I went into the story understanding that certain themes like rape hadn't been handled very well, so the disappointment there was more of a resignation than a surprise, and I was able to focus on the areas that I thought Martin handled very well: the character depth of the (very very many) villains, the twists and turns of the political maneuvering, the fact that the narrative (and surrounding characters) made no apologies for when certain characters made absolutely bone-headed mistakes (except to further characterize said surrounding character for not reacting the way that s/he "should" have according to morals and/or reason) ... Except for how surprised I was by the poor quality of the writing, however. Spelling out the sound effects instead of describing them was the big one, but I think I've also come to realize why so many writers are so passionately opposed to using adverbs. I am not sorry ;-) I'd actually thought that I did know, on an intellectual level, that adding an adverb isn't normally the most powerful way to describe something, but this book showed me just how annoying it was when every third or fourth dialogue tag depended on the adverbs to get the point across. 90% certain I want to read the second one.
I'm necroposting the jinkies out of this thread, mainly because I'm still plodding through A Feast for Crows, and I'm wondering if you stuck with the series... After having initially engaged the franchise through HBO's porn parody of the books, my surprise as regards things like rape and such was the utter absence of said in the books. At least as far as compared with the show. As regards the characters... I find most of his descriptions and building of their personalities end up create people who aren't really real. They're cartoon people, in both physical aspect and in their personality traits. Very few of them fall into what I find to be a credible human range. Let's not forget the unending, tedious, elaborate, over-detailed, narrative intrusion of every single character noticing things to an ungodly degree of detail. You could sew the costumes yourself from even the descriptions given by a person like Arya, who, given the nature of everything else about her, should care a lick about anyone's clothing, yet there she is, in the narrative, giving us a tip to tow, down to the color of thread holding the buttons. Compared with ridiculous clothing descriptions, I don't even see the adverbs. Be all my gripes as they may be, I stuck with it to book four....
I had actually completely forgotten I'd written this, and it surprised me to remember that I'd written "90% certain I want to read the second one." I'd decided very quickly that the risk of the second book's writing being at the level of the first wasn't worth it, but apparently, I wrote this even more quickly than that. I haven't read the book recently enough to have anything specific to point to for what I probably meant, and I'm not willing to reread it under any circumstance, so I guess we're just going to have to go with your impression instead. You're also probably better at recognizing a wider range of humanity than I am (my being autistic and more dependant on explicit descriptions in order for people to make any kind of sense to me). This part, I probably didn't notice because I just love SFF exposition more than almost anybody else. I'd changed my mind about reading the second book so quickly that I'd forgotten I ever wanted to.
Ah, well. Was worth a shot. My scathing critique of the writing aside, this is the fandom in which I find myself playing over with the fanfic kids. Sadly, I'm late to the party. Right now the rave party is all about Lucifer (the recently canceled show that I have never seen).
I love BBC’s Doctor Who more than Disney’s Frozen, but I love the Frozen fan-fiction community more than the Doctor Who one (Though I do actually love Frozen )
