male and female fantasy authors
So George RR Martin was highly recommended on this mailing list I'm on, and I picked up "A Game of Thrones" from a used bookstore and finished it a few days ago.
I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this book. I was wary of it at first because I tend to not like fantasy written by men. Up until now, I hadn't really known why, but now I think I do. While the plot in this book was interesting and complex, and I'm sort of curious to see what happened in the next book, the treatment of women was so . . . so male-erotic-fantasy that it really got on my nerves.
This book is full of the rape of 12-year-old girls. It has incestual sexual abuse, lots of crazy women, lots and lots of rape, and a whole lot of talk about nipples and whores. There's a race of people in this book whose mating ritual consist of men randomly throwing down the first woman they see and having their way with her in front of everybody. Now, the people who do this sort of stuff are never the heroes of the book, and they're usually the bad guys. The heroes just have bastard children and go to whorehouses. Anyway, the point is that this race of people is constantly pillaging and raping, and it's written in a kind of "oh, that's just the way they are." Like, it's no big deal that they just gang-raped a little girl.
Sometimes it is significant, like the incestuous abusive relationship. I think that the author was trying to show that this was a terrible, disgusting thing, but . . . There's a scene where the girl from that relationship (who is like 11 or 13 or something) gets essentially sold to this guy as a wife, and he has sex with her on their wedding night. It's all about how she was afraid, but he's so manly that she gets really horny and has wild sex with him. Is there anything that's more male-fantasy than overpowering an unwilling woman and then she enjoys it anyway?
It was really just kind of disgusting.
Anyway, as a comparison, consider Jacuqueline Carey's writing. The Kushiel trilogy has a whole lot of sex and a good amount of rape. But it's written in a way where rape is always a terrible thing that leaves a lasting impression. People always need to be saved from being raped. When Phedre is raped, and she physically enjoys it because she's Kushiel's Dart, she hates herself for it and it's still portrayed as a terrible thing.
And there are a whole lot less nipples. Geez. Nipples are gross, why are men so obsessed with them?
That and there's a whole lot of war without a whole lot of characterization in "A Game of Thrones." The only characters who I really felt were worth something were Arya, Jon, and Bran. The rest were just . . . shallow or over-the-top. Like, people would do evil things with no motivation other than to be evil. There were a lot of really insipid characters.
I think this series is probably going to be in the same status as the Wheel of Time . . . I read the first book, thought the plot was good but not much else, and can't bring myself to read the rest of the series. I have to say, George RR Martin's writing style is not very polished at all. It's not nearly as bad as the Raymond E Feist book that I tried to read, but it's nowhere near the level of my favorite female writers.
Now that I think about it, the only male fantasy author that I've read in recent years and for the most part enjoyed was David Eddings. And after ten books, he was starting to get pretty old.
I think I need a trip to the used bookstore to pick up some more stuff by authors I'll actually *like*.