...The Wall Falls, Everyone Dies
Feb. 26th, 2009 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenSo, George Martin’s had a bunch of posts up regarding people complaining about how long it’s taking for A Dance with Dragons to come out.
So, on the one hand, I sympathise if he’s being bombarded with nasty messages and demands he get on with it, and I do feel a little bad about my comment on the series in the book list meme being simply ‘FINISH THE SERIES ALREADY’.
On the other hand – well, the post-script to Feast for Crows seemed to imply the next book was near finished, and the main reason for splitting them up was just to reduce the physical size of each volume. That was three and a half years ago. So either he was lying then about having totally already written a ton of stuff about Tyrion and Daenerys and Jon, or he actually had written all that stuff and now he’s just rewriting it over and over again. In which case, there comes a point where you need to be told “Dude, get it in a publishable state and then stop fiddling with it!” There’s a point where revisions don’t improve a work any more, they just delay it.
And I’ve been a little concerned right from the start about how - and if - all the disparate storylines are going to tie together. It seems to me there’s three main stories; the Others in the north, Daenerys’ growing army in the south, and the squabbling noble families of Westeros. Now, for the most part, the series has focused on the Westeros storylines – which is why I’m concerned, since once either Daenerys’ army finally reaches Westeros, or the Others break through the Wall… well, who’s ended up ruling King’s Landing becomes a little irrelevant, doesn’t it?
A Feast for Crows didn’t do much to allay my concerns, since it completely fails to advance any of the existing storylines, instead opting to introduce a bunch of unrelated plots. The delays in the volume that’s supposed to focus on the movers and shakers of each storyline makes me even more concerned that Martin doesn’t actually have a plan for where the storyline is going. Maybe there’s some fannish entitlement in demanding he get on with it, but I don’t think it’s that arrogant to ask that a storyteller not be stringing everyone along with a shaggy-dog story…
So, on the one hand, I sympathise if he’s being bombarded with nasty messages and demands he get on with it, and I do feel a little bad about my comment on the series in the book list meme being simply ‘FINISH THE SERIES ALREADY’.
On the other hand – well, the post-script to Feast for Crows seemed to imply the next book was near finished, and the main reason for splitting them up was just to reduce the physical size of each volume. That was three and a half years ago. So either he was lying then about having totally already written a ton of stuff about Tyrion and Daenerys and Jon, or he actually had written all that stuff and now he’s just rewriting it over and over again. In which case, there comes a point where you need to be told “Dude, get it in a publishable state and then stop fiddling with it!” There’s a point where revisions don’t improve a work any more, they just delay it.
And I’ve been a little concerned right from the start about how - and if - all the disparate storylines are going to tie together. It seems to me there’s three main stories; the Others in the north, Daenerys’ growing army in the south, and the squabbling noble families of Westeros. Now, for the most part, the series has focused on the Westeros storylines – which is why I’m concerned, since once either Daenerys’ army finally reaches Westeros, or the Others break through the Wall… well, who’s ended up ruling King’s Landing becomes a little irrelevant, doesn’t it?
A Feast for Crows didn’t do much to allay my concerns, since it completely fails to advance any of the existing storylines, instead opting to introduce a bunch of unrelated plots. The delays in the volume that’s supposed to focus on the movers and shakers of each storyline makes me even more concerned that Martin doesn’t actually have a plan for where the storyline is going. Maybe there’s some fannish entitlement in demanding he get on with it, but I don’t think it’s that arrogant to ask that a storyteller not be stringing everyone along with a shaggy-dog story…
no subject
on 2009-02-26 06:19 am (UTC)I actually didn't like A Game of Thrones the first time I read it because of exactly the point you raise here: once everyone starts freezing and Others invade, who cares whether so-and-so has an eensy bit more power than such-and-such? On a second read, I took it more as a Greek tragedy: you know the outcome (Too-Noble-to-Live Ned stops living, squabbling monarchs distract everyone while certain death approaches, that sort of thing), but that's part of the fun. (In a side note, I never understood why everyone was so shocked at Ned's death. I thought it was obvious from pretty early on that all vestiges of order and nobility were going to have to die so everyone else could descend into chaos and brutality.)
But after four huge books of "Look at these silly power squabbles; they'll be totally unprepared when they get attacked by snow-vampires and dragons simultaneously!" I am plenty ready for the attacking to get underway. The author promised! I get the point already, so let's get to Stage 2!