Game of Thrones?

[gategrrl]

Has anyone read George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones series? 

I'm not much into High Fantasy (haven't been for a loong while) but I downloaded a demo of the trilogy, and it actually seemed pretty good. The characters aren't stupidly named, the parameters and their relationships are clearly spelled out pretty quickly, and there's some perverted stuff going on there, too. Almost a dark High Fantasy. And dire wolves. How can you go wrong with Dire Wolves?

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I read the first one, and it was really good, but he hasn't finished the series yet and I'm trying to avoid starting stuff that might never get finished (at his current rate of production).

However, for good fantasy that actually is out there to read, I'd also rec Joe Abercrombie's trilogy that starts with The Blade Itself and Scott Lynch's books (though he's slightly less speedy) starting with The Lies of Locke Lamora.

In other words, read more fantasy! :P

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

The amazon reviews are pretty clear that the fourth book (eight years in the making) is not nearly as engaging as the first three. Lots of angry readers!

[revena.livejournal.com]

I read the first one, and did not dig it. I love me some high fantasy and I totally enjoy wallowing in tragedy on occasion, but I found A Game of Thrones too unremittingly bleak for my taste.

It's amazing

[ndmzero.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for your preferences - but the Game of Thrones is a fantastic series and George RR Martin always does great characters. I highly recommend it - I'm tapping my fingers waiting for him to come out with the newest book. (George Martin's Sand Kings is one of the best, and I mean the best, Sci Fi short stories I've read in 40 years. He's really good.) On the other hand, in his Wild Card series, I was always freaked because I would bet money that one of his "super-psychos" (written by a contributing author, not him) committed a (perverted) murder behind the grade school I attended. That story was in the first set, and has affected my appreciation of the rest of the series. Still, that isn't his fault.

Re: It's amazing

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

There was a murder behind your *gradeschool*?!

OK, maybe I mispoke

[ndmzero.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear: In a story in the first WILD CARD collection, there was a rape/murder against a child committed by one of the wild cards in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio outside a parochial school hard against the woods and a creek/ravine. (Honestly, I can't swear I remember those details, but I did check them again after I freaked the first time and I freaked again -- my catholic grade school was hard against a woods and a small ravine - which I knew from first hand experience because I cleaned out an ungodly number of friggin tires from those woods in the first Earth Day in 1974.

I don't have first hand knowledge that a classmate wrote that story, but I was freaked enough by the possibility (fictional) that I avoided it.

Re: OK, maybe I mispoke

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. The setting was so close to the reality of your school that it freaked you out. I get it now.

Re: OK, maybe I mispoke

[ndmzero.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would be the more accurate way to put it.