Are We There Yet? (a sort of Eye of the World review)

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Two stars for effort, worldbuilding and potential, especially knowing that Brandon Sanderson takes over in the end, but, having finally gotten through Eye of the World (audiobook really helped), I understand why I put it back on the library shelves, along with The Sword of Shannara , when I was a teen.

Review done, let's move on to commentary about a problem I'm seeing a lot in epic fantasy: epicness for the sake of epicness. I think it's a disease some authors have. That is, writing these huge stories within these massive worlds with all sorts of characters. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Eye of the World develops some pretty strong lore and (vaguely) interesting characters, but after a while, I started to wonder how much of the story was actually necessary.

Are we there yet? Perhaps we should stop at another tavern.

As far as epic fantasy goes, I've read and loved The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit before it, but don't ask me to read them again. I was quite happy with the movies and not at all troubled by what was edited out. Die hard fans might complain about the lack of Tom Bombadil, but I'm okay with that because he really wasn't that integral to plot and/or character development (No, he wasn't. Stop it.). When thinking about an Eye of the World movie saga, I can see alllll the scenes that could be excised with no real loss to the story -- because did we really need to visit yet another tavern??

Game of Thrones is another prime example of an author that has lost his way in his epic fantasy. I can't stop praising HBO for sifting through the detritus to bring only the meat, without ever losing the heart of GRRM's original story and I'm looking forward to how they end the TV show far more than I am looking forward to whatever GRRM eventually plans to do. Assuming he has greater plans than just fanboying over himself.

Back to Eye of the World for a moment. I said the book had some (vaguely) interesting characters. Actually, the only character I care about is Moiraine. I could do with a few less of the younger ones on this fellowship. Half the time, I can't even tell them apart. I suppose that's convenient if any of them were to die, but I can't really say the deadly and dangerous events in the story have filled me with enough dread to actually believe anyone was going to be hurt in any interesting way. I mentioned Brandon Sanderson above, and frankly, he's about the only thing that would encourage me to read on any time soon because I am fond of his characterization and know that he will do a good job of making the characters more likable and memorable than they currently are.

Oh you're just bitter, you might say, and you'd probably be right. But having recently read and loved what Ursula K. Le Guin could accomplish in under 200 words, my meh-ness grows over epic fantasy that is epic just because the author does not know how to trim the fat.

2 of 5 stars

FanArt: Game of Thrones

Season 3 of HBO's Game of Thrones starts this Sunday and I am super excited! To celebrate, here's a post of a sketch I once did of our favorite Master of Coin from the smallest of the Fingers, portrayed by the talented Aidan Gillen. Enjoy!

 Littlefinger by Mogsy

From A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

At the end of A Feast for Crows, GRRM excitedly informed readers that it and the subsequent A Dance With Dragons were actually a single book, separated due to length. He promised that missing characters would be present in Dragons and that the stories would catch up and proceed onward. For this reason, I will often be referring back to Crows.

I feel that separating the books was an unfortunate decision and Dragons suffered for it. I wanted to love this book as much as I loved the previous, but I feel like reading it so closely following Crows hurt my enjoyment of the series. From the beginning of the book, I concluded that the people who read Crows years before and had waited so long for Dragons were at the advantage. They didn’t have to read chapters that literally repeated things word for word from Crows where the books overlapped and those readers were filled with years of anticipation, allowing them to overlook many of the flaws.

What I loved in Crows failed to follow through in Dragons and as a result, I have come to refer to Dragons as “Killing Time Until I Figure Out Where The Hell This Is All Going,” by George RR Martin, featuring the following chapters:

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

After 400 pages or so, "nothing" was happening in this book, and yet I could not stop turning the pages and had already rated this book at four stars. By the time I was done, I'd upped the rating to five stars and determined that this was my favourite book of the entire series.

I can see why many people would not like this book. As I said, "nothing" happens for a thousand pages. After the Battle of Blackwater, the Red Wedding, the War of Five Kings and various other violent and magical events that have taken place over the last three books, this book is stark change, but it is the book that proves just how atypical a fantasy series it is. I cannot think of a single fantasy trope that Martin uses in his storytelling. I cannot identify any tropes, for that matter. From the moment he chopped off the apparent hero's head, Martin made it clear that we are not to expect anything but the unexpected. Don't try to guess what happens next and to whom because you are very likely to be wrong.

No, that's not true. If you guess that someone is going to die, then you'd probably be right. Where, when and how, you won't guess, but it's pretty safe to assume that everyone's going to die in A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't get attached. There is no shortage of death in this book, but, interestingly, a lot of it happens offstage. A lot of everything happens offstage, actually, with information passed on through rumours and the occasional crowmail.

The reader is just as much in the dark about many occurrences and there is no such thing as dramatic irony to rely on. Keeping in mind that A Feast of Crows is only half the story Martin wished to tell in this part of the series, this shouldn't be a surprise. The prominent characters missing from this book are a part of the next and presumably, the rumours we are reading about here will be made more clear in A Dance with Dragons. Not that there are no prominent characters here. There are many, many characters in Crows, with several new ones being introduced, as well as new plots and twists. It may seem as though this would make the series too convoluted for its own good, but the beauty of Martin's epic is that it is so realistic. Of course all these plots and characters would exist in such a world, under such circumstances. It is absolutely amazing that Martin threads it all together so coherently and completely such that a reader paying attention simply can't get lost, despite the magnitude of characters and plotlines.

Crows takes the time to delve very deeply into these characters and plots. This is where many may complain, because the book does not seem to move very far forward. It is filled with characters conniving, searching, plotting, whining, grieving, coping, and most importantly, changing. Several major characters undergo some intriguing transformations throughout this book. Some don't realize they are changing, while others have recognized the changes in themselves and their relationships and look further inward as they grow and learn to survive within the game of thrones. Others change literally, becoming someone else, even as they try to stay true to who they were.

Final verdict:

4 of 5 stars