A Song of Ice & Fire by George R.R. Martin: Book Discussion Thread

[Diunx]

Man what an awful finale.

The whole Sheepstealer thing continues to be completely retarded, there is a huge dragon going around on the Eryie and the Targs don't know about it? Rhae's fukking mom was born and raised in the Eryie!

I hate that they are trying to whitewash Rhaenyra, they turned her into a blank as fukk character, my favorite moments of her has been her going a little heel last night with "A son for a son" and her smirk when she tamed the Bronze Fury.

She killed a bunch of people trying to find dragon riders, wanted to go to Rook's Nest to burn a bunch of soldiers (most of them are farmers that pretty much get forced to fight for these highborn a$$holes), ordered a blockade starving a while city, you don't have to make her a cartoon villain like Aemond but she is not a good person, fighting a war because she wants to sit on a throne.

Daemond didn't need to be in every episode, we didn't need two visions with youn Rhae, two visions with Viserys, that BS with his mom etc, one vision with each of the cameos was enough and you compress his story into 4 episodes, him doing the same shyt during every episode of the show was baffling.

Dissapointed about the north, Jace's time in there was full of conspiracies, did he get married? did his dragon lay eggs on the cripts etc,. was looking forward to some answers and all we got were 5 mins.

Nettles is probably the most popular of the dragon seeds and one of the most popular characters of fire and blood and they decide to leave her out?

Enjoyed the season but they need to bring their A game next season, a lot of goodwill was killed last night and people will be harsher to the next one.

 

[detroitwalt]

Had no idea George was bringing the smoke for HOTD and Condal. He deleted his latest blog post the same day he posted it.

I have no idea what Ryan has planned - if indeed he has planned anything…

 

[Jmare007]

Instead of spending time bytching about a TV adaptation he could be figuring out how to untangle his block for the books we all actually care about

This fat fukk is the worst

 

[Diunx]

Instead of spending time bytching about a TV adaptation he could be figuring out how to untangle his block for the books we all actually care about

This fat fukk is the worst

Is not even that hard, just say fukk it to that part of the story.

Victarion takes the reigns of Mereen, "murders to the pro Dany people? Its obvious the old rulers kill them all"

*Dany comes back* "alright leave a slave in charge my destiny is westeros I had a dream lets go"

Then he keeps the same level of detail and care with the rest of the story, just get out of Essos.

 

[Big Dick]

Is not even that hard, just say fukk it to that part of the story.

Victarion takes the reigns of Mereen, "murders to the pro Dany people? Its obvious the old rulers kill them all"

*Dany comes back* "alright leave a slave in charge my destiny is westeros I had a dream lets go"

Then he keeps the same level of detail and care with the rest of the story, just get out of Essos.

Pretty much what Stephen King said he did when he got backed into a corner while writing the stand. Planted a bomb and killed a big chunk of characters off.

I agree tho. Granted, he feels like his entire legacy depends on how he executes this but he’s underestimating the damage he’s doing by not finishing the series.

 

[O.Red]

Is not even that hard, just say fukk it to that part of the story.

Victarion takes the reigns of Mereen, "murders to the pro Dany people? Its obvious the old rulers kill them all"

*Dany comes back* "alright leave a slave in charge my destiny is westeros I had a dream lets go"

Then he keeps the same level of detail and care with the rest of the story, just get out of Essos.

George wrote himself into a hole with Mereen and adding all the Feast characters, but "fukk it" ain't it breh. It's a slap in the face to the reason people loved the books in the first place

Just dismissively throwing away chunks of story would be worse than him never releasing the books

 

[Piff Perkins]

George is so obsessed over book details that he missed the real issue: the season was bad. There were really good episodes but it quickly became clear they slow walked multiple plots and fukked up what should have been a massive ending. If that season ended with Rhae taking King's Landing it would have been a massive success. That should have been the cliff hanger goal, and then next season would be the slow descent/fall. Now we're going to get a S3 that starts with a bang before quickly resulting in Rhae's downfall and I think people are going to be bummed.

This makes me think George's lament about S3/S4 having drastic and "toxic" changes on the way is just some book changes and not concerns about whether it's actually good or not.

 

[Diunx]

George wrote himself into a hole with Mereen and adding all the Feast characters, but "fukk it" ain't it breh. It's a slap in the face to the reason people loved the books in the first place

Just dismissively throwing away chunks of story would be worse than him never releasing the books

Like I said you keep the same quality for the rest of the story but yeah " fukk it" with the thing that has kept the seriee stuck for 20 years, the fans will get over it.

 

[O.Red]

Like I said you keep the same quality for the rest of the story but yeah " fukk it" with the thing that has kept the seriee stuck for 20 years, the fans will get over it.

"Just scoop out the part of the soup that the roach was in, no one will notice"

 

[Diunx]

.

 

[Diunx]

"Just scoop out the part of the soup that the roach was in, no one will notice"

Yep, and hell it doesn't even have to be shyt, Tyrion and Victarion trolling the old masters and sending them to their dead can be hilarious.

No one is trying to read 5 chapters or whatever the fukk Danny is gonna do with the Dothraki or 3 chapters of their trip to westeros.

"fukk it" is much muuuuch better than no books at all.

 

[Piff Perkins]

I don't think the issue is Meereen. Martin claimed that he solved the issue in ADWD by adding Barristan as a POV. I think the problem is he has too many characters and his writing has gotten significantly more ponderous and bogged down by lore building over narrative. He's probably sitting on a massive amount of pages for TWOW without the plot moving towards a climax that sets up the final book. Perfect example: the Arianna sample chapters. Two chapters of her traveling to meet Connington and "Aegon." She finally arrives at the end of the second chapter only to learn she can't meet Aegon because a battle is about to begin. In the first three books travel typically meant one chapter. There's no reason for her to potentially have three chapters before getting to actually talk to the characters she set out to meet. Then when you consider the battle was supposed to be in ADWD...we could be talking about 200 pages of TWOW before this battle happens. That's just insane to me.

 

[EastByrd]

GRRM is in the right of this. Condal plays with the source material way too much and for no reason. Having read the books I was expecting Jace and Corlys to be leading the Blacks as they did in the books, but they gave all of their plots to Rhaenyra instead. Team Black got gutted that's why Team Green scenes are lowkey way more enjoyable to watch imo

 

[Piff Perkins]

GRRM is in the right of this. Condal plays with the source material way too much and for no reason. Having read the books I was expecting Jace and Corlys to be leading the Blacks as they did in the books, but they gave all of their plots to Rhaenyra instead. Team Black got gutted that's why Team Green scenes are lowkey way more enjoyable to watch imo

While I agree, Martin didn't make this argument. Given his gripes with episodes 1-2, if the rant had continued I'd imagine he would have eventually made this argument tho. At the same time I think they should have added even more stuff for Jace to do. Similar to the way GoT handled Robb. Instead they had Jace basically do two things (Stark and Frey alliances) and then jack shyt after that. He should have had some type of battle scene

I'm fine with expanding the story, which is pretty bare bones as is. I just feel like they expanded it with bad decisions. Daemon spending the entire season going mad in the Riverlands being the main offender. They basically slow walked the arc just to get that final scene of him accepting Rhae as his queen. Very poor writing IMO. You could have achieved that with a couple episodes and gotten Daemon back into the thick of things where he belongs.

 

[detroitwalt]

While I agree, Martin didn't make this argument. Given his gripes with episodes 1-2, if the rant had continued I'd imagine he would have eventually made this argument tho. At the same time I think they should have added even more stuff for Jace to do. Similar to the way GoT handled Robb. Instead they had Jace basically do two things (Stark and Frey alliances) and then jack shyt after that. He should have had some type of battle scene

I'm fine with expanding the story, which is pretty bare bones as is. I just feel like they expanded it with bad decisions. Daemon spending the entire season going mad in the Riverlands being the main offender. They basically slow walked the arc just to get that final scene of him accepting Rhae as his queen. Very poor writing IMO. You could have achieved that with a couple episodes and gotten Daemon back into the thick of things where he belongs.

They fukked Rhaynera up too. The season opened with her wanting Aemond’s head for killing her son but then she spends the rest of the season trying not to go to war. So they stole her crown, the news of which sent her into premature labor killing her baby, killed her son, then killed Rhaenys and she still wanted to try to talk this shyt out.

I never paid attention before but being in that freefolk subreddit I see how much HOTD co-writer Sara Hess is a Rhae stan and the show suffers for it.