Posted on 05/31/2013 12:43:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
With the end of the third season of Game of Thrones in sight (June 9th), a global audience of over 5 million is debating whether or not George R.R. Martin is the rightful “American Tolkien.” I argue that while The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have striking similarities, Martin is actually pioneering a distinct genre—a new kind of fantasy novel informed by historical fiction and politics. Martin admits that he was influenced a great deal by Tolkien, and mirrored the structure of his novels off of Tolkien’s work:
“Tolkien begins his story in the Shire with one group of inhabitants, hobbits, but eventually expands the tale in ever-widening orbits to cover many races and huge tracts of land. That’s what I wanted to do too. I wanted to start with a tight focus on a few characters and one place in the world, and as the story is told, the world will continue to get bigger and bigger and more people get drawn into the conflict,” Martin told the Detroit Free Press.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I have been accused of (still) having a teenage sense of humour.
I've read the entire series 6 times (all 14 books!) - and the ending roused me so much that I read it in a day - all 900+ pages - and thinking about it still chokes me up.
The last book, while getting to it, had moments - but as a writer as well, I thought was spot on whiz bang on point.
I don't need in your face taboo like Martin writes for me to appreciate a complicated plot.
Tolkien? I love his writing to bits, moreso because he wrote as a love of creation on which the fantasy genre derives from still.
I watch any given episode of 'Game Of Thrones' and see some character is urinating in the stream while being anally raped by a horse with a homosexual holding the reins while leeches are being inserted into the homosexual's anus as he's threatening to sodomize a pre-teen girl while having his penis cut off and burnt in a fiery brazier.
So then I go look at a picture of the author of this wildly successful stuff and he looks exactly like the very embodiment of the stereotypical perv.
The heck did you think I meant, Durus?
Yeah, he's no Tolkien. He's just some sadistic dungeon master who's written his pervy old AD&D campaign into a series of successful novels. Besides, spending an entire chapter on describing the recipe for Sansa Stark's famous lemon cakes doesn't make a fantasy author rise to the level of Tolkien.
Kardashian “news” is a guilty indulgence of mine.
... he is a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party and claimed Jimmy Carter ... to be "clearly the best human being to be president during my lifetime"...Wikipedia
I LOVE Game of Thrones.....I hate the pornographic content though -fast forward through it. And I especially hate the gay stuff. yeccchhh!
As good as it it, he is NO J.R.Tolkien, can’t touch him with a 500 foot pole.
I was just writing a thank you to you for allowing me to confirm that my decision to not watch episode 3 or 4+ because of the grotesque scenes in Thrones.
I was appalled that my nieces watch it and probably read the books? not sure.
However, I thought about the times we are living in compared to the age of Tolkien’s Greatest Generation (in the MSM eyes since only God knows for sure) and I recall that in the days of Noah, God killed everyone because of the violence. The coming days of violence will be more horrendous than ever before and this popular book exposes the hardness of the hearts of earth’s citizens.
I put down Jordon somewhere around book 6. I was no longer interested in the proliferation of yet more, and more, and more of the same bitchy female character. I had no interest paying Jordan money so that he could work out his mommy issues.
Martin is Jordan for adults.
The only similarity between the two is that at his current pace, Martin, like Jordan, will also probably die before the series is finished.
BTW, if you like the gritty realism of Martin, check out Glenn Cook and Joe Abercrombie.
Please tell me, does Lord Tyrion have a good ending?! I’m routing for him.
Who’s gay now? Isn’t Renly dead?
Plus he’s a big Jets fan.
I have also read the entire WOT. Disappointed by the conclusion.
Unfortunately, I think RJ desperately needed a more aggressive editor. The 14 book series would have been much better edited down to perhaps half that number.
And the military aspects became pretty ludicrous in the last few books. Once Traveling had been rediscovered, marching massive armies across country for thousands of miles became pretty pointless.
I thought the first few books in the series were far superior.
“I watch any given episode of ‘Game Of Thrones’ and see some character is urinating in the stream while being anally raped by a horse with a homosexual holding the reins while leeches are being inserted into the homosexual’s anus as he’s threatening to sodomize a pre-teen girl while having his penis cut off and burnt in a fiery brazier.”
This is lunacy.
You haven’t read or watched anything, have you?
Don’t forget Loras.
Ser Loras and an invented character not in the books seemingly created to allow the showing of more gay sex scenes.
That is unknown as of yet. Tyrion has a long journey ahead of him, and some of it is not going to be easy or fun. I believe he finds something near the end of book 5 that he has been searching for his entire life.
Oh, I didn’t put two and two together. I watched the first two seasons (waiting for season 3 on DVD), and now I’m reading the books, so the character names/descriptions are sticking with me better. Figures the flower guy’s a homo.
LOL..not even close.
Yes. I am a huge fan of the books so I want to also go on record that the books do not have highly descriptive sex scenes in them at all.
Yes, in the books there is heavy insinuation about the sexual activities of the characters because the books are about the relationships between the characters and how the extremes of the absolute worst and absolute best of human nature comes out in the battle for power over men’s lives. But there isn’t really any description in detail of sex scenes in the books. HBO decided to add all that. Which is a real shame because the books are “adult” enough. What HBO did was to make the whole show entirely unwatchable by an audience under 18. Without the graphic sex you could really study the aspects of human nature with a teenager and show how bad things can really get if you don’t have a moral compass.
Martin is a troll or a dwarf.
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