/lit/ - Literature

[Symphony !WGIWxyZGCo No.1772142]

Does this get any better? I'm around seven chapters in and the constantly shifting perspectives with no real relation to eachother are making it incredibly difficult to not throw this disjointed piece of shit on the fire.

[Anonymous No.1772148]

>JRR Tolkien
>George RR Martin
>JRR
>GRR
>RR

[Anonymous No.1772150]

I guess you can't please everyone but there's a reason why you have all these different perspectives. And the intertwine soon enough OP... Remember: that book is part 1 of 7.

[Anonymous No.1772162]

>>1772150
Too bad we'll never see the last two amirite?

[Anonymous No.1772171]

Dont worry Cristopher Paulini will finish them.

[Anonymous No.1772192]

>>1772162
Why do you say that?

[Anonymous No.1772195]

>>1772192

because the author is a fat old fuck teetering on the edge of a diabetes induced comba and subsequent death

[Anonymous No.1772198]

>>1772195

dunno why i put a b in coma, oh well

[Anonymous No.1772213]

these books are not even hard to read. what the hell.

[Anonymous No.1772280]

>>1772195
How do you know he's on the verge of diabetes and death? Do you have his medical records or something?

[Anonymous No.1772309]

>>1772280

He suffered a major E. Coli infection last year.

Also, he constantly blogs on his online diary about eating cheeseburgers. Besides which he is overweight, sixty years old, and may soon have to be confined to a wheelchair. You do the math.

[Anonymous No.1772379]

>>1772309
Mmmm, damn.

[Anonymous No.1772388]

he also married a 20 year old, so my money is on heart attack

[Anonymous No.1772410]

>>1772388

Wow, she must age fast then.

[Anonymous No.1772465]

>>1772388
We got some bullshitting up in here, I've read his blogs and I haven't seen shit about hamburgerrs or ecoli attacks

[Anonymous No.1772488]

>>1772410

nice try thats his sister Gina R.R. Martin

[Anonymous No.1772527]

what the fuck, all the asoiaf books read smooth as silk

@ OP:

Sounds to me like you're extremely unused to this type of book structure. I can't see how or why else you'd be feeling confused. Yes, perspectives shift all the time, but they are NOT disjointed by any means.

In any event, if you are really seven chapters in, there is a big "hook" coming up VERY soon. (like 2 or 3 chapters from where you are) Hopefully, that'll get you going.

[Anonymous No.1772643]

eh, once you get to know all the characters, its pretty good. It is kinda a depressing piece of shit though. (ie nothing ever gets solved, everybody fucks everyone over, good guy loses, bad guy wins)

watch the fucking hbo series if you don't like the book.

[Anonymous No.1772695]

hm, lots of threads on lit about the "a song of ice and fire" books recently; must be cuz of the HBO series. Cool.

>>1772643
>>It is kinda a depressing piece of shit though

Disagree. Martin can get quite brutal with the treatment of his characters, but there's also a lot of idealism and hope that help you find the faith to keep on.

[Anonymous No.1772715]

stick with it OP it gets crazy good.

also, can I piggyback your thread and ask other /lit/izens what other fantasy series I might enjoy now that I've finished these books?

sorry that HBO is probably causing a massive influx of these threads, but really, these books were awesome and now I just wanna go on a fantasy series bender.

[Anonymous No.1772733]

I'm about 250 pages into a Clash of Kings. How do you guys rank books 1-4? Is there any more fantasy besides The Others and Dany's dragons?

[Anonymous No.1772745]

>>1772733

i finished clash of kings last night... theres a shit load of sorcery coming your way.

[Anonymous No.1772750]

I thought Theon was this silent badass in GoT, basically from the line "he always had a smirk on his face, as if the world were a joke only he were clever enough to understand"

Having his own POV chapters in book 2 is awesome

[Anonymous No.1772763]

>>1772750

it sucks when he

[spoilers]kills bran and rickon[/spoilers] but other than that theon is cool, however asha > theon.

[Anonymous No.1772770]

>>1772763
Nice failure.

[Anonymous No.1772777]

>>1772770

i didn't know if it was spoiler or spoilers

[Anonymous No.1772784]

>>1772763
it's okay, that doesn't actually happen anyway.

[Anonymous No.1772828]

>>1772750
Im about 2/3rds the way through book 2 and though i like the POV chapters of Theon i hate his character so much. Though in A Game Of Thrones i hated the imp but now have grown to like his character a lot. Thats what i like about these books they actually have me liking and hating characters, and then a few chapters or in the next book the character does something that totally changes my opinion.

tldr. Characters in the series cause emotional attachment etc.

[Anonymous No.1772885]

>>1772695
1984 is inspiring too. Its also depressing as fuck. Don't read unless you are already depressed.

[Anonymous No.1772889]

haha, cleverly done :D
spoilers, guys!

>>1772715
Ah, just finished the asoiaf books and eager to start a new series! :D

Now, I don't mean to dishearten you or anything, but I found out, after finishing the series myself, that these books have spoiled me in a way... What do I mean? Well, for the first few months or so, everything I read after them just seemed weak, and unable to match the greatness of Martin's work.

It's true... I honestly haven't found anything that has displaced them from my #1 spot in fantasy, even after all those years.

Now, as for recommendations, you might hear people around you recommend you one of these:
-Malazan Book of the Fallen (series) by Steven Erikson
-Magician (series) by Raymond Feist
-The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
-The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
-and of course the Wheel of Time

Now, these books are all quite popular, and there's a high likelihood that you'll come to enjoy them. However, I would make a different set of suggestions, based on the fact that they're a bit closer to the nature of A Song of Ice and FIre:

-The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski (you might have heard about the computer game that was made after them). It's a dark fantasy type, not unlike ASOIAF, though not so epic. Still pretty good.
-Troy trilogy by David Gemmell - this is more the "historical fiction" genre, but its feel is quite similar to that of ASOIAF, to me at least. It's about the Trojan war, and I suppose that at least some love for Greek history is required to come to like it, but I think it's great.

and, if you're still looking for that immense, epic feel of ASOIAF, you might want to try The Stand by Stephen King, which just might be even better. That tends to get classified as "horror", though I insist that it's fantasy.

happy reading :)

[Anonymous No.1772892]

It gets better.
It's pretty much The Sopranos in middle earth

[Anonymous No.1772912]

>>1772892
>>the Sopranos in middle earth

That's the wtf-est way I've seen anyone describe it. O_o

[Anonymous No.1772953]

>>1772889
No Gormenghast? Are you some kind of crazy man?

[Anonymous No.1773066]

>>1772953
Gormenghast is unreadable drivel

[SpaceRangerJim No.1773077]

>>1772912
Really? Cause >>1772892 is what George RR Martin said about a year ago would be a bad blurb for the show that's showing now on HBO.

As for the OP, saying "it gets better" isn't really suffice. But, I can guarantee that it comes together and at the climax it'll pay off big, so much that you'll be able to breeze through it every time you re-read it (which'll probably be more often than not since it's pretty much the best out of the series, even though it's riddled with archaic welsh and english)

[Anonymous No.1773089]

>>1773077
Yeah, pretty much this. I just can't wait for book 6. That's when a lot of shit will happen, I've been waiting for winter to hit westeros for fucking 6 years now and DWD doesn't seem to get to the winter part.

Still, began rereading GoT a week ago and fuuuuuck, it's a fucking good book.

[Anonymous No.1773301]

>>1772733

The fantasy is all around you, my friend. Just look around.

[Anonymous No.1773305]

>>1773066
Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

[Anonymous No.1773599]

I just finished "A Game of Thrones" last night. It took me 10 days, which for 800 pages is a record for me as I'm usually a slow reader.

The switching perspectives worked perfectly in my opinion. I really can't see any other way a story that huge and detailed could work.

I've already gotten a good start on "A Clash of Kings". I dunno why I slept on these books for so long. A friend of mine recommended them like 4 years ago and like an idiot I didn't pick them up until people started to talk about the TV show.

[Anonymous No.1773655]

>>1772733
They're pretty good.

However by the end of the fourth book I began to get a bit tired of all the positive characters getting crapped on.

I would like to think that some good stuff would happen to the honorable people at least occasionally. For this much ill fortune to happen so consistently seems just... not wholly believable.

An occasional win for the good guys would be nice. As soon as charaters begin to get sympathetic they have shit land on their head.

Tyrion and Jorah get shit on.
Sandor and Jaime were kinda cruisin until they changed their character and became more sympathetic... then.

>That Brienne of Tarth (feelsbadman.jpg)

[Anonymous No.1774536]

>>1773655

well, I think ALL the characters get the shaft one way or another, even the "bad" ones, so you can at least get some sense of justice out of that.

[Anonymous No.1774970]

you know, I don't understand people who say about the books simple things like "it's good" or "it's bad" or "it's pretty cool".

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series which you don't dislike, and you don't simply "like".

It's a series that warrants your absolute OBSESSION with it, your absolute enthrallment.

It's not just "good". It makes you crave more of it, so once you finish the books, you immediately join the nearest online forum or discussion or blog or whatever dedicated to it, and you try to learn more about it, try to find something that you maybe missed on your first read, try to continue the magic until the next book comes out.

So, to those who don't like it: try to like it. Talk to people who like it, listen to what they have to say. Eventually, you'll probably mature enough psychologically and emotionally. Then, sit in the corner, start reading, and try your best to like the books. And if you still don't see it, sorry to say there isn't hope for you.

And don't say that ASOIAF is "good".

Oxygen is good. fact, not opinion.
ASOIAF is god-tier. fact, not opinion.

[Anonymous No.1775026]

I felt the same way OP.

once you get to know all the characters, you look forward to the shifting perspective

[Anonymous No.1775042]

>>1774970

mah nigga

[Anonymous No.1775122]

>Does this get any better?

Let's see:

>Fat chicks getting thrown out of windows

>Wooly fucking MAMMOTHS

>Giants

>Hookers

>Midget sex

>A guy burning his brother's FUCKING FACE

>An entire wedding hall getting FUCKING SLAUGHTERED

>A little girl becoming a fucking BLIND NINJA

>A chick with DEMONS LIVING IN HER PUSSY

>Creepy drunk clowns

>A giant bashing peoples' skulls in and TORTURING THEM

>ZOMBIES

>Battles and Romance

>FENCING! FIGHTING! TORTURE! REVENGE!

Fuck yes it gets fucking better.

[Anonymous No.1775358]

>>1774536
Well ok, sorta. But Im talking about if it could break either way, not just the bad stuff happening in general.

I mean like the Red Wedding was clearly deliberate and not happen stance. But that last part with Brienne and Podric. While traipsing across countryside the size of New Jersey they just happen to run into the Queen of the Damned and subsequently... you know.

Think about all the stuff that's happened to Arya. Some really lucky breaks, yeah. But how many ultra shitty breaks have drifted her way too.

And really how shitty is it that Sandor gets wounded, mortally infected and half roasted alive shortly after he decides to risk his life for the little girl.

[Anonymous No.1775505]

OP is clearly a troll.....

[Anonymous No.1777511]

bamp