I remember attending one of GRRM’s events and he said something along the lines of “Ive forgotten more about Westeros than I remember.”
He wasn’t kidding that there are at least 3-4 novels worth of stuff lurking in this material. I’m sure in the future someone will adapt/expand on some of these stories.
The Jaeheyrs stuff is great. So much intrigue and tragedy, even during the reign of the most peaceful and prosperous Targaryen monarch. And his weakness was indulging his daughters too much. What nightmares they became.
Still, those early Targaryen reigns were something to behold.
I got a notification from my Library yesterday that my turn had come for Fire and Blood, so I dropped whatever I was reading and started my 2 weeks of reading this book. It certainly is more interesting than I thought it would be, right off the bat.
Gosh, I’m really loving this book. (Fire and Blood). There’s so many interesting stories here. Honestly, I was expecting more of the kind of stuff you hear about in Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts, you know, stuff like “none of the original sources reveal anything about this period, so we don’t really know what happened except through Herodotus’ plays”, etc.
But apparently the historian putting together Tangaryan history had plenty of good sources, since so far we pretty much know everything that happened in most situations.
Someone mentioned in the Game of Thrones TV episode section that the Night King is not a character in the books. Which leads to the inevitable question: Was he going to be introduced in the books by GRRM or not? And if he wasn’t, then how are the undead going to be defeated with a Night King kill that eliminates all undead everywhere? Without a Night King, even if they won the battle at Winterfell, the dead will always be a problem.
Of course, if there was to be no Night King, then I doubt the undead could have procured a dragon and broken through the wall. So that would make them easier to contain.
Edit: Oh fine. I’ll spoiler the section for book readers who refuse to watch the TV show.
Pretty sure he was introduced in the show when they were post-books, which would strongly suggest Night King is coming in the books eventually.
And I’m blurring his name, because folks that come to this thread may not watch the show and/or not want to know about what’s (probably) coming in the books.
At this point, I’d be somewhat content with a 4 page summary of the entire ending, just so we have an idea of what Martin actually intended vs. the HBO show. If it’s same, so be it. Also screw Martin with a thousand Valerian steel swords but so be it.
Around the time the TV series started, they made a big deal about how GRRM had shared the remainder of the book’s plot with the producers. But my theory is that the further away they got from what was in GRRM’s mind (primarily Winds of Winter), the less defined the plot points became.
Like, I imagine they got a pretty solid outline of Winds of Winter. But I think they only thing they got for Dream of Spring was two bullet points reading 1) zombies get beaten, and 2) someone sits on the Iron Throne.
In the books, the Night Kind is a figure out of either myth or history (or both, I can’t recall precisely) but is not an actual character currently existing that any of the POV characters have encountered. There probably is some type of Night King in the books to be revealed as the White Walkers act is they have some leadership or direction, but we haven’t seen that character yet in the books.
On the TV show, is he encountered for the first time by the characters at Hardhome? I can’t remember anymore. Or was the first time on their excursion North to capture a White Walker “alive”?
EDIT: I know he’s never going to finish, but I really hope we at least get Winds of Winter in book form one day. That will answer a LOT of questions on which parts were meant to be, and which parts the show fudged a bit or a lot.
Also, consider that GRRM has the luxury of revising the plan in large chunks as he moves along. He might have had an overview, but from what I’ve read, he’s not the kind of guy who does overviews well – he prefers to carve out the plot as it advances, and modify the plans to make them logical/realistic, which is a luxury authors have far more than TV screenwriters. This means even if he provided an overview, it’s highly likely he wouldn’t stick to it when push came to shove.
I hope so, and if we don’t I will be disappointed. I hate to sound the target of “George R R Martin isn’t your bitch,” but I think on a series of this length and years in the making you have an implied contract with your readers to finish. When he works on editing the other series, or working on Fire and Blood, I kinda feel like he should be finishing this story. He kinda reminds me of well, me, with started projects that I never finish.
What if the show is actually hewing very closing to what he had planned for the books, but he’s balked after seeing the negative reactions people have had to it?
We already started seeing major deviations from the books starting with the third season onwards. Just off the top of my head, the Sand Snakes, the Bronn and Jaime road show, a bunch of Mereen stuff, Tyrion and Jorah’s journey, almost everything with Melisandre, etc.
I think in broad strokes, the showrunners followed the plot of the books, but there’s no way the specific set piece events happened the way the books were headed.
I do not agree that books 4 and 5 are fantastic. They both have some great writing and some great scenes in them (5 much more so than 4, IMO) but they are also both quite uneven relative to books 1 through 3, with plenty of weaker writing (“words are wind”, etc.). And quality control is notably poor in both (again with 5 being better than 4 IMO) in both, specifically in regard to management of characters, plot threads, integration of plot and story, and control of plot and story. For example, Martin has admitted he had real trouble with the “Mereeneese Knot” and it definitely shows in book 5. Also, the Dorne material is simply not written to the same quality level as most of the rest of the books. The Dorne and Iron Island POVs (with the exception of Victarion, who breaks the general rule) are the weakest of the series IMO, by a lot.
On the other hand, the fact that I feel obligated to allow an exception for Victarion shows that even in what I view as the weakest books in the series, there are great characters, great scenes and great writing.
The problem is, the first 3 books were good to great consistently throughout. This is a remarkable achievement in writing and definitely raised my expectations too high. And yet, between the great writing in the first 3 books and all the foreshadowing/prophecy which made it seem like Martin actually had a plan, at the time of reading the first 3 books, those expectations felt justified.
One of the keys is that Martin did not tell every story he thought of it in the first 3 books: plenty happens off stage and a lot of context and backstory is implied. He had enough self-discipline to focus on certain POVs and certain plot threads, and his self-editorial judgement was excellent in that what he focused on turned out to be truly excellent.
Somehow after book III, his ability to focus like that, disregard weaker characters and lesser plot threads, to ignore digressions and control his ego and actually cut from his writing, lessened. Not sure if it was success, stubbornness, etc., but just as the same thing happened to Tom Clancy and middle-period Steven King, it happened to Martin. Interestingly, King improved IMO with a return to tighter, better work in recent years. Quite possibly due to recovery from alcoholism. For Martin, I see no indication of any such recovery of focus or willingness to trim his worst instincts as a writer.
In a meta sense, editing, including self-editing, is just as important at creativity, and IMO Martin lost some ability to edit himself 15 to 20 years ago. His creativity remained excellent and his prose crafting remained top of the line, but his ability to edit out his weaker ideas, characters, and writing, lessened.
So the later books are step down not just in quantity of output, but also, IMO a notable step down in quality as well (on average, not absolute). Oh well. It is what it is.
