In retrospect, assuming GRRM would be able to crank out the remaining books before the show ended was a fool's hope.
I don't think anyone could have predicted that he'd slow down this much. If he'd kept to the same schedule as AFFC and ADWD - which were already seen as incredibly delayed at the time - we'd still be getting the final book in the series this year.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Stopping technically counts as slowing down I guess. I wonder if he got burned out or decided that doing Hollywood type things was a hell of a lot more interesting than slogging out a manuscript in his study.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
We got an ending with the show, and I personally hated it, so I'm satisfied now and not particularly caring for another book.
Honestly, I just want to see what an actual writer would do with that ending. I can see so many pieces that I think work thematically and narratively, but it’s all undermined by how little dialogue and character development there is in the lead-up. And what is there is clumsy and juvenile.
Instead you get Tyrion and Varys trading vapid eunuch and dwarf jokes (certainly nothing more interesting on their minds), endless CG dragon scenes, and so many conversations that cut away right when it might reveal something about a person’s motivations.
I defended the series and show runners a lot on the way to the end, but without GRRM’s material as a backstop and source of dialogue they were absolutely incapable of developing this story.
Edit: The final season is probably the most money and non-writing talent poured into a rough draft outline of a story in history.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Stopping technically counts as slowing down I guess. I wonder if he got burned out or decided that doing Hollywood type things was a hell of a lot more interesting than slogging out a manuscript in his study.
Or with fuck you money he no longer has the drive? It happens.
Or he wrote himself into a corner, which is undoubtedly part of it.
I think the show-runners and writers deserve a lot of shit for the last season.
At the same time, assuming the final "this is how each character winds up" came from Martin, I have no idea how you get from where the books are now to that ending in a way that actually is satisfying. I'm not sure Martin knows, either.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited April 2021
He should've just done the time-skip.
It would've allowed him to jump past all the problems he had to work through (e.g., Meereen) and no doubt is still working through.
The whole series really is an interesting object lesson in why certain rules of writing exist and how they can (and perhaps cannot) be overcome. Giving all your characters the same or very similar names? Makes for rough reading, but isn't insurmountable. Having multiple PoV characters, some of whom die and some of whom are introduced later on? A lot of work with varying reactions from the audience, but again not insurmountable. Realistically accounting for time, distance, and communication at all times? Difficult and can create pacing issues, but still doable. Having literally dozens of interweaving plot lines and characters to account for? Coupled with everything else, perhaps a bridge too far.
I think the show-runners and writers deserve a lot of shit for the last season.
At the same time, assuming the final "this is how each character winds up" came from Martin, I have no idea how you get from where the books are now to that ending in a way that actually is satisfying. I'm not sure Martin knows, either.
Nah. A lot of the answers were probably metaphorical and so don’t have an issue. Arya rides into the sunset/sails into the west. Got turned into Arya literally riding into the sunset and then sailing into the west
Honestly, I'm kinda glad on a personal level. For those who were more invested, and disappointed they didn't get a satisfactory ending, I am sorry
you won't get one.
But this just means I can memoryhole the entire experience, beyond being skeptical of any new projects. No more what ifs, or maybes.
I think the show-runners and writers deserve a lot of shit for the last season.
At the same time, assuming the final "this is how each character winds up" came from Martin, I have no idea how you get from where the books are now to that ending in a way that actually is satisfying. I'm not sure Martin knows, either.
Nah. A lot of the answers were probably metaphorical and so don’t have an issue. Arya rides into the sunset/sails into the west. Got turned into Arya literally riding into the sunset and then sailing into the west
I doubt it but maybe. But Arya's ending was probably the least weird. I don't know at what point Martin told the show people how it all ends but I can't imagine being told, "Yeah, so, Jon kills Dany after she goes on a dragon murder rampage. What? No, no, he's not king. He gets exiled by High King Bran. Yeah, Bran. He's king in the end. Nah, everyone's pretty cool with it." and have to figure out how to get from point A to that.
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fRAWRstThe Seas CallThe Mad AnswerRegistered Userregular
edited April 2021
as someone who was introduced via the show, fell in love with the books and became a "superfan" of all the lore and histories and characters, and still loves to go back to the books and reread it all in its amazingness, its hard to feel hype. used to go to r/asoiaf daily, read up on theories and comments and generally love the entire universe. its hard to muster excitement for georges other projects, and i will bet good money that none of these hbo series ever get released
its been 10 fucking years since the last book
i just wanted
jon to stay dead and become the next nights king, and kill everyone else and thats it thats the story
Stopping technically counts as slowing down I guess. I wonder if he got burned out or decided that doing Hollywood type things was a hell of a lot more interesting than slogging out a manuscript in his study.
Which is amusing because he got out of Hollywood script writing to be freed from the constraints of composing for the big/small screen.
Maybe the series is cursed and like whoever is writing it is incapable of finishing it. Martin dies and then passses it off to some other respected writer in the space to finish. He goes mad over 50 years unable to complete it, passes off to another beloved writer, etc. In fact, this may one of the treatments Martin is doing for HBO. Finale is someone finishing it 5,0000 years in the future and suddenly Cthulu rises from his underwater palace alive again in that strange aeon.
Stopping technically counts as slowing down I guess. I wonder if he got burned out or decided that doing Hollywood type things was a hell of a lot more interesting than slogging out a manuscript in his study.
Which is amusing because he got out of Hollywood script writing to be freed from the constraints of composing for the big/small screen.
Which were probably "budget" and now that isn't so much of a problem for him.
Maybe the series is cursed and like whoever is writing it is incapable of finishing it. Martin dies and then passses it off to some other respected writer in the space to finish. He goes mad over 50 years unable to complete it, passes off to another beloved writer, etc. In fact, this may one of the treatments Martin is doing for HBO. Finale is someone finishing it 5,0000 years in the future and suddenly Cthulu rises from his underwater palace alive again in that strange aeon.
It's just going to be Wheel of Time part deux. Which is what I feared and why I didn't pick it up years ago, because I wanted it finished before I started and getting burned again.
Maybe the series is cursed and like whoever is writing it is incapable of finishing it. Martin dies and then passses it off to some other respected writer in the space to finish. He goes mad over 50 years unable to complete it, passes off to another beloved writer, etc. In fact, this may one of the treatments Martin is doing for HBO. Finale is someone finishing it 5,0000 years in the future and suddenly Cthulu rises from his underwater palace alive again in that strange aeon.
It's not cursed, it's just badly structured.
Martin started out with a fairly large cast of PoV characters and a large number of tangentially connected plot-lines. Usually when authors do that they gradually tie the disparate plots together and shave off points of view because either that person dies, they become irrelevant to the narrative, or just a few of them are in the same place and you don't need that many narrators. I'm pretty sure that whenever Martin gets bored with a character or gets a bout of writer's block he just adds another one, because every book seems to have more PoVs and plot lines than the last. He had to split a book in half because he had too many things going on that were sufficiently unrelated to one another he could split it in half by PoV characters. It's a huge mess and I don't really see how it's possible for him to wrap it all up in two books without a lot of characters' arcs ending in "And then they died and nobody cared about any of this again."
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
I mean, writing anything is as hard as you make it. You can tell the story of an alternate-universe War of the Roses in one, normal-length novel. You just tell the story from one or a couple of character's points of view and only hit the highlights of the whole thing.
Martin has apparently decided to tell a War of the Roses as a play-by-play account of the entire war from the points of view of dozens of people.
I liked the books when they were about the Starks and the Lannisters. If he'd kept it about them, losing characters and plots as Starks and Lannisters died, it would be a sprawling epic but a manageable sprawling epic. He could have even come back later and written novels telling the story of the war from the point of view of other houses, fleshing out the world and its history. Instead he's just doing all of that simultaneously.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
Like most authors, Erikson's books all, individually, focus on a manageable number of characters and plot lines.
Taken as a whole, the entire Book of the Fallen series has a ton of characters doing all manner of unrelated things.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
By the time you get to Bonehunters and Reaper's Gale you've added on 2 precursor races than you get in Gardens of the Moon or Deadhouse Gates, a half dozen factions, 2-3 timeframe shifts, and the prose starts approaching Joyce levels of obtuse.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
I don't remember if the first book properly conveys this (although I suspect it does, I believe there's a large dramatis personae with complicated backstories right off the bat) but then every novel adds more characters and more locations and more concurrent events and plotlines to where I can simply tell you that you're just factually wrong, Malazan is much more complex than Ice and Fire.
Also apparently the main book series I read is just the start, wikipedia tells me it's like a 23 book universe of novels now.
I'm OK if Martin just decides he doesn't give a fuck about satisfying his fans, it's frustrating but whatever, he can do what he wants - I really don't think we need to make excuses for him though. Fantasy as a genre tends towards epic multi-book sagas, other authors manage it just fine.
I’ve read plenty of fantasy epics, and they are all much less complex, with fewer characters, simpler motivations, and much less interlocking parts, as well as an obvious victory goal. ASOIAF could have basically gone on forever. There was no obvious point where the story was likely to be “finished.”
I’ve read plenty of fantasy epics, and they are all much less complex, with fewer characters, simpler motivations, and much less interlocking parts, as well as an obvious victory goal. ASOIAF could have basically gone on forever. There was no obvious point where the story was likely to be “finished.”
Eventually the war ends. Either someone re-conquers the kingdoms and rules from the Iron Throne, some number of kingdoms agree to terms and co-exist beside one another, or everybody gets burned to death by a dragon. Any of those are end conditions.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
I mean, writing anything is as hard as you make it. You can tell the story of an alternate-universe War of the Roses in one, normal-length novel. You just tell the story from one or a couple of character's points of view and only hit the highlights of the whole thing.
Martin has apparently decided to tell a War of the Roses as a play-by-play account of the entire war from the points of view of dozens of people.
I liked the books when they were about the Starks and the Lannisters. If he'd kept it about them, losing characters and plots as Starks and Lannisters died, it would be a sprawling epic but a manageable sprawling epic. He could have even come back later and written novels telling the story of the war from the point of view of other houses, fleshing out the world and its history. Instead he's just doing all of that simultaneously.
Even from the start it was intended to move past that. Back before he'd even started writing the plan was 3 books and Stark vs Lannisters was book 1.
I’ve read plenty of fantasy epics, and they are all much less complex, with fewer characters, simpler motivations, and much less interlocking parts, as well as an obvious victory goal. ASOIAF could have basically gone on forever. There was no obvious point where the story was likely to be “finished.”
Eventually the war ends. Either someone re-conquers the kingdoms and rules from the Iron Throne, some number of kingdoms agree to terms and co-exist beside one another, or everybody gets burned to death by a dragon. Any of those are end conditions.
My prediction for the end was basically Magna Carta and the creation of Parliament/ House of Lords. Along with unfinished threads that hint at future troubles because time doesn't end and people don't stop being assholes. There were two Barons Wars within 50 years of Magna Carta after all.
I think the show-runners and writers deserve a lot of shit for the last season.
At the same time, assuming the final "this is how each character winds up" came from Martin, I have no idea how you get from where the books are now to that ending in a way that actually is satisfying. I'm not sure Martin knows, either.
I bet they can get there
-Everyone openly hates Dany, making her cold toward the citizens of westeros
-Dany burns the red keep because cersei uses a bunch of civilians as a human shield and fuck her
-Tyrion encourages Dany the entire time to be more ruthless. Book Tyrion is in a *Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark* place
-Other Targaryon sides with the crown?
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Malazan is not complicated. It is obtuse. The style is often mistaken for (or in this case is) the substance.
Turns out that one man writing an alternate Wars of the Roses is hard. It exceeds the possible complexity that the human brain can follow. If you look at other epics, like the Wheel of Time or the Lord of the Rings, they are structurally much simpler.
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
I don't remember if the first book properly conveys this (although I suspect it does, I believe there's a large dramatis personae with complicated backstories right off the bat) but then every novel adds more characters and more locations and more concurrent events and plotlines to where I can simply tell you that you're just factually wrong, Malazan is much more complex than Ice and Fire.
Also apparently the main book series I read is just the start, wikipedia tells me it's like a 23 book universe of novels now.
I'm OK if Martin just decides he doesn't give a fuck about satisfying his fans, it's frustrating but whatever, he can do what he wants - I really don't think we need to make excuses for him though. Fantasy as a genre tends towards epic multi-book sagas, other authors manage it just fine.
The first malazan book is a bit much when you start it, but after you work your way through the introductions and get into the story proper, and especially in ensuing books where they retread events from different points of view, its retroactively a lot easier to follow
and Coltain's Chain of Dogs is one of my favorite high fantasy stories because of how they kept pulling victories off in logical ways without being bullshit
You can't directly compare the two, Malazan is a lot higher fantasy so there is a lot more that's like "well this guy turns into a fucking dragon after emerging from the warren of darkness", but you have to give Erikson credit at pumping that shit out
I don't know why being higher fantasy means we can't compare the two, and Inquisitor I guess I'd like some clarification there because the few people who bounced off the series after I recommended it to them found it obtuse because it is complicated.
But I don't want to turn this into a fantasy novel series "versus" argument, prefer whatever you like but even if you hold ASoIaF to such a high standard of impossible complexity that each page of GRRM writing equals multiple pages effort of "lesser" works, he's still far, far too slow compared to his peers. There is no reason he couldn't have managed this, it just seems that for whatever reason he didn't have the will to.
Man, all this talk about Malazan is making me want to read that series again, just so damn good.
Oh for sure, Martin isn't writing either because of writers block or just because he doesn't want to
the fandom has no ownership of Martin, and he has an obligation to nobody to actually deliver another novel, but arguing that his books are too complicated to finish is kind of silly
The main problem with TV Dany is she went from A to Z without going through the rest of the Alphabet. We can see her at A, we even have some ideas of what E and L and T and some of the other letters might be, but they had to wrap this up, so...
The main problem with TV Dany is she went from A to Z without going through the rest of the Alphabet. We can see her at A, we even have some ideas of what E and L and T and some of the other letters might be, but they had to wrap this up, so...
Part of my lack of desire to read the rest of the books is we’d get to see the process by which she goes crazy, and I’m sure it’s grimdark, especially without any suspense about whether she might pull out of the dive.
Also if GRRM has somehow come up with books that are too complicated to finish, I would consider that a failure of the writer. Whether he has writer's block or just lost interest or whatever, I don't think there will be any more books released in the series. I've been of this opinion for upwards of a decade, and I have seen nothing yet that is even remotely close to getting me to change my mind.
I don't hold any ill will towards him for not finishing the work, I've seen way too many stories that I love abandoned over the years to really be bothered by one more incomplete story. Frankly getting the cliff's notes ending is fine by me, if that's really the plan he had for ending the series then whatever, I can move on with my life.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I'm used to sprawling series where the author gives up instead of writing a satisfying ending.
Jim McCarthy and Colonel Elizabeth 'Lizard' Tirelli, whatever is going to happen to you and the Earth?
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
I saw a ton of unread posts so either a new book came out or GRRM is pissing people off.
Posts
It's the number one reason I do not start reading them.
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I don't think anyone could have predicted that he'd slow down this much. If he'd kept to the same schedule as AFFC and ADWD - which were already seen as incredibly delayed at the time - we'd still be getting the final book in the series this year.
Honestly, I just want to see what an actual writer would do with that ending. I can see so many pieces that I think work thematically and narratively, but it’s all undermined by how little dialogue and character development there is in the lead-up. And what is there is clumsy and juvenile.
Instead you get Tyrion and Varys trading vapid eunuch and dwarf jokes (certainly nothing more interesting on their minds), endless CG dragon scenes, and so many conversations that cut away right when it might reveal something about a person’s motivations.
I defended the series and show runners a lot on the way to the end, but without GRRM’s material as a backstop and source of dialogue they were absolutely incapable of developing this story.
Edit: The final season is probably the most money and non-writing talent poured into a rough draft outline of a story in history.
Or with fuck you money he no longer has the drive? It happens.
Or he wrote himself into a corner, which is undoubtedly part of it.
At the same time, assuming the final "this is how each character winds up" came from Martin, I have no idea how you get from where the books are now to that ending in a way that actually is satisfying. I'm not sure Martin knows, either.
It would've allowed him to jump past all the problems he had to work through (e.g., Meereen) and no doubt is still working through.
The whole series really is an interesting object lesson in why certain rules of writing exist and how they can (and perhaps cannot) be overcome. Giving all your characters the same or very similar names? Makes for rough reading, but isn't insurmountable. Having multiple PoV characters, some of whom die and some of whom are introduced later on? A lot of work with varying reactions from the audience, but again not insurmountable. Realistically accounting for time, distance, and communication at all times? Difficult and can create pacing issues, but still doable. Having literally dozens of interweaving plot lines and characters to account for? Coupled with everything else, perhaps a bridge too far.
Nah. A lot of the answers were probably metaphorical and so don’t have an issue. Arya rides into the sunset/sails into the west. Got turned into Arya literally riding into the sunset and then sailing into the west
you won't get one.
But this just means I can memoryhole the entire experience, beyond being skeptical of any new projects. No more what ifs, or maybes.
I doubt it but maybe. But Arya's ending was probably the least weird. I don't know at what point Martin told the show people how it all ends but I can't imagine being told, "Yeah, so, Jon kills Dany after she goes on a dragon murder rampage. What? No, no, he's not king. He gets exiled by High King Bran. Yeah, Bran. He's king in the end. Nah, everyone's pretty cool with it." and have to figure out how to get from point A to that.
its been 10 fucking years since the last book
i just wanted
jon to stay dead and become the next nights king, and kill everyone else and thats it thats the story
Woke: Sad about not reading another Dunk and Egg story
Which is amusing because he got out of Hollywood script writing to be freed from the constraints of composing for the big/small screen.
Which were probably "budget" and now that isn't so much of a problem for him.
It's just going to be Wheel of Time part deux. Which is what I feared and why I didn't pick it up years ago, because I wanted it finished before I started and getting burned again.
It's not cursed, it's just badly structured.
Martin started out with a fairly large cast of PoV characters and a large number of tangentially connected plot-lines. Usually when authors do that they gradually tie the disparate plots together and shave off points of view because either that person dies, they become irrelevant to the narrative, or just a few of them are in the same place and you don't need that many narrators. I'm pretty sure that whenever Martin gets bored with a character or gets a bout of writer's block he just adds another one, because every book seems to have more PoVs and plot lines than the last. He had to split a book in half because he had too many things going on that were sufficiently unrelated to one another he could split it in half by PoV characters. It's a huge mess and I don't really see how it's possible for him to wrap it all up in two books without a lot of characters' arcs ending in "And then they died and nobody cared about any of this again."
To make an epic like this work you'd need to start at 25 and devote the next 40 years to it, and be one of those writers who never get blocked.
I mean, writing anything is as hard as you make it. You can tell the story of an alternate-universe War of the Roses in one, normal-length novel. You just tell the story from one or a couple of character's points of view and only hit the highlights of the whole thing.
Martin has apparently decided to tell a War of the Roses as a play-by-play account of the entire war from the points of view of dozens of people.
I liked the books when they were about the Starks and the Lannisters. If he'd kept it about them, losing characters and plots as Starks and Lannisters died, it would be a sprawling epic but a manageable sprawling epic. He could have even come back later and written novels telling the story of the war from the point of view of other houses, fleshing out the world and its history. Instead he's just doing all of that simultaneously.
What? No, many fantasy novels are as just as complex and were finished in a reasonable timeframe, off the top of my head Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen absolutely has more characters and plots and not only does it not "exceed the possible complexity that the human brain can follow" he completed the 10 book series in 12 years, with each of those 10 books being longer than Song of Ice and Fire books, 1000-1200 page doorstoppers.
I read the first book of that and it was obscurely and confusingly written but not particularly complex in terms of characters or plotlines.
Like most authors, Erikson's books all, individually, focus on a manageable number of characters and plot lines.
Taken as a whole, the entire Book of the Fallen series has a ton of characters doing all manner of unrelated things.
By the time you get to Bonehunters and Reaper's Gale you've added on 2 precursor races than you get in Gardens of the Moon or Deadhouse Gates, a half dozen factions, 2-3 timeframe shifts, and the prose starts approaching Joyce levels of obtuse.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I don't remember if the first book properly conveys this (although I suspect it does, I believe there's a large dramatis personae with complicated backstories right off the bat) but then every novel adds more characters and more locations and more concurrent events and plotlines to where I can simply tell you that you're just factually wrong, Malazan is much more complex than Ice and Fire.
Also apparently the main book series I read is just the start, wikipedia tells me it's like a 23 book universe of novels now.
I'm OK if Martin just decides he doesn't give a fuck about satisfying his fans, it's frustrating but whatever, he can do what he wants - I really don't think we need to make excuses for him though. Fantasy as a genre tends towards epic multi-book sagas, other authors manage it just fine.
Eventually the war ends. Either someone re-conquers the kingdoms and rules from the Iron Throne, some number of kingdoms agree to terms and co-exist beside one another, or everybody gets burned to death by a dragon. Any of those are end conditions.
Even from the start it was intended to move past that. Back before he'd even started writing the plan was 3 books and Stark vs Lannisters was book 1.
My prediction for the end was basically Magna Carta and the creation of Parliament/ House of Lords. Along with unfinished threads that hint at future troubles because time doesn't end and people don't stop being assholes. There were two Barons Wars within 50 years of Magna Carta after all.
I bet they can get there
-Everyone openly hates Dany, making her cold toward the citizens of westeros
-Dany burns the red keep because cersei uses a bunch of civilians as a human shield and fuck her
-Tyrion encourages Dany the entire time to be more ruthless. Book Tyrion is in a *Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark* place
-Other Targaryon sides with the crown?
The first malazan book is a bit much when you start it, but after you work your way through the introductions and get into the story proper, and especially in ensuing books where they retread events from different points of view, its retroactively a lot easier to follow
and Coltain's Chain of Dogs is one of my favorite high fantasy stories because of how they kept pulling victories off in logical ways without being bullshit
You can't directly compare the two, Malazan is a lot higher fantasy so there is a lot more that's like "well this guy turns into a fucking dragon after emerging from the warren of darkness", but you have to give Erikson credit at pumping that shit out
But I don't want to turn this into a fantasy novel series "versus" argument, prefer whatever you like but even if you hold ASoIaF to such a high standard of impossible complexity that each page of GRRM writing equals multiple pages effort of "lesser" works, he's still far, far too slow compared to his peers. There is no reason he couldn't have managed this, it just seems that for whatever reason he didn't have the will to.
Man, all this talk about Malazan is making me want to read that series again, just so damn good.
the fandom has no ownership of Martin, and he has an obligation to nobody to actually deliver another novel, but arguing that his books are too complicated to finish is kind of silly
Bran, however, has not even reached A.
Part of my lack of desire to read the rest of the books is we’d get to see the process by which she goes crazy, and I’m sure it’s grimdark, especially without any suspense about whether she might pull out of the dive.
I don't hold any ill will towards him for not finishing the work, I've seen way too many stories that I love abandoned over the years to really be bothered by one more incomplete story. Frankly getting the cliff's notes ending is fine by me, if that's really the plan he had for ending the series then whatever, I can move on with my life.
Jim McCarthy and Colonel Elizabeth 'Lizard' Tirelli, whatever is going to happen to you and the Earth?