Just ploughing through 3800 pages or so of A Game of Thrones. I adored George R.R. Martin's 70's work like "A Song for Lya" and "Seven Times Never Kill Man", but he got really cynical during the Reagan years. REALLY cynical. As in, hard to read unless you wanted to become really, really depressed, as typified by his "Tuf Voyaging" series. He started on this gigantic potboiler (4 volumes so far, a 5th on the way later this year) in the year Bill Clinton was elected, and it's incredibly dark and cynical too with plenty of dead bodies (he kills off one of his friggin' HEROS within the first few hundred pages!), but also brings a bit of the humanity from his 70's work into the fray. It's a nice mix, just friggin' HUGE.
-- Badtux the Immersed Penguin
I thoroughly enjoyed the first three volumes of the Thrones work but my unsolicited advice is to never venture into the fourth volume and I doubt the fifth and final volume will ever be done. However, I repeat, the first three volumes are great fun!
ReplyDeleteA Dance with Dragons, the 5th volume, is available for preorder on Amazon and will be shipped on July 12, 2011. Whether the 6th volume, The Winds of Winter, will ever happen given the 5 year gap between volumes and George R.R. Martin's advancing age, is unknown. I suspect the 7th volume, A Dream of Spring, shall remain vaporware forever.
ReplyDeleteA song for Lya is on of my most favorite stories ever - I read it when it was new, and a few times since. Just did "Tough Voyaging" a couple of years ago. "Dying of the Light" is also very good and very strange.
ReplyDeleteAs for advancing age, GMMR will be 63 in Sept. Hell, I'm older than that.
I'm on Pg 674 of GoT, and it's magnificent. The HBO series is superb, also. I've only seen parts of a few episodes, but it is really top-notch stuff.
The mystery I wonder about is the parentage of Jon Snow. I'm convinced that Eddard's dead sister Lyanna is the mother. I'm not convinced Eddard is the father, though it could be - it also be his dead brother Brandon. It's implied that Lyanna died in childbirth, but that might not be right. Any thoughts on that topic?
As far in as I am, the whole time line of the events leading up to the overthrow of the Targaryans 14 years earlier is unclear. Crown Prince Rheagar had the hots for Lyanna, as did Robert Baratheon. Mad King Aerys had Brandon strangled to death. What's that all about? Does any of that get cleared up?
Cheers!
JzB
Actually, it's NOT implied that Lyanna died in childbirth. I inferred it.
ReplyDeleteJzB