/lit/ - Literature

>>5191776
Yeah, I admit it. The Lannisters were the most interesting family. Couldn't give two shits about any of the Starks, save maybe Robb, now maybe Sansa. He should've just ended it as a trilogy like he planned, and end it all with dignity. Now he's just padding it out for hype and shuckles and dragon-warging.

If he'd improved his prose, kept it a trilogy and focused purely on the Lannisters and Starks, it could've been great.

Am I the only one who thought that the first book was the most well-written one, and that the last one was absolutely terrible?

The 4th book is the borest piece of shit ive ever read. I refused to continue reading the saga btm.

>>5191785
>>5191799
I stopped in the middle of the second book, I couldn't take it anymore, I remember I was in the middle of Sansa's chapter, i though to myself "why? for the love of god why do I keep reading this low quality soap opera fantasy shit."

but i do admit that i fucking love the TV show, it's easily on my top 5 most favorite tv shows of all times

go ahead, judge me

>>5191839
There's no shame in that. It distills down the bloated narrative and saves you from enduring the laughable writing quality. The man is a television writer at heart. He excels at it. The way fans of the books describe it - that you somehow get MORE from the books - can equally be surmised by reading the books as supplementary material to the TV show. If you wanted, that is. Why anyone would want to sit through extraneous details is beyond me.

>>5191839

i dont know why you even started the books if you had no interest in "soap-opera fantasy shit"

it seems like the most common criticisms of the series are

>it's a fantasy book

and

>the writing sucks

funny how neither of these are actually criticisms

>>5191891
>The writing sucks
>Not a criticism

Is it supposed to suck?

>>5191891
>the writing sucks
>not a valid criticism

>>5191902

it's not a valid criticism because you have to explain how it sucks, otherwise you're just syaing you dont like the book

it's not a reason to not like the book

>>5191914
I acknowledge my stupidity but will continue to hide behind smug pepe jpg's in a poor attempt to save face

>>5191914
You're saying you don't like the book because the writing sucks. Usually you can safely presuppose the other person to be fairly competent and take "writing" to mean prose and degree of nuance. Sure, it's a generalization, but it's obvious what the person means.

>>5191776
Um no?

Tyrion's chapters like most chapters are "literally" GRRM's rants about how reading and reading alone will make you the most divine human being in the world.

Anyone who is more interested in athletic pursuits are given terrible characteristics.

It just reeks of this whole neckbeard culture that people who play sports are stupid, even though it has been proven physical exercise will sharpen your mind more than reading does.

>>5191925
>Anyone who is more interested in athletic pursuits are given terrible characteristics.

Define "terrible". The bookworms are often depicted as sociopaths, aloof, emotionally detached, Machiavellian and such (Tywin, Little Finger, Cersei, Pycelle). Tyrion drinks and whores. If anyone, Sam is GRRM's Mary Sue. The athletes (Oberyn, the Hound, Gendry, Daario, Ned, Robert) with such tendencies are in the minority.

>>5191776
>yet, his books are disgustingly dull.
>disgustingly dull
>his books
>dull

>>5191925

>this is what happens when you go into a story looking for reasons to hate it

>>5191920

i've always liked that particular frog pic

>>5191921

>prose and degree of nuance

that's only barely better than syaing the writing sucks, it still doesn't explain much, although "degree of nuance" gives me a little bit to work with i guess

are you saying his writing should have more metaphor and allusion?

>>5191914
Quite easily explained.

GRRM is really good with characters and creative with fluff and the usual tokens and gimmicks when it comes down to fantasy. Yet his stories have always been meandering and boring. One could say thin, I guess.

Westeros is a living, breathing world in itself and the characters are just cream-worthy, yet the plot moves at a crawling pace opening up only to GRRMs needs ( must kill this one, must insert this dude, this lady dies, this dude... he just dies etc. etc. ). It's more of stacking of the things he does well (characters and fluff) except the plot or story unfolding.

The series could have ended by now instead of becoming dull and boring. I had to skim the last two books, because it was unbelievably boring.

Some dude said the first book was the best.

YES IT FUCKING WAS!

>>5191963

there we go

this is good criticism, and i very much agree

the plot has a lot of well done moments, good interactions and interesting characters, but there are way too many POV characters, Asha did not POV chapters, nor did Aeron Damphair, nor did the Onion Knight, nor did the Dornish Prince really

>>5191957
No. This is what happens when you read a book not barracking for house Hufflepuff or whatever

>>5191988

>when you read a book not barracking for house Hufflepuff

wat

>>5191996
Satire, plebian. Learn it.

>>5191982
The amount of POVs is only a problem in the last 2 books. The POVs all felt relevant in the first 3 (aside from maybe most of Sam's chapters...), but there were too many new POVs in AFfC and ADwD that pushed out the more interesting and more developed ones.

>>5191914
But what you are saying doesn't even make sense.

I clearly said i like the story, but the writing is the thing that makes the book so dull boring.

this is why IMO TV show > Books.

>>5192050

no you are the one who doesnt make sense here

>the writing is the thing that makes the book so dull boring

is just like saying "the book is boring because thats the way the book is"

"boring" is at least a criticism though, unlike "poor writing", which is just a judgment

>>5191963
This can't be right.. as I said before i stopped in the middle of the second book, therefore i have read the first one, and in my opinion it started to became a little bit interesting after 400 pages or so.

If the first book is suppose to be the best book in the series i don't even want to know how bad is the 5th book, you know, the book that even the hardcore fans said it's boring.

I-DON'T-EVEN-WANT-TO-KNOW. OK?

>>5192014

yes i would generally agree

also i question the time spent on specific POVs

Jon Snow's POV gets really slow at times, i mean he has had several chapters in all 5 books and what has really occurred during that time? they went into the forest, they came back, wildlings came, then stannis came, then stannis left

5 whole books, and only scant few events really happened

some of that time could've been spent on Arya or something

>>5191925
Dude, did you even read the fucking books? This criticism is not applicable to any character.

The two characters depicted as reading the most, Tyrion and the Ironborn literally called "The Reader" certainly are pretty fucking terrible people (like almost everyone else), then characters like Robb Stark are glorified.

7/10 still hope you aren't actually trolling

>>5192075
No no no.

You don't understand, the books are written like a fucking movie scripts, there is literally no interaction with the reader, there is no clever use of words, no mind-blowing descriptions that will make you as a reader, stop and think about what you just read for a minute, the books are full with so much useless information that add absolutely nothing to the story or to the character.

My point is, the story (as a story) itself is quite good and the TV show has proven that.

It's the shit-tier prose writing that ruined it for me.

>>5192100

hmm i can see where you are coming from now

i disagree completely though, i enjoyed plenty of the descriptions, and i also dont think its really fair to say there's no clever use of words either, a lot of the dialogue, vocal or internal, was funny to me

i dont really see how you can call it a movie script when all the chapters are written in first person, with unreliable narration to a certain extent, and personality within every description

>>5191935
What category does Stannis fall under?

>>5192111
I have notice that you know, of course you can't bring the character line of thought to a TV show, but you can do it even better if you know what you're doing.


I will give you an example:
In the first season of the TV show there was a scene with Cersei and Robert, in that scene they had a conversation about their relationship.

This conversation never happened in the book, but they had to add the scene in order to explain the nature of the relationship between the king and the queen to crowd at home that never read the books.
Because in the book the information was all over the place, sometimes from Tyrion's POV and sometimes from Ned's POV.


You see? right there.
The writer of the show took something long, boring and dull and wrote a 5 minutes scene with all the information on point.

It's obviously just one example out of many, but that's the reason why i think the TV shows are much better.

>>5192100
>no mind-blowing descriptions that will make you as a reader, stop and think about what you just read for a minute

but muh food porn

>>5191925
Try reading more than one chapter.

>>5192093
>The two characters depicted as reading the most, Tyrion and the Ironborn literally called "The Reader" certainly are pretty fucking terrible people
How is The Reader a terrible person? He's depicted as the only reasonable Ironborn.

>>5192142
Sounds more like a distaste of using limited 3rd person POVs in general than actual criticism of GRRM's writing.

>>5192469
What are you trying to prove?

If you like the books then why do you give a shit about what other people say?

why are you so defensive?

George R.R Martin's books are dull - they are written as a screenplay would be written. Any depth or meaning or commentary there is within the plot, story arc and what is coming in future books.

It's basically superficial, written for the surface and for the vision. Entertaining and novel and thrilling, but not literature.

>>5191839
Are you me? That is exactly where I gave up.

>>5191852
This. The Martin-written episodes of the show are often the best.

>>5191963
>the characters are just cream-worthy

They really are not. The characters are the worst thing about the series by far. All of them sound like overweight neckbearded LARPers shouting at each other in a forest. GRRM just can't write human beings acting human.

>>5192100
This is a terribly written explanation for why GRRM sucks, basically.

Martin has zero command of the english language. His prose is functional at best and laughable at worst, he shits out cliches left right and centre and writes dialogue so eye-gougingly bad it is hard to believe the books aren't parody sometimes. He does have some genuine skills and a fantastic eye for what is really interesting about a medieval-lite setting, and his world building is obviously fantastic. The only time his prose is raised above something that a teenager should be expected to write in english class is when he writes about food.

>>5192142
This, and that was one of the best scenes in the first series.

In fact in almost every episode the best scene is one that wasn't in the books.

>>5192514
Calm down sperglord, I'm not the guy you were replying to. That was my first post in that reply thread.

>>5192602
k sry i luv u ;_;

>>5192580

exaggerations man

it's like the entire book was the diarrhea passage to you, i dont remember any "eye-gougingly bad" prose

cliches i would agree with, left and right? idk. he had a few pet phrases i got tired of

I like ASOIAF even though I agree it drags on sometimes. I just kind of zone out and get lost in it, and it's relaxing. Game of Thrones is a pretty good streamlined adaptation (some terrible choices like the Jaime rape scene aside).

Still, Dune did a lot of what ASOIAF does (a large cast of interesting characters and lots and lots of intrigue) only better.

In other words, ASOIAF is overrated, but that doesn't mean it sucks at all.

>>5191935
Also, Brienne is fucking awesome, Jaime improves drastically, Robb makes some mistakes but isn't a bad guy, same with Theon, the Hound becomes a better person, and Oberynn Martell is one bad motherfucker.

>>5192585
I disagree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbhv3JHkJNk