Haven’t read Song of Ice & Fire or at least watched Game of Thrones? This post will absolutely ruin the big surprise for you. So either stop reading or have no one to blame for the ruination but yourself.
With the latest book in the Song of Ice & Fire series coming out recently, I’ve found myself re-reading the first 4 before diving in to it. I’ve finished the third book (Storm of Swords), and will be cracking open #4 soon…then the newcomer!
It’s actually a bit strange that I am as in to this series as I am, considering that I’m not exactly a big Fantasy reader. I suppose Warhammer 40K fiction sort of counts, but all of the power armor and space travel and what not shifts that towards the sci-fi end of things. And while I do enjoy the delightfully over the top ‘Nothing but war’ universe of 40K, I have never so much as picked up any of the novels that take place in the Warhammer Fantasy realm. They probably aren’t all that different (except in overall tech level), but I just don’t have that same interest.
So why do I enjoy this series? And why did I grow disenchanted and bored with the only other Fantasy series that I’ve ever really attempted to get in to, the Wheel of Time series?
One issue that came up for me while reading Wheel of Time was the almost cookie cutter structure of the books themselves. All of the characters would go their separate ways, many adventures were had, and then everyone came together over the last 100 pages or so to witness or take part in some epic battle. Next book, start all over again. I think that I got about 5 books in before this totally put me off the whole series, and I returned them all to Liam (at that time there were 9 books. There are now 13 and counting). But really, I don’t think that was my biggest issue with it. I may not have realized it at the time (especially since I didn’t have another series to act as a handy comparison point), but there is a much bigger problem with the Wheel of Time books.
Both of these series take place in similarly dangerous worlds. Wars rage, alliances burn, the trusting are stabbed in the back. But there is one key difference.
As I read A Game of Thrones, I was at first wary. Oh sure, it was good…but so was the first book in Wheel of Time, and I eventually grew tired of that. And then it happened. Then Ned Stark lost his head.
“What the…he’s DEAD?! But he was the central character! Everything was branching off of…holy SHIT! So who do these other books center on?! DAMN!”
If the guy who was the heart of the first book could die, ANYBODY could die. And I won’t give much away, but the big events in Game of Thrones pale in comparison to the cavalcade of ‘Holy shit!’ moments in Storm of Swords.
And that’s it. That’s the difference. In every damn book (that I got through, anyway) in the Wheel of Time series, the characters were involved in battles and fights and skirmishes and ambushes. And sure, occasionally one would be wounded…but that was it. They might suffer a bit of a limp or what not, but it’s not like people were losing an arm or a leg or anything truly debilitating. Well, they WERE, it’s just that none of THOSE poor bastards were recurring characters.
And as that became the pattern, every ounce of drama was sucked out of the entire series for me. All of those big scenes ceased to be interesting because it didn’t matter how bad the odds were described as or how dire the situation seemed to be : the heroes would all survive. And that began to make less and less sense for me as the series went on and the world the books took place in kept getting worse.
If you’re going to sell me on a series as being dramatic and unpredictable, it has to be dramatic and unpredictable. If the end result can be correctly deduced before I even crack the damn book open, go find some other sucker willing to pour the time in to read the 1,000 pages. I can’t be bothered.
