A (ridiculously complicated) Game of Thrones
I've been lurking around this delicious community for a while now and can't resist posting this bookfail any longer. I realize that George R.R. Martin is basically the god of fantasy, but hey, if we can slam Bram Stoker and other works of literature than Martin is not immune.
Okay. First off, I didn't finish the book; I reached page 300 and could go no farther. Also, I did not entirely hate the book, what I read of it. It's superbly well written, so if you think I'm totally just jealous, you're partially right. ;) It's also compelling enough while you're in the midst of it, though pretty much every detail leaked from my mind the instant I put it down. But there are some major issues with this book that I could not ignore. My memory is hazy since it's a forgettable book that I read several months ago, but I remember the salient details. One thing that really rubbed me the wrong way that I could NOT get over was the twin incest. Not okay. So. Freaking. Not. OKAY. I happen to be a twin, and I did a little research after being shocked to pieces by the twin thing, and as far as I can tell twin incest is the rarest kind there is. Still, I'm sure it happens (maybe? I hope not) but what I didn't understand was the need to include a graphic sex scene between the twinly lovers. Um...?? It gives me the heebie jeebies that Martin actually imagined and wrote down an explicit scene between twins. This is a man I don't ever want to meet. Going off the whole sex thing, good grief, could there BE any more sex in this book?? In the Amazon reviews I read before buying the book, there were absolutely gushing reviews of how 'gritty' and 'realistic' this book was...but the sex is straight out of a romance novel! Honestly, people! Since when is absurd movie-style sex gritty and realistic?? Urgh! Then there's the characters. Oh, so many characters, so many complaints, so little time. Basically, they uniformly suck. Not one is unique or intriguing. I can remember nothing specific about any of them. It's not that I'm too stupid for such a large cast of characters; I can pwn through Dickens with the best of them. Bleak House has way more characters and a much more complex plot, but the characters are so incredibly vivid that even if you forget what their point in the plot is, you never, ever forget who they are. That's REAL characterization. I could go on, but I won't. Basically, it reads like a combination of history textbook and romance novel. It's also supposedly based on the real-life War of the Roses, and fancy name aside, learning about that in my history class was just as boring as the book. If you like politics this may be your cup of tea, but for me, it was a fail. The book also may not have irked me so much if I hadn't heard so much before reading it about how it's 'highly realistic' and 'changing the face of fantasy' and whatnot. Believability is essential in fantasy; realism is antithetical to fantasy. I really had high expectations for this book, but I can't see how he's changing the face of fantasy or whatever it is he's supposed to be doing. I saw nothing in this book that stood out as new or different, and I so badly wanted to read something new and different. Ah, well. The search for a truly awesome epic fantasy series continues!