A Feast for Crows
June 20, 2005 4:16 am GeneralI’m a big fan of George R R Martin’s fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire. I’ve read the first three books in the series and I’ve been looking forward to the fourth book since like 2001 or something. Well, it’s finally finished!! I’m so excited.
If you’re into fantasy style books, this is it. Obviously, it’s unfair to try to compare it to Tolkien or anything. But I’ve read some other series and nothing else compares to this. I tried reading Robert Jordan’s stupid-ass Wheel of Time series. What a sleeper! It started out very promising, but the thing has dragged on for like 11 books and for the past three books it feels like nothing much has happened. In fact, after reading the last book I can say most assertively that nothing happened during that book. The plot did not advance.
While Martin’s series is becoming long, I trust him. He originally said that there will be six books in the series, I think, but he recently extended that to seven. Okay, I’ll give him that. But it means something to me, as a reader, that he actually has an end in mind and that he’s not just writing some damned soap opera book series that can go on indefinitely. His plots are actually interesting, and I find myself being surprised by what he writes; this is something that nobody does anymore!! Seriously, nobody actually writes plots that really surprise you. Sometimes, in books or movies or whatever, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to come next but you’re still not surprised when it happens. Martin actually manages to surprise you. You’re sitting there calmly reading your book and drinking some tea when, bam! he goes and does something crazy like killing off the person who appeared to be an essential protagonist.
How many people has Jordan killed off in his series? I don’t know exactly, but I know that they were all “bad guys”. Yippee.
Anyway, seriously.. I’m very excited about FEAST being finished finally. I’ve been waiting for this so long. For awhile, I remember Martin would post stuff on his website about some nasty people bitching at him about taking so long. I wrote to him and told him, “Take as long as you need to. Just make sure it’s as good as the previous books.” I want consistency. I remember reading The Death Gate Cycle by those people who wrote that shitty Dragonlance stuff years ago when I was in middle school. Death Gate was so awesome…. until the end, when it was completely and utterly ruined. Then again, I was in middle school.. maybe if I went back and read that now I’d find that the whole thing sucked.
Okay, I’m done talking about this today. It’s probably hard to tell by reading this, since I’m ranting about other series more than talking about Martin’s series, but I’m really, truly very excited.
