>start reading GRRM's ASoIaF to see if IQfys hatred of it is contrarianism or factual
>the story is actually very decent nd the characters wonderfully engrossing in a pulpy medieval drama kind of way
>currently halfway through A Feast for Crows
>look forward to every Jaime and am never disappointed each time
>realize I can't trust IQfy for anything
These books are genuinely entertaining and good.
He can write well, but can’t finish his most popular series. Way better than Snanderson as far as fantasy. There is a reason the books were popular.
>way better than Sanderson
What a high bar
Good timing, Winds of Winter surely releasing in 2024.
>Good timing, Winds of Winter surely releasing in 2024.
oh sweet summer child
midwits are mad because theres no ending and might never be one
How does wanting something you put lots of time engrossing yourself in to be finished make someone a "midwit?"
Pretending that you don't like the books anyway just because you'll never have an ending is prime midwit behavior.
First 3 books are genuinely very good and entertaining.
4 and 5 have too much rambling going on and he keeps introducing new characters and pov we don't care about.
Book 6 and 7 will never come out.
This is such a wrong take I am taken aback by it. Martin grew into his writing over time, the earlier you go into his work the more amateur crudity you see. You're going to be bringing 10 times as often reading A Game of Thrones than Dance, because he literally got like 20 years of experience between.
>e. You're going to be bringing 10 times as often
I meant cringing*
Yeah basically, his style improves a lot over time. Though there are some serious faults like him constantly using "useless as nipples on a breastplate" or unconvincing idiosyncrasies of parlance like "much and more". There's no subtlety that's for sure.
>There is a reason the books were popular.
It's because he doesn't write them like books, he writes them like a TV script. You'll notice basically every single chapter ends on a upswing and a cliffhanger. There's deep but reliable formula involved.
>4 and 5 have too much rambling going on and he keeps introducing new characters and pov we don't care about.
You're not supposed to admit that being a brainlet is why you don't like the books.
I agree with this assessment, except I do think the man will complete the series.
in before: Dark wings, dark words. Cramped legs. Mummer's farce. Suckling pig.
There's a lot of garbage in books 4 and 5 but a lot of gold as well. The Jaime POVs in 4 and the Jon POVs in 5 are some of my favorites across the whole series.
>everyone always jerks off the Jaime chapters
>when Theon's parts in Dance are by far the best things Martin has ever written
The part when he decides that he doesn't want to be Reek anymore, that he wants to reclaim his name of Theon Greyjoy, had me tearing up a little.
>https://thehawke.github.io/twow-excerpts/chapters/theon.html
>You've got to know your name.
I really marvel at it, somehow Martin wrote one of the best tragic characters in decades. I'm almost convinced it is an accident, because Theon's characterization is so different from the rest of his "bad end" characters which just seem like misery porn, but Theon has a strong sense of past present and future which gives him a wonderfully tormented effect.
Frick off boy
You need to realise that every narrative character is not part of the political plot and is inconsequential.
Yes she *DOES* become a narrative character.
The last two books get ragged on because the plot doesn't really move forward, they lack an ending, they're a bit bloated, they were unecessarily cut in two and because there will never be another book.
Yet the actual writing is miles better (even with the stupid quirks like repeating words are wind every other page) than in AGOT and those books have some of the best parts of the whole series. Not just Jaime, but Cersei, Reek, Victarion and even Connington.
If the series was ever finished which it won't be, people would more easily admit the quality of those two books.
>even Connington
*especially Connington
the latter books may be better but it's when he is losing his grip on the plot which makes the books unsatisfying to read.
Most IQfyners in general are untrustworthy, moronic, insane and ignorant.
The problem with the series is that Martin is terminally American, and views everything through the lens of a modern American. Take the way he portrays peasants in the series. Weak, helpless, powerless, poverty ridden. Perpetually oppressed and abused by bandits and evil lords.
In reality, a 15th century British peasant by modern standards was a multi-millionaire, a landowner, and a veteran. He was a skilled archer, who knew many other skilled archers, and they would all get together and run off bandits (assuming they weren't the bandits to begin with, tacitly approved by the local lord of course) with deadly force. He owned several hectares of land, and had lords offering him money to leave that land and farm theirs instead, because there were never enough skilled farmers and men-at-arms.
This is made even more absurd by the world building. The series is set in a world with irregular and long winters. In such a world, skilled farmers should be an incredibly valuable resource, and highly protected. But in ASoIaF it seems like nobody is ever watching out for the farmers. Where does King's Landing get its food?
In short, Martin has a very myopic view of life in such a setting, in his mind, all progress must be forward, so anything in the "past" must obviously be worse than it is in the present, and this severely undermines his worldbuilding and characters.
m not sure I entirely agree with your assessment. After all, when we left off in Dance most of Westeros is set to starve to death and half the peasantry are in secret rebellion and occupied with waylaying and hanging their ruling class.
But why was the entirety of the ruling class so universally incompetent all at the same time when they all know for a fact that food is literally the only thing that matters?
>>But why was the entirety of the ruling class so universally incompetent all at the same time
They weren't. Tywin was by all reasonable metrics extremely competent and was undone by a kind of act of god. And even as we left off his brother was unfricking things left and right. But there is a decades old conspiracy running underneath everything and intentionally sabotaging the political climate for the sake of infighting.
And I'll remind you, 2 of the 7 Kingdoms haven't even entered the war so far and are extremely well provisioned.
>when they all know for a fact that food is literally the only thing that matters?
You'd need a pretty big castle to contain your fields and farms. Kind of silly to hear someone describe the plot of ASoIaF as unrealistic when it's literally based on the 100 years war with a peppering of DnD magic and zombie bullshit.
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