Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:37 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
It's the best fantasy series ever written and the best fantasy TV show ever made. If you don't like it you probably don't like fantasy. I think the HBO show is Top 5.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:39 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
give me some comparables, genuinely love the genre and would love your thoughts (though i'm skeptical since you are wrong about GOT)
and if you say LOTR you're discredited. i don't know anybody who actually read those books who liked them. awesome world-building, OF COURSE, but fuck who needs to read four pages of a poem, over and over and over.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:43 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
Hard to even call GOT fantasy. Maybe "soft fantasy." Sure, there are dragons but they haven't really played a major role just yet. And the things beyond the wall also haven't come into play too much in either the books or the movies. It's more of a War of the Roses political/soft fantasy hybrid.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:46 PM Author: contagious business firm
yeah, but only because it just so happens that the POV characters are primarily concerned with political jostling. There is magic in the world, it's just that WesterosBros don't fuck with it, for some reason.
Its very derivative of the Wars of the Roses with Stark = York and Lannister = Lancaster but that's not necessarily a bad thing because the Wars of the Roses are very interesting.
PS: Aside from the dragons GoT is a pretty low-magic realm. It wasn't even clear for a long time whether there was any actual magic or it was just superstition.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:44 PM Author: floppy black woman
i agree about LOTR but i still think it's better than SoIaF which is way overrated. i'd put SoIaF slightly ahead of Wheel of Time, which is your classic too-length too-many-characters bullshit genre tripe. in my very humble view, SoIaF is not as good as, say, The Dark is Rising, the Belgariad, Dalemark, Prydain, Earthsea, the L'Engle books if you're counting them, or even Harry Potter.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:47 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
OK cool recs, will check out. But have you read all the SOIAF? I will grant that the last two books have been pretty bad, but the first three books were so outstanding that it hasn't soured me from the series. I'm hopeful that George Martin lets the showrunners work some magic on the final two books.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:52 PM Author: floppy black woman
haha. well, i knew you and i had different tastes. :) you could make an argument for GoT, but definitely not the other two. how much fantasy have you read?
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:55 PM Author: contagious business firm
a fair amount. WoT, Malazan, Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn and Stormlight Archive), Kingkiller Chronicles (loving this one so far), some Robin Hobb (also a favorite), Scott Lynch, Tad Williams, Prydain, some Pratchett, a few other randoms by Piers Anthony.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 7:57 PM Author: floppy black woman
oh most of that is not good imo. WoT and sanderson in particular are really bad. i've never read pratchett, everyone says i should. but in general i like smaller, more delicate works with compelling characters and with some mystery to them, i don't get off on huge armies being thrown at each other. for example, i think Redemption of Althalus is way better than anything else by Eddings
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:00 PM Author: floppy black woman
for a series Dark is Rising comes close. maybe Dalemark. for a book... idk, it'd be something by DWJ i'm almost sure. i think she's head and shoulders better than the others when it comes to single works.
one thing that many people think improves GoT over other fantasy is that the characters are older. but they all retain adolescent mindsets, for one reason or another. so this doesn't really change much.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:03 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
Dark is Rising looks to be written for "children/young adults." I can't do that again. Should I try anyway? Harry Potter was a slog if you read them as an adult, especially juxtaposed against the grit of GOT, and the Wheel of Time series reminded me of junior high.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:05 PM Author: floppy black woman
WoT is shit. the "grit" of GoT is just masturbatory imo. i feel the same way about cormac mccarthy. i haven't read Dark is Rising in years, so i can't speak to it. if you want some faux "grit" in your fantasy where a lot of people get raped and murdered and it feels really epic, i mean, idk, that's just not what i know and it's just not what i do, so i don't know where to find it.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:09 PM Author: floppy black woman
idk if i believe in real grit as something worth writing towards. just seems like a silly and useless goal, orthogonal to aesthetic questions. it ALL seems faux to me unless it's crucial to advancing a story which is independently worthwhile
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:44 PM Author: Chartreuse adventurous new version public bath
what? who on earth praises GoT for having older characters? robb and dany claimed their thrones before they could fuckin drive. arya is the world's most mentally complex 11 year old.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:02 PM Author: contagious business firm
I'm kind of a sucker for big epic scenes, dramatic showdowns, that kind of stuff, which tends to inform my preferences, particularly as far as fantasy goes. (e.g. the battle at the end of Lord of Chaos might be my GOAT fantasy chapter).
But I'll add Redemption of Althalus to my reading list. Any other 180 recommendations?
Date: December 23rd, 2014 9:18 PM Author: Well-lubricated Prole Brunch
Ok I started WoT as a teenager and the same with Belgariad. WoT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Belgariad so I really can't take what you are saying seriously. I mean, different strokes and all that, but really, Belgariad beats WoT and GoT? Next you'll be telling me Dragonlance was the best fantasy series
An issue with GoT is that its hard to give the five existing books one single rating or ranking because the first three are really good while four and especially five suck.
Something like LotR is much more consistent across the volumes.
If you think LotR is shitty we aren't going to agree on anything. I'm not a LotR fanatic and it certainly has its faults but to say its shitty is silly.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:01 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
To me it's really bad, almost unreadable. Credit to the guy for basically starting a genre but he went overboard with the languages and the history and all that. Oh look! A poem, stretching for four pages. And another in the next chapter. Tell the truth - you skipped those. At bottom, he just couldn't tell a story especially wrt pacing. Maybe it'd be different were I born in the 30s or 40s.
I've read the books several times but I admit the songs and poems only got read once, if that. But they make up what, 1-2% of the book? That's hardly a reason to dismiss the books.
I like the languages and the history and the sense that the events in the book are occurring against a backdrop of thousands of years of history.
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:09 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
It's not the songs and the poems per se; it's that they're a good illustration of how masturbatory the books were for the author. He could not edit. He could not pace. He did build a cool world that lots of other authors have basically copied to tell an actual, good story.
Pretty much. Not all of books 4 and 5 suck but the decision to separate them by geography was lunacy and they are far far too long with loads of extra characters nobody cares about being introduced which just dilutes the enjoyable parts with the characters you do care about.
The first three books/seasons are amazing, and it seems u don't even have a firm grasp of what characters are still alive etc. go back to fucklaw threading lol
Date: December 23rd, 2014 8:39 PM Author: Razzle dilemma headpube
Why? Because 2 or 3 xo poasters couldn't resist the urge to be contrarian? You're missing out bigtime. There are people on this board who think Breaking Bad was SPS too.