thread: 2011-06-19 : Previously on Game of Thrones
On 2011-07-02, Gordon wrote:
Just another opinion - the first book *brilliantly* succeeds at both playing to existing genre norms AND subverting them, so much so that I remain amazed by the achievement. You probably need to have read way-too-many average-or-worse fantasy series to get the full impact, and while I wised-up some years back (hey, maybe in part *because* of A Game of Thrones), I certainly fit that bill before starting the first book. The next two books continued to succeed, and the fourth didn't fail, but did falter. He's taken so long with the fifth that I probably won't be reading more until the series is complete - it's certainly his right to take as long as he feels necessary, I just can't stay interested when the delays are SO long. And . . . there is a danger that series has simply become a mediocre instance of what it was once both being a superior exemplar of and also illuminating by subversion. But Martin is talented. I'm hoping he brings the whole thing back on course. He just won't get more of my money until he proves it :-)
I haven't seen the show yet - some friends have the whole season on DVR, and we'll start watching 'em in a week or three. It is hard to imagine they'll capture everything that made the book special, but maybe there's enough. Some of the comments here make me quite nervous; while the books do have a fantasy-tinged "historical fiction" feel, it's (again, of course, IMO) GOOD historical fiction, which is to say the "historical" does not overwhelm the "fiction." There seems to be some indications that the opposite is true of the TV series, or that the subversion of conventions isn't as compelling as it was in the book. If so, that's too bad - especially since the TV series is apparently commercially successful, the next season has been approved, and the success of a bad adaptation is never a good thing.
