16
Brandon Sanderson / Re: I just wanted to thank you for helping - slight spoilers possibly
« on: December 14, 2007, 08:23:06 PM »
Hey Not Bookstore Guy - I would very much like to engage you in a respectful discussion of the merits (or complete lack thereof) of George RR Martin's series, "A Song of Ice and Fire".
Not to denigrate your opinion but I could not disagree more with your assessment. I had no trouble with the explicit nature of the writing - what I could not stomach were the inconsistencies - to me his world changes whenever he needs to have something different in the story. Three things stood out -
(I put down book 3 half way through and I have never done that before - it was about a year ago so I am going by memory here)
1 - Language - the first inconsistency - the world introduced to us is one where knights refer to each other using the ancient Ser not even Sir. And then they swear in the modern vernacular - f-bombs and other modern swear words in a ancient setting? Utterly ruined the consistency of the world - for me
2 - Undead - the second inconsistency - the mother who died and then came back as undead - two complete books and NO MENTION of undead or anything like that and then suddenly, a character comes back from the dead. And interacts with the live characters - in something like Wheel Of Time, the dark lord from the very first book is referred to as the lord of the grave and a number of references to him being able to reach the dead and bring them back allow for the return of a couple of bad guys much later in the series without disturbing the continuity of the world.
3 - Religion - the third inconsistency - the system of beliefs presented has no mention of heaven or hell - there is no reference to an afterlife or anything like that - the belief system is based in the current living world - and yet certain characters tell others to, "Go to hell" - perhaps this ties in with the first inconsistency but I isolated this as it refers to a system of religious beliefs that is not part of the world.
For those reasons, I put down George RR Martin in favor of other authors....
May I suggest Neil Gaiman?
Not to denigrate your opinion but I could not disagree more with your assessment. I had no trouble with the explicit nature of the writing - what I could not stomach were the inconsistencies - to me his world changes whenever he needs to have something different in the story. Three things stood out -
(I put down book 3 half way through and I have never done that before - it was about a year ago so I am going by memory here)
1 - Language - the first inconsistency - the world introduced to us is one where knights refer to each other using the ancient Ser not even Sir. And then they swear in the modern vernacular - f-bombs and other modern swear words in a ancient setting? Utterly ruined the consistency of the world - for me
2 - Undead - the second inconsistency - the mother who died and then came back as undead - two complete books and NO MENTION of undead or anything like that and then suddenly, a character comes back from the dead. And interacts with the live characters - in something like Wheel Of Time, the dark lord from the very first book is referred to as the lord of the grave and a number of references to him being able to reach the dead and bring them back allow for the return of a couple of bad guys much later in the series without disturbing the continuity of the world.
3 - Religion - the third inconsistency - the system of beliefs presented has no mention of heaven or hell - there is no reference to an afterlife or anything like that - the belief system is based in the current living world - and yet certain characters tell others to, "Go to hell" - perhaps this ties in with the first inconsistency but I isolated this as it refers to a system of religious beliefs that is not part of the world.
For those reasons, I put down George RR Martin in favor of other authors....
May I suggest Neil Gaiman?