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GRRM is a bad writer?


BastardlyRock

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GRRM isn't a prose genius like Vladimir Nabokov or Anthony Burgess. His gift is for plot and characters. I would place his technical ability at around the same level as crime writer James Ellroy, author of L A Confidential. He is without peer within his own genre. His books are beautifully crafted genre masterpieces.


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I'm sure I'm not as well read as many of you on here but I have read several novels considered to be classics. IMO I find him to be a very good writer. Perhaps he doesn't illuminate certain things the way many classic writers have but personally I find many of these classic stories slower and lacking of any visceral impact. There are certain chapters in ASoIF that have truly affected me and it's in these chapters that you realize how great the story telling has been up to this point that it would have that sort of impact on you. BTW I also prefer the LOTR films to the books. I have great respect for Tolkien but also find his works difficult to get through.

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Really? I have been leaning to give him a shot. Suggestions?

If I may: Tolkien comes from a different background and different times. He is an academic before being an author - in the literary sense. He mimics styles and he builds a narrative world to fit both his artificial languages and his desire to give rhetorical organisation to Germanic and Nordic lore. LoTR can be tiresome in this sense - and so does the Silmarillion.

If you feel that this is the sort of experience you are looking for, then give it a go. The Hobbit, LoTR and The Silmarillion will all give you very different literary experiences and perspectives (the other works are only 'readable' if you decided to dive deeper into this experience)

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Really? I have been leaning to give him a shot. Suggestions?

"Small Gods" is the one I'd recommend, as it is one of his best works. It's stand alone, so you don't need any backstory to understand it. I also love any of the Watch series with Sam Vimes- my favorite book of that particular group is "Night Watch", but the first one in the series is "Guards! Guards!"

Be careful, though- they are incredibly addictive ;) And hilarious. I've read all 40-something of his Discworld books, and while some are better than others, they are all great reads. He's an absolute master of satire.

Fun fact: Charles Dance played Lord Vetinari in the miniseries of "Going Postal'- and he nailed it.

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This.

Moreover, my personal impression is that GRRM tries too hard sometimes: both his prose and his storytelling are grand, "epic" in the sense that they do not aim at the average (Bernard Cornwell comes to mind), but his grasp of his own intents can be fragile every now and then. The abundance of certain expressions and words in specific books, the somewhat inconsistency in the usage of certain terms, a few aspects of the convoluted plot, the waste or misplace of a some secondary characters… all of these undermine, even if in a very subjective and personal level, the grandiosity of his prose and story.

By no means I’m saying that GRRM is not good (he might be my second or third favorite author, to be honest), but I can see why some people would find problems with his literary aesthetics.

And I totally agree with all who point out that he gets on a "kick" with a certain phrase and hammers it into the ground, and because the books are coming out years apart but the events are happening days or weeks apart, it comes across like everybody's picked up new favorite idioms overnight. As in, "If you really liked saying 'much and more' so much, then how come you never said it last week?" :D

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I read all five books in summer 2012. Since then, I've listened to the audio books.

So what do I recall from two years ago...

Inadequate editing: sj4iy made the point. At Feast, I started reading the online chapter summaries immediately after I finished each chapter. My fears were repeatedly confirmed, I was missing vital details amongst numerous (arguably) trivial details. I recall thinking how nice it might be to read a re-edited version whereby gray side bars and/or other formatting were employed to enumerate all the foods on a table, for example. Also, I'd rather see a picture of a sigil rather than a quarter page of verbiage or more describing it.

The other writing trend that troubled me, and he's hardly unique in this, was the frequent ambiguous pronouns, not the intentional ones designed to confuse and evoke mystery.

Another format thing I craved would mark in bold the name of who was speaking, as in a script. It seems I had to re-read a number of passages to be sure I understood the correct identity of a speaker.

I've not read many books. Yet I've read everything ASOIAF. He must be doing something extraordinary to hook me into so much reading.

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"Small Gods" is the one I'd recommend, as it is one of his best works. It's stand alone, so you don't need any backstory to understand it. I also love any of the Watch series with Sam Vimes- my favorite book of that particular group is "Night Watch", but the first one in the series is "Guards! Guards!"

Be careful, though- they are incredibly addictive ;) And hilarious. I've read all 40-something of his Discworld books, and while some are better than others, they are all great reads. He's an absolute master of satire.

Fantastic! I will have to try a few.

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I read all five books in summer 2012. Since then, I've listened to the audio books.

So what do I recall from two years ago...

Inadequate editing: sj4iy made the point. At Feast, I started reading the online chapter summaries immediately after I finished each chapter. My fears were repeatedly confirmed, I was missing vital details amongst numerous (arguably) trivial details. I recall thinking how nice it might be to read a re-edited version whereby gray side bars and/or other formatting were employed to enumerate all the foods on a table, for example. Also, I'd rather see a picture of a sigil rather than a quarter page of verbiage or more describing it.

The other writing trend that troubled me, and he's hardly unique in this, was the frequent ambiguous pronouns, not the intentional ones designed to confuse and evoke mystery.

Another format thing I craved would mark in bold the name of who was speaking, as in a script. It seems I had to re-read a number of passages to be sure I understood the correct identity of a speaker.

I've not read many books. Yet I've read everything ASOIAF. He must be doing something extraordinary to hook me into so much reading.

One thing that is no so much a problem in the books as the audiobooks are the internal monologues interspersed with actual dialogue. It makes it difficult to know what a character is thinking and what they are actually saying when it's read aloud with no "he thought" or something to denote it.

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But he's great at character and an absolute fucking genius when it comes to realizing 'secondary' characters.

<--

I agree that I like more the secondary characters than many of the main ones. They're not to be only "around". They all look like real people.

What he being fat has to do with it? JK

I noticed. I said "no one will notice..."

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I love the aSoIaF books and the characters who inhabit them. I've read hundreds of novels over the years and these are among my very favourites. It is that rare kind of story that begs me to re-read it multiple times. I think it is because of the density of the story and the layered use of foreshadowing and prophecy. Do I think the books are perfect masterpieces of literature? No. Do I think they are endlessly entertaining? Yes. If I had to nitpick a problem with GRRM's writing, I would say that he isn't very good at advancing his plot. Five books in and I don't always feel like we are much closer to learning where this is all going. Having said that, I don't care a great deal because I loved reading every chapter so far.


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Well, you know, there's many aspects to writing, like:



- Prose: He's good enough, but definetely not the best out there. I don't think he'd make my top 20, to be honest


- Dialogue: Very good, probably his biggest strength


- Characters (and character development): Very good from book 1 to 3. Many of the POV characters introduced in aFfC/aDwD like Aeron, Arys, Areo, Victarion, Quentyn, JonCon, are terrible and underdeveloped and some of the secondary ones are awful (Darkstar, the Sand Snakes)


- Pacing (and structure): Pretty bad in aFfC/aDwD



I don't hate his pseudo-archaich expressions, but some phrases he does repeat a lot, but that's probably Anne Groell's fault

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I haven't read much but I think the writing in the first four books is quite good. However I felt Dance had pacing issues as well as problems with numerous unrelated storylines, both of which drained the fluidity of the book.



I also found it easy to miss key subtle details if I was paying complete attention, I'm not sure if that's just me though.

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Well, you know, there's many aspects to writing, like:

- Prose: He's good enough, but definetely not the best out there. I don't think he'd make my top 20, to be honest

- Dialogue: Very good, probably his biggest strength

- Characters (and character development): Very good from book 1 to 3. Many of the POV characters introduced in aFfC/aDwD like Aeron, Arys, Areo, Victarion, Quentyn, JonCon, are terrible and underdeveloped and some of the secondary ones are awful (Darkstar, the Sand Snakes)

- Pacing (and structure): Pretty bad in aFfC/aDwD

I don't hate his pseudo-archaich expressions, but some phrases he does repeat a lot, but that's probably Anne Groell's fault

I definitely agree about the dialogue, most of what I've read doesn't even compare in terms of dialogue.

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George became a better writer between aSoS and aFfC, just read that prologue in Feast to notice that. However, what George did really well in the first three books is the rythm and pacing. In the end the choice to split up and leave out on of the end battles in Feast and Dance is what brakes down rythm.


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Well, you know, there's many aspects to writing, like:

- Prose: He's good enough, but definetely not the best out there. I don't think he'd make my top 20, to be honest

- Dialogue: Very good, probably his biggest strength

- Characters (and character development): Very good from book 1 to 3. Many of the POV characters introduced in aFfC/aDwD like Aeron, Arys, Areo, Victarion, Quentyn, JonCon, are terrible and underdeveloped and some of the secondary ones are awful (Darkstar, the Sand Snakes)

- Pacing (and structure): Pretty bad in aFfC/aDwD

I don't hate his pseudo-archaich expressions, but some phrases he does repeat a lot, but that's probably Anne Groell's fault

I actually enjoy the archaic expressions/words....but my daily life is consumed by these so.... I agree with your points, especially character development. I personally am not a fan of the 10 names, one person tactic. If anything, I find it to be a unnecessary distraction.

There are some repetitious phrases that are more annoying than anything. To name a few:

- "You know nothing Jon Snow" - well I found Ygritte annoying as well....

- "It is known"

- Anything Dany says in regards to her blood, the throne....

- "Where do the whores go"

BUT.....As many complaints as I can list, there is something to be said for a series that can be read over and over. There is also something to be said when an author can successfully create characters who are both loathed and loved by many. I loath Dany, Cercei, Joff, Tywin, the Freys, but I love the Starks, Jon, Stannis, and even good old Robert. Other readers may have the opposite tastes, and so on. Hemingway, etc might be the class of the field in terms of style, but I will pick up aSoIaF most days of the week before the classics.

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To be honest, some of the chapters come off as amateurish. Also let's not forget that GRRM did not create this story from scratch, he has essentially took a historical event and turned it into fantasy. Yes he did bring several characters to life, and no dragons and direwolves were not involved in the Wars of the Roses; but the basic outline for a story was there for him to utilize. Now don't get me wrong AoIaF is my favorite series from the genre (aside from the King Killer Chronicles); however, I came to the series because I have a strange love affair with the English Wars of the Roses--not the other way around. I just returned to GoT about 4 months ago and was surprised a how bad some of the chapters were written.

In the end, prose are meaningless if the story is garbage. He tells a brilliant story with more twists and turns than one could imagine. For me, at least, I could care less where he ranks among writers, because he is a in a league of his own in terms of story telling. I know I will be torched for this, but I find Tolkien to be "garbage". I have used every ounce of my energy in an attempt to read LotR, but I just cannot force myself through it. I actually like Jackson's interpretation better...... I think there is a huge difference from story telling and stringing words together in a "beautiful" way.

IMO I think Patrick Rothfuss is a far superior author, but that is my opinion.

I don't have an issue with his usage of wroth.

It's not as simple as a copy of War of the Roses. And for that matter, LotR can be viewed as a WWII analogy

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He's definitely a competent writer in terms of pure writing craft. But it's his characterisation, sense of setting and the subtle hints that he intersperses throughout ASOIAF that make him memorable.



If it wasn't for the great story and immersive world, I don't think he would be viewed in the same way.



But hey, this is genre fiction, it's not about how beautiful the prose is, it's about coherency and readability first and foremost.




Edit: not having a dig at genre fiction, just pointing out it's not literary fiction.


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He's great at prose, exposition, and creating different moods. Reading through the first three books and a lot of his short stories, and Dying of the Light, its clear that he is quite a unique talent...



Books four and five lack none of his best qualities, but there's a clear feeling of meandering, as if the story was a bit off the rails. I love aspects of both books but I can see why some don't. But I'd say that's just a lack of planning rather than writing skill.



If we are comparing him to Benioff and Weiss, he is James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare and Gabriel García Márquez rolled into one.


:agree: :agree: :agree: :agree: :agree:


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