1)Martin is still involved and I wish that he were not. His days of being a helpful and creative force are behind him and his ego (like insisting on making the Iron Throne BIGGER!!!) IMO create lots of opportunities for the show to go wrong.
2)The concept of a feudal civil war with Dragons only has so much content value to me. I haven’t seen any indication of the deeper story beats, plot hooks, or interesting characters that would drive a longer arc as yet. They haven’t revealed much of that, so we’ll see.
That said, I’m merely skeptical about this show rather than fully hating on it. I’m willing to read the reviews of the first season and form my own opinion.
This is where I’m at. There are a lot of medieval civil war/intrigue soap operas out there; dragons alone is not going to set this above those other shows.
So it really comes down to whether the writers, directors, and authors are good. GRRM’s book already sets the story beats, but it doesn’t give a lot of deep characterization, so they’re pretty much on their own there (depending on how much GRRM has been consulting).
Why do these successful series authors so often ignore their editors, making their books longer? I mean, why does power necessarily express itself that way? I’d like to think I would wield my power by forcing my publisher’s staff to find 400 pages to trim or be fired.
I’ve been listening to A Cast of Kings, and they’ve gotten me pretty excited about House of the Dragon.
The hosts (David Chen of the Filmcast, along with Kim Renfro who’s written a lot about Game of Thrones) were both very disappointed with the last season of the original series, but both have heard and see enough to be excited about the new series. Kim recently went to the premier and agreed that it was a very promising start.
I believe in many cases the reason is ego. Some authors perceive edits as a criticism of the work or saying “that part of the work is not good” and resist it. That ignores the issue of construction and integration in favor of treating everything the author writes as Golden Perfection.
Authors usually get to a point where their editors are merely just the people they interface with at the publisher. They’ll give suggestions but they are completely beholden to the author (especially if they have long-term multi-book deals).
Regardless of the show’s quality, Betteridge’s law applies to that headline.
“There’s no world in which we expect this to pick up where the original left off,” Bloys said. “I think the show will do really well. But it will have to do the work on its own to bring people in and to sustain the viewership.”
I guess they knew that, though. Nice placement at the end of the article.
And in the premiere episode, there are elements that will look familiar to “Thrones” viewers, including plenty of gore, multiple dragons and an Iron Throne. Also: nudity and an orgy.
NPR talked about House of the Dragon the other day, and the lead in was the host of all things considered asking:
“So is this show more old white men with beards, fantasy fluff, and poor treatment of women like the original Game of Thrones? I couldn’t watch the original, all I know about the ending of GoT is that everyone hated it. Do you think I’ll enjoy HotD?”
