A Game of Crap

[jchrisobrien]

I spent the majority of yesterday drawn into A Game of Thorns, and then it happened.  Two of my favorite characters killed in one chapter (I later found that one of them wasn't killed, but they weren't mentioned for the rest of the book).  A Game of Thrones started out like a taut intrigue or thriller, and halfway through it became Requiem for a Dream:  "Let's have really horrible things happen over and over to all the characters you like.  Let's see them make major sacrifices in everything they do, and nothing go right for them anyway."  I started hoping more characters would die, just to put them out of their misery.  The last quarter of the book I just skimmed, I didn't care about the details or imagery, I just wanted to see how badly people got screwed over.

Today I checked wikidpedia to get some ideas of what is coming in the future:  more of the characters I liked die, more of the ones I hated lived, or screwed over the characters I liked more.  Some of them just get ignored and do random stupid things for the rest of the series. 

Thanks for all the crap, George.  Maybe I'll get around to finishing the series some decade, or I'll just read all the capsule reviews and get my anger out in one day, rather than wasting the next few weeks.

I hope Kushiel's Dart is a step up from this.

Comments

[silas7.livejournal.com]

Nepenthe pointed out some of the parallels to Exalted re: the Dawn Age, and I can see them. By the time they were being explained, I expected the teller to get killed by a falling tree limb. :)

There were some fairly uplifting turns at the end: the King in the North (which is going to break my heart later), and Jon getting to DO something in the next book (apparantly, join with the enemy).

[canongrrl.livejournal.com]

I remember I was going to try and read the boos but I like fantasy for escapism not to watch all my favorites die so I was never really able to make myself read more then a handful of pages