GRRM makes my brain hurt

GRRM (George R. R. Martin) make my brain hurt. I swear, the man must sit around all day thinking, how can I make these books more dense and confusing? I’m maybe a hundred pages into A Feast for Crows, GRRM’s latest brick in the Song of Ice and Fire googology. And my eyes are crossed […]

GRRM (George R. R. Martin) make my brain hurt.

I swear, the man must sit around all day thinking, how can I make these books more dense and confusing?

I’m maybe a hundred pages into A Feast for Crows, GRRM’s latest brick in the Song of Ice and Fire googology. And my eyes are crossed with confusion at every chapter.

Who the fuck is Aryn? Wait, who was Dontos again? Why is Myrcella important? Wait, I thought Stannis was dead…

Dammit Martin, you need to put some synopsis pages in these volumes if you’re gonna make us wait five years between. I cannot fucking keep track of all your characters and connections.

Honestly, though, I’m remembering again why I used to say GRRM is the most intense, compelling fantasy writer working today. The man’s amazing. Most of these giant multi-brick series are nothing but rehash Tolkien; the best of them still trapped in a genre that is getting thicker and thicker with cliche, and the worst going on and on and on without ever seeing an end. Clearly editing is a thing of the past for most of these series.

Martin, even while writing a series that is growing and growing, seems to have some laser-tight focus on where his story’s going. For all his hundreds of characters, this series feels like a history, not like an aimless jaunt through someone’s daydreams of heroics and magic.

I don’t know how he keeps track of it all. But I know it’s brilliant.

Yet, I hope he’s close to done. There’s another book due out next year, and after that, knowing Martin, another half-decade wait; that’s ok if he’s getting close to the end, but I’d really like to see how it all ends sometime before my kids go away to college.

Ok. Now it’s time for another dose of cold medicine, and I’ll crawl back into the book.

9 thoughts on “GRRM makes my brain hurt”

  1. “the worst going on and on and on without ever seeing an end.”

    I see this with Robert Jordan. I’ve been buying first editions from the beginning. I hear he’s got a new one out, and now I could care less.

    Just put out a book (and not a prequel, jagoff)!

    Although, I’m hoping my collection will be worth something someday. So, I’ll buy it, but not read it until I’m in the mood. I’ve been waiting too long.

  2. A Feast for Crows, never mind the crows is a feast for every reader, isnt it..? But I did miss Jon Snow in this book. Snow, Lannister are supposedly expected in the next book in the series. Till then, we do have to wait..

  3. The owner of the tiny little gym I belong to recommended the series to me. Something to read as I am tormented upon the dual elliptical machine? Uh, sure…

    xooxoxox

  4. You know, C, one of the villans in this series is named ‘Cersei’. She’s a blond femme-fatale who’s in an incestuous relationship with her brother. B^)

  5. Is it at all possible, dear Karl Elvis, that the cold medicine had something to do with your confusion?

    After a couple of doses of my cold medicine, I couldn’t keep the plot of a Dr. Seuss book straight.

  6. I think maybe alwaysarousedgirl is on to something.

    I heard that with the older brands of cough syrup, if you tie a string around the end of the bottle and whirl the whole thing like a centrifuge around your head, the codiene will separate out of suspension and you can just, like, decant it off.

    …..I think I suddenly feel a tickle in my throat coming on. Excuse, please.

  7. AAG, y’know that WKRP episode where Doctor Johnny Fever does the drunk test and his reflexes get faster, the drunker he gets? That’s how I am. So no, not the cold meds. It’s fuckin’ GRRM and his layer upon layer of plot and subtext, foreshadow, double-crosses and changes in allegiance, and his cast of a thousand characters.

    Buck, you know, that soudns great only codeine just gives me a fucking headache and makes me itch all over. Doesn ‘t even give me a buzz. It figures that codeine and vicodin, the easiest narcotics in the world to get, both disagree with me. Though I’ll take some versed or dilaudid or percs or darvon. You know, if ya got any. B^)

  8. It’s been years since I read the first 3 “Song of Fire & Ice” books and I’m waiting for “Crows” to come out in softcover before I can devour it. I will have to re-read the other 3 pre-“Crows”.

    Did you know that there is a comic book that is a prequel to the “Fire & Ice” series? I saw it in the animé manga section at Chapters for about 25 CAD. It takes place 100 years before the first “Fire & Ice” book. Interesting, no?

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