Jesus christ, has there ever been a more overrated series of books?
I really don't get how so many people can be tricked into thinking that this is good or that The Mountain That Doesn't Write is a genius. It's very clear that he never planned farther than the first book as the quality quickly deteriorates after that. Moreover, since The Mountain That Always Eats is the kind of author that writes before he thinks, so to speak, he gets easily distracted by subplots that serve no purpose and lead nowhere, and eventually end with the characters involved dying in some horrible way simply because The Mountain That Knows No Scales can't think of another way to end them.
Nah, George R.R. Martin has a lot of knowledge about history and wrote a fictional world that shows it.
I know you're being contrarian but obviously the most overrated series of books is Harry Potter. Rowling took something that every 12 year old has thought about and made it a book. It's not special or unique or even well written, its total schlock. At least Game of Thrones is a fleshed out world to live in, where everybody has a history and a place and a time.
Jonathan Evans
No need to troll, user. You can just agree.
Gabriel Wood
He ends exciting chapters on a cliffhanger and then moves over to something boring, i actually thought it was well done even if it was annoying.
Benjamin Cooper
Storm of swords is the best book and then it goes down hill from there.
Thomas Garcia
Take your own advice, kid.
Caleb Williams
>getting angry over genre fiction
Jayden Russell
He’s good as far as fantasy goes Good character arcs that touch several aspects of the world as they unfold and he is able to instill a sort of lingering wonder which radiates from each stage of plot progression As you question the fate of characters you like and the geopolitical landscape at large. The philosophies and culture are appropriate and add depth where there is none to be found in the writings of other fantasy authors. In the end the piece can only be valued for what it tries to do wether you agree with the artistic direction or not, and the strengths measured by the parameters set by the tradition. On these accounts a Song of Ice and Fire will always remain a staple of modern Fantasy.
Ryder James
>George R.R. Martin has a lot of knowledge about history He really doesn't, and ASoIaF certainly isn't indicative of any such knowledge. The feudal society showcased in the series is laughably oversimplified, shallow and based on outright misconceptions about the middle ages.
>the most overrated series of books is Harry Potter That's certainly an opinion, but I'd argue that Harry Potter is actually a fairly decent series for pre- and young teens, which are the target audience. ASoIaF, however, is just straight up bad at being what it tries to be.
Eh. I found most of Storm being boring and forgetable with only a few chapters that actually managed to be exciting.
>Good character arcs In the first book, perhaps. Anything after that is just meandering drivel with no goal in mind.
>he is able to instill a sort of lingering wonder I do not get this feeling at all. Rather, the combination of ridicilously big structures, laughable amounts of casual violence, and straight up silly attempts at intrigue gave me the impression of cheap schlock entertainment.
>The philosophies and culture These are practically nonexistent in the books, and what little information we do get is typically incredibly stupid.
Aiden Hughes
WHEN THE NEW BOOK IS COMING OUT? FAT FUCK IS GOING TO DIE ON A SHITTER.
Angel Cruz
It's more about the intricate politics of the era of War of the Roses, which GoT is basically a fantasy version of. Feudalism is on the way out, I'd expect you to have known that if you wanted to discuss history.
Cameron Hall
>the intricate politics of the era of War of the Roses Which, again, ASoIaF only has a shallow and oversimplified resemblance to.
Jose Jenkins
>shallow In the realm of genre fiction, compared to what?
Joshua Rivera
I typically don't read fantasy so I wouldn't know how other books compare in this regard. I also don't see why that would matter. If I saw you eating shit and you told me that it at least tasted better than most other shit, that wouldn't change the fact that you were still eating shit.
>I also don't see why that would matter. You actually having knowledge to draw from and draw referential data of comparison actually does matter.
You're basically saying you don't know what you're talking about and you should be taken seriously anyway. Read a book you fucking nigger.
Jackson King
Other books being potentially worse does not make ASoIaF good.
Gavin Reed
This is exactly how a book store employee warned me away from the series back in the early 2000s. Nothing I've seen has made me doubt the kid to this day.
I read the books and came the exact opposite conclusion. It comes off like he may have watched some History channel documentaries so he's vaguely aware of some interesting historical episodes like the War of the Roses but when it comes to the day to day life of medieval societies he is woefully inept.
One example is how he treats war with a very modern mindset, applying the modern doctrine of total war to societies of the past. Wars in feudal societies were generally private affairs between monarchs. It usually made no sense to terrorize and kill peasants because they were disconnected with the war effort, and because they were essentially property tied to the land, they were seen as the prize of war. It doesn't make much sense for a king to spend all of his wealth capturing a neighbors castle only to destroy it for the same reason it doesn't make any sense for a the king to kill his neighboring peasants. He has nothing to gain by doing either.
Throughout the series peasants are treated like Soviets on the eastern front and it's ridiculous.
Jeremiah James
>reading shitty fantasy books gives you "knowledge to draw from and draw referential data of comparison" that is necessary to understand how GRRM's shitty books aren't THAT shitty after all Take this sort of goy thinking back to r*ddit
Kayden Richardson
Ice and Fire was a hell of a lot better when normalfags hadn't discovered it and was still pretty niche.
Jason Ortiz
I doubt Jesus Christ would be responding to Yea Forums threads if he were alive today so please refrain from addressing your post to him
Aiden Torres
Frankly the idea of the same noble houses holding the same holdings over thousands of years in a feudal system is just insulting.
Nicholas Davis
> insulting lmao kid
Owen Jackson
/his/ here. gurrrm is a fucking retard who hasn't studied SHIT. Fuck off back to /scififantasy/ you retard. >ooh but the red wedding was like taken from history loloolll? he must be like SUUUPER educated omg Fuck off. At least read some historical fiction if your 80 IQ ass can't pick up a real book.
Chase Johnson
Harry Potter is way more complex when it comes to "knowledge about history" than ASOIAF, it's pretty obvious that Rowling has studied stuff like the occult, witchcraft, folklore, paganism and such quite extensively. You can see that her story is heavily influenced by mythology and jungian ideas while his story is some grimdark morally relativistic soap opera with a shallow layer of "you can see how this is kinda like the reformation, right?" on top.
Bentley Hughes
>"you can see how this is kinda like the reformation, right?" About that, it also bothers me how GRRM doesn't seem to have a cohesive theme to his story. Sometimes he wants it to be commentary on the fantasy genre. Sometimes he want it to be a commentary on the idolization of heroes. Sometimes it's about the evils of war. Sometimes it's about nuclear weapons. Sometimes it's about patriarchy. The books are simply all over the place when it comes to theme. Compare that to Tolkien who, for whatever flaws his writing may have had, did have a concise theme in "power corrupts."
Dylan Adams
>he thinks the theme of JRR Tolkien is “power corrupts”
It's about as subtle as GRRM's "twists," so I don't really see how you could miss it. The reason Frodo is the one who must take the Ring is because he doesn't have any ambitions that it can corrupt.
Jace Diaz
If his characters died in spectacular ways that fit well with your schema, would you feel the impact of their death? A stroke, a car accident, a heart attack -- they come without warning. It is the surprising, unpoetic, meaningless death which most impacts the hearts of men.
Gabriel Adams
>The reason Frodo is the one who must take the Ring is because he doesn't have any ambitions that it can corrupt
HAHAHHAAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAAAA
Ian Lopez
You seem upset, user. Do you want to talk about it?
Evan Richardson
>tfw you will never experience the love that Beren and Luthien shared
David Martinez
>"power corrupts." The ring didn't make Sauron evil the satanic character Morgoth turned him away from God
Andrew Mitchell
>The ring didn't make Sauron evil Well duh. Sauron was the one who made the Ring as a focal point for all of his power. Power had already corrupted him. The reason the Ring corrupts everyone else is because it grants them too much power to handle.
>Morgoth turned him away from God Only partly right. Sauron was originally driven by a desire to improve on Eru's creation. He was compelled to serve Melkor in part because he too sought to change creation, and partly because Melkor had the power that Sauron required. Sauron wasn't fully corrupted until after the Fall of Númenor, however, long after Morgoth had already been thrown out through the Door of Night.
>Sauron was of course not 'evil' in origin. He was a 'spirit' corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth. He was given an opportunity of repentance, when Morgoth was overcome, but could not face the humiliation of recantation, and suing for pardon; and so his temporary turn to good and 'benevolence' ended in a greater relapse, until he became the main representative of Evil of later ages. But at the beginning of the Second Age he was still beautiful to look at, or could still assume a beautiful visible shape – and was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up. >Letter 153 To Peter Hastings
John Thompson
>The reason the Ring corrupts everyone else is because it grants them too much power to handle. No it's because the ring contains the essence of Sauron which allows him to communicate with its bearer and sway them to his side
Jason Moore
No.
>Of the others only Gandalf might be expected to master him – being an emissary of the Powers and a creature of the same order, an immortal spirit taking a visible physical form. In the 'Mirror of Galadriel', 1381, it appears that Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring and supplanting the Dark Lord. If so, so also were the other guardians of the Three, especially Elrond. But this is another matter. It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power. But this the Great had well considered and had rejected, as is seen in Elrond's words at the Council. Galadriel's rejection of the temptation was founded upon previous thought and resolve. In any case Elrond or Galadriel would have proceeded in the policy now adopted by Sauron: they would have built up an empire with great and absolutely subservient generals and armies and engines of war, until they could challenge Sauron and destroy him by force. Confrontation of Sauron alone, unaided, self to self was not contemplated. One can imagine the scene in which Gandalf, say, was placed in such a position. It would be a delicate balance. On one side the true allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior strength because Sauron was not actually in possession, and perhaps also because he was weakened by long corruption and expenditure of will in dominating inferiors. If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken from him for ever. But the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end. >Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great). >Letter 246 From a letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar
What is it GRRM usually say when he tries to explain away how every measurement described in the book is impossibly large? Something like how the book is really the account of some maester or something? Imagine a maester writing that while not laughing.
Hunter Baker
that isn't even the quote from the series. my favourites are >Her cunt became the world >The sight of their arousals was arousing >The ship growled beneath him like a constipated fat man straining to shit
Carson Cook
>the best quote*
Matthew Morris
>be in military jail >happen to bring a copy of T.E. Lawrence's masterly work "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" >due to nothing to do in jail finish it in like two or three days >need something else to read, badly, in order to pass the next few weeks by >ask jail guard if he has anything >brings me the fifth (i think?) book of ASOIAF >"k..." >Start reading >can't even get more than a few pages in without feeling disgust for the mediocrity and pedestrian nature of this filth >give it back to him >pretty much just lie in bed doing nothing for the next few weeks instead of reading Gay Arse Arse Martin that's my story
Darkstar is cool because it's laughably edgy at first, especially since he's the only one who calls himself Darkstar and nobody has ever heard of him; but it's also great because he's Gerold Dayne, a relative of Ser Arthur Dayne--one of the greatest knights in Westerosi history. Arthur Dayne was known as the "Sword of Morning," which conjures up images of the Sun and daylight, so a "Darkstar" is the reversed image of the Dayne legacy, and he is of the night instead of the day.
Gavin Reed
GRR is to books what Quentin Tarantino is to movies
Noah Green
I've had some gnarly shits in my day but they have never made me thirstier. Is this something fat people experience?
Jackson Reyes
Severe diarrhea can dehydrate you. But no, it’s not as if you go to the shitter and come out thirsty.
Anthony Evans
im a rebel without a cause
Nathaniel Gutierrez
y'know, on /r/books people begin threads about books that they love rather than books they wish to denigrate. Its a pretty good system
Andrew James
then go back there, fag
Christian Robinson
Do you like Darkstar, user?
Connor Scott
ITT: Cunts who have actually read these GRRM books. Back in the day we wouldn't tolerate this. There should be no one here who has read even a single one of them.
As much as I hate the books, doing so just because it's hip or some shit is fucking retarded. If I haven't read a book I don't have an opinion on it.
Landon Watson
>just because it's hip No, it's utter shit writing.
Zachary Reed
But you haven't read it, so how would you know?
Bentley Baker
>She was sopping wet when he entered her. “Damn you,” she said. “Damn you damn you damn you.” He sucked her nipples till she cried out half in pain and half in pleasure. Her cunt became the world.
All I need to know. It's juvenalia.
Tyler Hughes
And here's some more with a quick google search >Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. >"The three men were erect. The sight of their arousal was arousing"
Nathaniel Roberts
>Her cunt became the world. That's actually quite profound. Mundanes like you just can't into the esoteric depths of George RR Martin. Note the vesica pisces shape on this traditional tarot card entitled "the World"
These have already been pointed out and laughed at in the thread. Snippets like these can to some degree inform you on whether you'll enjoy the book or not, but that's all. If someone were to show me snippets like those from Black Company or something, I'd just say "ok, I wasn't planning on reading that anyway." I wouldn't say I hate Black Company or call it shit writing unless I actually read it and thought that.
It's incredibly easy to take a snippet out of context and make it seem way more stupid than it actually is. That said, "their arousal was arousing" is stupid regardless of context.
Brayden Cooper
>silly amounts of casual violence >senseless swearing at every turn >nudity >constant references to better and more original works You might actually be onto something here. The only real difference is probably that Tarantino seems more self-aware about what he's making.
Leo Powell
You seem to fail to see that if an author even writes like that in the first place then their entire work is nullified. I would want to have no associate whatever with such an author if they wrote those passages. It's juvenile trash.
Angel Gutierrez
George RR Martin is an initiate of the highest order. He conceals profound wisdom under the coarsest possible exterior in order to elude the profane gaze of the unwashed exoterics. This passage , for example, contains a variety of symbols, of which I can only elaborate here a small portion. Note that it takes place during Sunset, which is the closing of a cycle of manifestation. The "looser and looser stools" refers to the hastening of degenerative processes at the close of the cycle, and water represents the psychic or subtle domain of manifestation, upon which many people will draw in search of spiritual truths, only to exacerbate their degenerative condition.
Elijah Mitchell
I'm having literature class flashbacks
Logan Rogers
Oh for fucks sake he is describing someone having diarrhea
Michael Perry
26 years to barely write 6 books. How can one man bamboozle so many.
Jonathan Lee
This shit is a brain disease. Shut the fuck up you lunatic.
Lucas Green
Why are you surpried. I feel like you have to be reading only genre fiction to be this angry about a book being popular and bad at the same time.
Christian Thompson
Guys... I think he's taking the piss. I'm the one he was actually replying to, the one who should've been annoyed, but I instantly got it as a joke. At least I fucking hope it is.
they're in the fucking picture you posted, you daft cunt.
Landon White
Nah, I barely read any genre fiction as they don't ever really interest me enough to pick them up in the first place. I have a few friends who reads quite a bit of it, however, and whenever they try to explain the premise of some story they have read I usually just roll my eyes and zone out. I read ASoIaF in the early to mid 00's and didn't think much off it. Really, the only reason I cared enough to make this thread to begin with is because recently (thanks to the popularity of the tv-series, I suspect) I've happened to come across several forum posts and youtube videos praising GRRM's genius and calling the books methodically planned masterpieces, which very clearly is not the case.
James Bailey
Oh, I thought you were referring to a passage about strawberries from a Martin book. Actually, there is no official or canonical color scheme for the Marseille tarot. I very much doubt those were intended to be strawberries. The Marseille tarot is very old, and we don't have any original cards, just the plates that were used to make them, so the coloring has been more of a creative decision on the part of different designers/distributors.
John Gonzalez
no shit. anyways, as you were.
Christopher Taylor
lol look at this turbo sperg
Juan Martin
...for not reading trash fantasy?
Cameron Davis
Wait, you WEREN'T joking?
Jack Davis
I love the series, its great. I was introduced to Lord of the Rings first as a child and it was the door that brought me to the Fantasy genre.
Luke Bennett
I’m just kind of giving him what he wanted.
I mean, I understand he most likely wasn’t serious but the whole situation was still much funnier with my reply
Jason Diaz
Dune > LotR > GoT > WoT
Dune ain't even fantasy but I felt like it needed saying.
David Thompson
Close. Reverse LOTR and Dune. Add Watership Down after Dune.
Because the universe and lore of Watership Down is just as detailed as the others, that’s why.
Jayden Hall
This post made me realize that I hate literature. I'll just go and watch a science video or something.
Jaxon Murphy
>conflating profane "literature" with esoterica
Andrew Perez
For trying to dictate that everyone should follow your premature dismissal of an entire series on the basis of a few cherry-picked sentences. It's arrogant and if you tried saying that out loud in a generalized fantasy event or something, people would just ignore you as the village idiot.
