Critiques of ASOIAF

[TheWitch]

What critiques do we all have of ASOIAF?

In terms of world building, story arch, structure, plot etc

Not here to bash GRRM or the books, but we can all critique things we enjoy!

[OtherFromAnotherMother]

I have always wanted a POV from a commoner's perspective. Maybe a soldier in Tywin’s army or a farmer in the Riverlands (even though we do get a pretty good idea of the happenings here).

There are conversations which involve what the common people want. This quote from Jorah in GoT always stuck out to me.

Quote

Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

 

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are."

 

Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah's words, the more they rang of truth.

But we never actually get a viewpoint about this. Sure, we get a general sense like Bywater's talk with Tyrion about the people's talk of rebellion, etc. But does the average person in Gulltown care about who is on the throne? Is a Dornish mother of 5 actually upset that Doran doesn't do something about Oberyn's death? Are men excited to go to war following Robb Stark? 

I understand that this viewpoint would be very limited, but I think George could be able to loosely tie a POV into something important which would give the reader something extra to think about. 

 

[Reginald blackfield]

I'd have left out most of the common sayings and House words if I were GRRM. I felt they were poorly executed and mostly came across as cheesy.

[GyantSpyder]

Even between when A Game of Thrones and A Feast for Crows were written, the general cultural and social dialogue in America around gay people and sexual identity completely transformed.

This introduces some changes in the work that might be interpreted as inconsistencies, if you want to see the books as something that only exists within themselves. But if you see the books more reasonably as existing in a cultural context, it can be pretty interesting.

[GyantSpyder]

Also the female characters spend less time than they probably should noticing and thinking about specific things about male characters that are physically attractive. Half the men reading it would be rolling their eyes at how hot everybody thinks Jon Snow is, but it would be more balanced.

[mankytoes]

4 hours ago, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

I have always wanted a POV from a commoner's perspective. Maybe a soldier in Tywin’s army or a farmer in the Riverlands (even though we do get a pretty good idea of the happenings here).

There are conversations which involve what the common people want. This quote from Jorah in GoT always stuck out to me.

But we never actually get a viewpoint about this. Sure, we get a general sense like Bywater's talk with Tyrion about the people's talk of rebellion, etc. But does the average person in Gulltown care about who is on the throne? Is a Dornish mother of 5 actually upset that Doran doesn't do something about Oberyn's death? Are men excited to go to war following Robb Stark? 

I understand that this viewpoint would be very limited, but I think George could be able to loosely tie a POV into something important which would give the reader something extra to think about. 

 

Yeah, I mean Davos is a commoner by birth, and I think it adds depth to his. Even just a short chapter occasionally. Like with Robb, it's a very long way to go, with the farm going without your attention, for what is really a personal grudge between members of the nobility. No one was threatening their home (until the ironborn came... because they'd left in the first place).

1 hour ago, GyantSpyder said:

Also the female characters spend less time than they probably should noticing and thinking about specific things about male characters that are physically attractive. Half the men reading it would be rolling their eyes at how hot everybody thinks Jon Snow is, but it would be more balanced.

Even between when A Game of Thrones and A Feast for Crows were written, the general cultural and social dialogue in America around gay people and sexual identity completely transformed.

This introduces some changes in the work that might be interpreted as inconsistencies, if you want to see the books as something that only exists within themselves. But if you see the books more reasonably as existing in a cultural context, it can be pretty interesting.

 

I guess that's true, though I think you're thinking of Kit Harrington. Jon seems to be pretty plain faced, like Ned.

Can you expand on that? I don't really get what you mean (in terms of how the books reflect that).

I get really sick of dream sequences (this applies to all novels- everything I read seems to use them). Ok, the warging ones are plot important (which I kind of missed on my first read, because my eyes just skip over them). But some just annoy me. The one that stands out is Tyrion thinking of himself having two heads, killing Jaime, and one laughing, the other crying. Bloody hell, we get it, he's conflicted, I think we had worked that out already. What really annoys me is my dreams are never on the nose like this, I just get chased in bizarre circumstances.

Also, some of the battle writing doesn't really grab me. The Blackwater battle especially- in the Davos chapter he goes a bit nuts with naming the ships, it's very hard to keep track of. And then Tyrion is a little super powered when he rides out, he seems to kill about twenty guys.

I can't really think of much in terms of the wider story structure though, I really think these books are fucking awesome.

[falcotron]

20 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Also, some of the battle writing doesn't really grab me. The Blackwater battle especially- in the Davos chapter he goes a bit nuts with naming the ships, it's very hard to keep track of.

Actually, my first time through, I liked that. That's exactly how Davos would register a battle, which pushes you a little harder into Davos's PoV, so you care more about it. That's part of how GRRM gets us to feel for both sides here (the same way he's frequently talked about the Iliad).

But on a reread, when you already know and understand Davos, and the PoV structure is pretty firmly nailed into your head by now, it does feel a lot more distraction and less Davos flavor.

[Stuart Littlefinger]

The excessive food and clothing description

[Lucius Lovejoy]

Hmmm... the little things that annoyed me or I thought were unnecessary:

 

- When everyone starts using the term Nuncle in AFFC... it's fine for Asha since we hadn't had her POV before but the Lannisters using it was weird.

- When the chapter titles became descriptors instead of character names in AFFC.

- I'm sure Tyrion and Victarion had many more thoughts then "where do whores go" and Vic murdering his third wife after Euron soiled her so to have those repeated so often seemed excessive.

- as @Stuart Littlefinger noted the excessive food descriptions were a bit much at times.

[falcotron]

1 hour ago, Lucius Lovejoy said:

- When everyone starts using the term Nuncle in AFFC... it's fine for Asha since we hadn't had her POV before but the Lannisters using it was weird.

It's not just that one.

In AGoT, nobody says "little or less" or "much and more" once. In ACoK, Jeor says them a couple times, and it makes him sound like an old-fashioned old guy from the far North, which is pretty cool. In ASoS, Aemon and Stannis start saying it occasionally too. Which is a little weird.

In AFfC, everyone says it. All the time. And thinks it in their PoVs. It's not just occasionally—nobody ever says or thinks "little" or "much" again without adding the "or less" to the end, like it's some kind of involuntary tic. And they go out of their way to say it more, making their dialect and register less colorful. People who spent 3 books, and their first 40 years of life, saying they'd give their last silver or their left nut used to sound different from each other, but now they'd both only give much and more, so they sound the same as each other, and as drunk high school kids at a ren faire. They even go out of their way to structure their sentences oddly so they can squeeze in an extra use.

It's even weirder when everyone picks up some archaic idiom for one book and then just forgets in the next one. Somewhere between AGoT and ACoK, "gods be good" apparently becomes the only general-purpose interjection anyone knows. Which lasts until a few chapters into ASoS, when suddenly everyone gets sick of it. People still occasionally say it after that, but not nearly as often, and usually not as an interjection, and it's no longer frozen as an idiom—they say "If the gods are good" and "but the gods were good" as often as "gods be good". (Which I like better, but that's not the point.)

[Nihlus]

The worldbuilding of Westeros is generally poor. Particularly when it comes to the economics of the world, which seem tailor-made to allow one specific story to happen no matter how illogical it is. But this is really nothing compared to how absolutely terrible the worldbuilding in Essos is, to the point where the books are drastically improved just by skipping every Daenerys chapter.

[Trigger Warning]

Just because I started a reread recently so it's fresh but I absolutely checked out and skipped Bran's chapter where he sees Cersei and Jaime, we get it, you're good at climbing and know your way around Winterfell. Honestly I find quite a bit of the series pure tedium to read and think I've been drawn in mostly by the setting and characters and can't help feeling that a lot of it could be gutted without really losing much. 

[Daenerys Targaryen's slave]

The Gap should have happened. Maybe not 5 years, but 2-3 years would have been enough. That way, we see the characters once they are competent and able.

 

But Martin is obsessed with expounding on details, and now we have about 3 books of wasted time 

[TMIFairy]

4 hours ago, Nihlus said:

The worldbuilding of Westeros is generally poor. Particularly when it comes to the economics of the world

I agree. But this is part of the fantasy genre. Tolkien was even worse in this respect, IMO.

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

15 hours ago, OtherFromAnotherMother said:

I have always wanted a POV from a commoner's perspective. Maybe a soldier in Tywin’s army or a farmer in the Riverlands (even though we do get a pretty good idea of the happenings here).

We get some commoner perspective from Arya's  chapters, especially in GoT when she's at Flea Bottom.  

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

6 hours ago, Nihlus said:

The worldbuilding of Westeros is generally poor. Particularly when it comes to the economics of the world, which seem tailor-made to allow one specific story to happen no matter how illogical it is. But this is really nothing compared to how absolutely terrible the worldbuilding in Essos is, to the point where the books are drastically improved just by skipping every Daenerys chapter.

How so?

[Springwatch]

Ideas about justice are beyond weird. The job of a king or queen is mostly to sit on a throne or bench, and adjudicate between peasants - for hour after hour, day after day. Ned executes a guy, but hadn't bothered to get off his horse to question him. Elsewhere, summary justice is given out at the whim of the local strongman, no problem.

Where are the laws? Where are the judges?

This kind of thing used to bother me, but less so now I'm considering the novels as a modern legend - the unreliable narrator here is the author, and that's ok. And it gives the flexibility needed to fit in the massive amount of symbolism.

He hasn't got a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising Tolkein, though. At least in LOTR you can believe that a realistic infrastructure is out there in the background somewhere. GRRM shoves his cardboard and tinfoil right under your nose.

[mankytoes]

26 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

Ideas about justice are beyond weird. The job of a king or queen is mostly to sit on a throne or bench, and adjudicate between peasants - for hour after hour, day after day. Ned executes a guy, but hadn't bothered to get off his horse to question him. Elsewhere, summary justice is given out at the whim of the local strongman, no problem.

Where are the laws? Where are the judges?

This kind of thing used to bother me, but less so now I'm considering the novels as a modern legend - the unreliable narrator here is the author, and that's ok. And it gives the flexibility needed to fit in the massive amount of symbolism.

He hasn't got a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising Tolkein, though. At least in LOTR you can believe that a realistic infrastructure is out there in the background somewhere. GRRM shoves his cardboard and tinfoil right under your nose.

Rule of Law is far from a constant in societies, in fact it hasn't existed in most of them. Westeros is ruled by custom and status, not law as we understand it. Most people in history (and plenty in the present) have been subject to the whim of a strongman, not the rule of law.

[falcotron]

3 hours ago, TMIFairy said:

I agree. But this is part of the fantasy genre. Tolkien was even worse in this respect, IMO.

But Tolkien isn't the end of fantasy. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar has some attempt at making the economics work. Even Discworld manages to be somewhat realistic, even though it's a satirical world that advances implausibly from faux-medieval to magitech-Victorian in a generation. Clark Ashton-Smith developed realistic bronze age economics, which some later writers have expanded on. Paul Cornell, Charles Stross, and other writers try to work out how magic would fit into modern economics. There are even hundreds of letters and articles in Dragon Magazine trying to make the economics of D&D more realistic, and Mystara and some of their other settings tried to make things work more believably than the default Greyhawk setting.

In many other areas, GRRM identifies the stupid assumptions behind hack fantasy and directly challenges them. But in economics, he mostly just takes them on board unchallenged.

Of course his story can't challenge everything about stock epic fantasy, or there'd be no room for a story; it would just be a commentary on what's wrong with epic fantasy. But still, it's hard to give him a pass on these issues without at least commenting.

[falcotron]

6 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Rule of Law is far from a constant in societies, in fact it hasn't existed in most of them. Westeros is ruled by custom and status, not law as we understand it. Most people in history (and plenty in the present) have been subject to the whim of a strongman, not the rule of law.

It is a bit odd that Westeros is so far behind late-medieval Europe in this respect.

And it's even odder that GRRM doesn't seem to recognize that.

In interviews, he's described Westeros as having "something like English common law", but his world doesn't actually have any of the features that make up common law. Law isn't common; it varies from region to region and lord to lord. Appeal to precedent is pretty weak, rather than being the fundamental justification for all judgments. There's no professional judiciary. There are no officers of the court or legal experts. Their legal system bears more resemblance to pre-codification Germanic tribal law than to Plantagenet common law.

Which makes all the other ways his society is like late medieval England (or even late Renaissance, in some cases) a bit less plausible. It's hard to imagine how you could have Age of Exploration-style world trade and Dutch-style early-modern banking in a world without even the prerequisites for a concept of rule of law.