Over the past, oh, two or three months, I read through George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books; those of them published so far, which comprises four books., with the fifth coming out this month. I'd heard good things and had them recommended to me before, but like any good sheeple, I waited until I heard that they were making an HBO show out of it - not one to pass up on a medieval/fantasy show that looks credible, I decided I had to read the books first, at least the first.
The books are a different take on the fantasy genre; most fantasy books are spectacular showcases of action and sword-fighting and wizardry and dragons and whatnot. Most of them feel like "fluff", the term is, meaning that they seem to lack substance. Martin's series is quite the opposite. It is decidedly not "fluff" at all and it feels that way primarily because he shifts the narrative focus away from action and keeps it on the politicking of his world. It's not uncommon for a large battle to take place and only see it from one character's perspective, if at all, and then find out the greater summary of the battle after-the-fact, from another character. It's clear that Martin seems to view battles as a necessary result of the politicking of his realm; not as the primary reason his books exist. He enjoys nuance of character a lot more and does a great job of creating a large variety of striking characters. I would argue, because he delves so deeply into the politics, that he has too many characters - everyone has a name and a title and land and eventually they start to blur together. But I give credit to someone who takes the time to create a name, title and land for every minor character who gets a line of dialogue.
Spoilers, but I'll attempt to avoid anything specific.
I'm going to reference some of the books - to keep this accessible to all readers, I will be purposely vague in my references. I won't ruin anything outright, I promise, but I may allude to characters in a way that might spoil part of the experience for you, so read on at your own peril, or skip ahead to the next bolded section.
Martin doesn't have traditional chapters. Well, he does, only instead of Chapter 1/2/3, etc, he simply divides things up into point of view - so each book has somewhere between six and eight characters whose points of view we follow. It's still written in third-person, but still from that character's perspective and we get to glimpse into their mind. This helps Martin to create particularly vivid characters who are multi-faceted. It also helps him create a world where no one is definitively evil and no one is definitively good - everyone makes hard decisions for what they perceive to be the greater good; some people like their decisions, some people don't.
The best character Martin crafts is, in my opinion, Jaime Lannister, the notorious Kingslayer. He is presented, in the first book, as a first-rate, top-notch prick. The first book is told primarily from the point of view of the Stark family and we end up with their view of Jaime - he's an arrogant asshole; it doesn't help that he grievously wounds one of theirs, either. He's also bedding the king's wife - who happens to be his sister. This isn't known to the Starks, but as readers, we're allowed enough insights to put that together. But as the second book comes along, we're allowed Jaime's point of view, something that's maintained through the fourth book. We start to get inside his head and see what his motivations are, how he views himself, and why he does the things he does - most importantly, why he broke his vows and killed the former king, earning himself titles like Kingslayer and Oathbreaker. I won't go into it here, but another event in the third book, I believe, combined with the revelations about him the reader gleans from his point of view, help make Jaime one of the most interesting characters Martin writes.
If I have one issue with Martin, it starts at the fourth book, A Feast for Crows. He breaks from the storytelling of his past three books and ends up leaving out several major areas and characters, such as Jon Snow and the Wall or Daenerys and everything across the sea. At the end of the book, he notes that they'll get their own book, to be the fifth, which comes out this month (the note was dated June 2005...). I have two issues with this. First is that the fourth book starts to bring the hammer down on people who deserve it; we're left hanging at the end and knowing that the fifth book follows other characters means that continuing the series in the fifth book, as a reader, doesn't satisfy the "WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!" urge. While I know as a writer, I'll enjoy reading the other characters as they likely hear about what's happening from the fourth book, the reader part of me will cringe a little and go "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!" Ah well. The other issue I have with it also comes more as a writer - why break the book into two separate tomes following two separate groups (basically) instead of breaking it into books four and five, but keeping all characters in each book? A Feast for Crows was frustrating because of the amount of new chapter/point-of-view characters it introduced. Some offered valuable insights that deepened what was going on to me; others I honestly would have trouble remembering now or distinguishing from certain other characters.
I'm interested to see how he continues the series, though, and how long it'll end up being. I also can't help but think, as a writer, that if HBO wants to keep pushing their Game of Thrones series based on his work (the series, I should note, is mediocre at best; as a show on premium-cable, also, it has a really startling amount of naked boobs a lot of the time, too), that it may become a distraction to him, an added pressure to get the series done. Then again, he might also be using that to help motivate him.
Less George R.R. Martin, more of what I'm reading now...
So, with those books done for me for now - and I'll wait on the fifth til its in paperback - I've decided to move on to a series my lovely woman recommended to me after we discussed our mutual enjoyment of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, long long ago: the Otherland books, by Tad Williams.
I've gotta say, I'm intrigued. For one, the copyright on this first book, City of Golden Shadow, is 1996. I was on the Internet, gaming, in 1996. That was the year a game called Diablo came out: my first taste of online gaming. I remember what the 'net was like back then and I remember the fun noises that dial-up modems made (BINK BINK PONG WOOOOOONK KKKSHHHHH PONG BINK BINK BINK BINK KKKSHHHHH). Snow Crash was a good read in that regard, too, and also rather startling for being published in 1992, but Snow Crash was also less about the 'net and its possibilities than Otherland is.
As I read through Otherland, I can't help but also look at it through the eyes of someone who's been playing online games for the last fifteen years. I've watched games grow from Ultima Online and Diablo to things like World of WarCraft and online worlds that aren't games, like Second Life. For Williams to foresee something like Second Life, which his 'net represents well, in 1996 is rather striking to me. He even hints at gaming addiction, something that I don't think a lot of us were thinking about in 1996 but are certainly becoming more aware of in 2011, although it's still not an FDA-recognized form of addiction yet (it should be).
I'm not done with the first Otherland book yet; I'm about 250 pages into it and rather enjoying it now. It was a little slow at first, as all books can be, but the premise was interesting and I continued. Once the action starts to pick up, it starts to get to be one of those break-neck reads, where you can't slow down and have to keep going. But then, Mr. Williams does something so many other science-fiction/fantasy authors do - he shifts perspective. Robert Jordan, in his Wheel of Time books, is notorious for this (to me), too. I enjoy nothing, as a reader, less than when a part of a book gets really, really good and in order to manufacture suspense, the author shifts you to another character, making you wait to find out what happens, even though he's primed you to REALLY REALLY WANT THAT. I think it's a weak writing device; you can't even call it a plot device.
Part of writing - and, therefore, reading - is flow. Establish a good flow and it carries the reader and they'll be happier for it. This is true for fiction and non-fiction, even for essay-writing in school. As a reader, if you get to a point of significant action, nothing is worse than a herky-jerky pacing where you're bouncing between event and event and event from character and character and character. It's like riding in a car with someone who goes really fast, then stops, then goes really fast again, and stops. George R.R. Martin (whoops, though I was done talking about him) avoids this because his books lack a great deal of action - because he focuses on the politics of his world primarily, it's less common for him to start driving so fast, so to speak, that you're bothered when he puts on the brakes. Indeed, he often moves you to another character to help accentuate what the character you've been following just did - some decision is made, and you're moving on to someone's reaction, or something they're doing that will be affected by the decision. In any case, you're not often moving away from the event in question. In many other books, you have multiple characters the author focuses on, in multiple places, doing multiple things. As all of those venues shift, it's irritating. Even J.R.R. Tolkien does this, in the Lord of the Rings, but he mitigates it by having two groups - Frodo, with the ring, and everyone else (for the most part). And it's not consistent through the entire series; in the Fellowship, there's one group and you follow it. Then in the Two Towers, as they break apart, you follow... I believe it's three groups - Frodo, Aragorn, and Merry/Pippin. Then in the Return, you follow Frodo and the others. It's manageable, as a reader. Imagine if each character went somewhere different, did different things, and you got bounced between them all. Some writers do that.
I mentioned in my introductory post that, as a writer, I critique what I read as I read it. I'm always looking for things that bother me, because I don't want to bother you when I write. I look for things I don't do as well as I might like to and read things that might help me improve on that. I tend to admire those things; the most recent highlight of that sort is mentioned above, in Martin's handling of Jaime Lannister. He does fantastic things with that character; I hope to write a character as complex and interesting, who so infuriates the reader on one hand, yet is so admirable on the other. Stephen King once said that a writer can't write without reading. It's no coincidence that when I go through periods where I don't read much, I lose motivation to write. It'd be like cooking without eating. Well, you'd starve for one, but besides that obvious point, if you're not tasting anything, how can you know what you like? How can you know what goes good together, how to experiment with your craft? Exactly. On that note, I'll try to update this on occasion in regards to what I'm reading and how it strikes me. I plan to cruise through the Otherland book series (four books) for now and after that, I'm not sure. I don't plan my reading out that far ahead. Perhaps at the end of the year, I'll log in this blog (rhyme!) the books I've completed.
No comments:
Post a Comment