Works because I think the characters and the world is fairly believable although, As Ravon says, there are some overblown moments. The amount of characters doesn’t bother me too much because they are interesting enough to keep me reading.
An opposite to this would be “Wheel of Time” -series, which I stopped reading due to two things. 1. Most of the characters were downright irritating. 2. Plotholes were getting bigger and bigger as the series progressed (and the world wasn’t at all believable imo.)
Back ASoIaF, it’s true that it sometimes feels more like a historical novel than fantasy, but that’s not a big negative to me tbh… I like (good) historical novels…
At least I got to the end of Game of Thrones – I bailed on Wheel of Time after 150 pages or so. That fell into the genre sometimes known as “Extruded Fantasy Product” (Sort of literary equivalent of landfill indie)
Not surprising that A Song of Ice and Fire reads like a historical novel, because it is essentially (at least to start with) based on actual history – the Wars of the Roses.
Sorry for necro-posting, Tim, but it’s barely based on the Wars of the Roses. Beyond the names, and a somewhat English shape to Westeros and the fact that the Houses are fighting, it’s really its own tale.
This is a pretty remarkable example of world-building. Having read it several times (and am re-reading book 1 now), it’s really rich in detail.
“How on earth can the planet be a characterâ€
This says it all. If you start reducing big concepts to earthbound comparisons you’ve got to start questioning whether you are a true sci-fi fan.
The strength of GoT (gritty realism injected into fantasy scope) is also its weakness, much like space opera sci-fi.
I agree. I recently downloaded this book on audible and couldn’t wait to start it. The prologue and wonderful narration had me hooked initially, but then everything went south.
***SPOILER BELOW!!!***
I cannot believe how ridiculously 1-dimensional the characters are. Really, the evil queen is boffing her brother? How original. And Drogo and Daenerys’ honeymoon scene? I thought I was going to hurl.
I’ve just started part 3 and I’m calling it quits.
I can not comment on the book but I disliked the show. Got to episode 4 with yet another long manly speech and switched off. So dull! The beautiful blonde being raped by her ‘husband’, suddenly decides after a semi lesbian chat with a prostitute to become aroused instead of frightened and play the vixen. I see no reason for a woman to do this. Insulting to us all. I really wanted to love this as much as so many others, but it’s a soap opera primarily aimed at the fellows. The women are ridiculous and the men self grandiose.
I came to the “this is a soap opera” conclusion while reading the second book. My interest deteriorated rapidly and the book became a slog.
While the series might be a history as it happens, the problem I found is that it is impossible to tell what kind of a story a history of something is until it is all done. When the series reaches some final conclusion, then it will be easy to tell who the main characters really were with others becoming minor regardless of how much page time they got.
Just got HBO and started watching the series from the beginning. Very disappointed. The reason I stumbled onto this particular page is that I Googled “Game of Thrones soap opera,” just to see if anyone agreed with me that it was a bad daytime soap set in medieval times. The Google search pulled up hundreds of articles and reviews of course, coming to this very conclusion. It most certainly is, as you say, a soap opera in medieval clothes.
Never seen the TV series. This post (which I wrote quite a while ago) was about the book.
@Hawkinsob
Searching for someone to back up your thoughts on the internet is always going to work. Just because a lot of people see it that way doesn’t even make it a valid observation. And, come on, at the very least it’s a “good” daytime soap set in medieval times. I mean, have you even seen a bad soap?
Anyhow, soaps tend to trivialize events in the face of a character’s emotions or feelings, but Game of Thrones is the opposite. It trivializes emotions in the face of events.
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I think that Game of Thrones does fairly well with the world-building and fantasy politics, and I think that it is important to note that it’s one of the first larger fantasy epics to attempt a break from the Tolkien model. (It succeeds at this better in some places than others.) If Game of Thrones was a milieu story, like Dune, with a focus on the world and the politics and the history all intertwining, then I might like it better. But it infuriates me when people go on and on about how character-driven Game of Thrones is when almost all of the characters barely break two dimensions. There are so many characters and story lines, all presented at one time, that it’s impossible to get emotionally invested in all of them. I think it’s important to have well-rounded characters to be interested in AND have a well-developed plot and world. Dune focused entirely on the world, which is not my cup of tea, but I respect it for what it is. Game of Thrones tried to have characters and a world and fell short in the character department, and the world isn’t quite engaging enough to stand on it’s own without characters.
The HBO series does a remarkable job paying attention to detail when building the world, and I give them kudos for trying to stay as close to the source material as possible. But that is also their downfall because there are things that work in a book that don’t translate well to the screen. Heavy politics is one of them. Plus, I can’t get really emotionally involved in the characters because I’m expecting anyone I start liking to die and that’s too close to real life for me to find it entertaining. Some people like the “no one is safe!” trend that fantasy is taking. Me, I wanted to read and watch fantasy to get some relief from the horrors of reality, not have them shoved in my face in technicolor.
So far I’ve only read the first book and watched the first season. I doubt I’ll read the rest of the books, but I may watch the rest of the series. Eventually. Maybe. Or maybe not.
Thanks for showing that there are other people out among the wilds of the internet who aren’t enamored with Game of Thrones.
The author himself states explicitly that he bases his books on Maurice Druon’s historical fiction series, “The Accursed Kings”. I think I’ll read that series instead. Thanks for this review.
I’ve only read two books of GoT (the third is in the pile to be read – it was cheap at the supermarket) but I’ve got the feeling that it will turn out like Dune for me. I really enjoyed the first book, the second book less so, the third & fourth became a chore and that put a stop to the series. The reviews I’ve read of the later GoT books seem to suggest that the action type narrative gives way to longer chunks of dialogue and characters worrying/thinking about things – which sounds pretty tedious.
Having said that, I read through all 12 of the Sharpe books that Bernard Cornwall wrote before it became popular (yes, read them back-to-back) but then quickly tailed off once I got to the ones he wrote after the films were produced. They just weren’t the same after that. Oh well.
LOL.
GoT: Most of the characters were downright irritating. F@$%&/* plotholes F@$%&/* a loooot everywhere. York vs Lancaster. Game of England.
The man doesn’t know how to tell ’bout battles or magic things. Sex sex sex nudes and tits and blood and raping. F@$%&/* a lot characters that comes to the battle sayin’ “Aghaghh!! I’m dead!” and stuff.
Fantasy? Just the cheap porn with the girls. If almost we can say Arya “it’s a girl”. I can’t believe that character. Please.
GoT, A song of ice and fire… equals WC “literature”. That’s a commercial nonsense without backstories and poor worldbuilding. Lots of marketing. An unforgetable oblivion
Tony Stark is the only Stark that rocks.
Cheers!