Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackZeda
As I state last week, HBO saved George R.R. Martin. A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were decent IMO, but they also belied the fact that GRRM was a bit wandering where he wanted to go.
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I agree, only more emphatically. I've read plenty of fantasy series over the years, and it's not uncommon for an author to hit upon some success, and then milk the hell out of it. It's rare enough when success happens, and it's hard to fault an author for doing it. But it's still never a good taste in the mouth for the audience.
I felt AFOC and ADWD were awful. They slogged on about nothing just because he opted late to split it into two books and needed filler. I greatly dislike his change from having every chapter named and centered on a main character, and instead now brings in some ancillary characters, sometimes completely throw-away. And it also means I can go 20 chapters before getting back around to the ones I actually like. Including more characters can be nice, but man it bloats the content.
And it suffers from that same problem that other milked fantasy series experience: nothing happening. Sure some things happen, but it's a long slog to get there, and it's typically just end-of-book things...major milestones GRRM needed all that filler to get to. Busywork for major characters that really doesn't matter much.
And by the end of ADWD, we have supposedly just two books left, and I struggle to think of how this could all be wrapped up in two more books.