Will we ever get another series like ASOIAF?

[Rhom]

21 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

You're describing Dune.

True.

[Darth Richard II]

3 hours ago, unJon said:

I haven't looked at it, but I saw some recent posts in the TV section about there being new theories on YouTube about it. Something about the destruction of a moon during an eclipse. Believe the poster was @LmL  

That is the sum of my knowledge. 

That's bunk. I can almost hear GRRM facepalming in my head.

[Darth Richard II]

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Is there any news on this? I remember discussing this on-board ten years ago or so. No satisfactory explanation (whether based on orbital mechanics or magic) was ever found. It seems like a screw-up from GRRM.

(Unless GRRM-world is not actually a planet orbiting a sun. It would have to be some mythical Tolkien-like world for the seasons to work.)

Do you know what fantasy means? Are you one of those people that constantly questions how Dragons can exist since they're so large?

[unJon]

5 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

To be fair, GRRM himself has gone on multiple tangents about how he specifically made his dragons serpentine with two legs and wings, rather than in the more traditional fantasy form of four limbs + wings, because no creature in nature exists that way and he wanted them to be as realistic as possible.

Leviticus 11:23. 

Well played. 

[Consigliere]

13 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Is there any news on this? I remember discussing this on-board ten years ago or so. No satisfactory explanation (whether based on orbital mechanics or magic) was ever found. It seems like a screw-up from GRRM.

(Unless GRRM-world is not actually a planet orbiting a sun. It would have to be some mythical Tolkien-like world for the seasons to work.)

There was an interview around 5 or 6 years ago where Martin said that he will eventually provide an explanation for why the seasons are the way they are and that it will be a fantasy explanation rather than a science-fiction one.

[Darth Richard II]

Also no one has mentioned Mlazan yet because

1. its not like ASOIAF at all

2. Opinions differ enough that juts mentioning it causes riots and fist fights.

[Darth Richard II]

28 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

To be fair, GRRM himself has gone on multiple tangents about how he specifically made his dragons serpentine with two legs and wings, rather than in the more traditional fantasy form of four limbs + wings, because no creature in nature exists that way and he wanted them to be as realistic as possible.

I meant dragons in fantasy in general, but I did not know that, and now i know.

[redeagl]

6 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Because Malazan is trash.*

 

*after Midnight Tides

No.

 

And yes, ASOIAF is epic fantasy. Not even "low fantasy" either.I mean: Shadow babies, a character getting resurrected 6 times, Ice zombies controlled by anOther race , a magical wall of ice that's huge as fuck, dragons, immortal green children etc etc.... How the hell is that not fantasy? 

[The Marquis de Leech]

12 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I have to disagree with you. I find Martin's world building quite well rounded. Now maybe on the geography side, he's not so good, as you say wrong trees in the wrong regions, but I love the way he crafted the history of his world, and how said history is brought to life within the main story. Sansa's chapter in AGoT where the Hand's Tourney takes place is the point where I really got into the books. So what if it's very close to 15th century England, there is still plenty of uniqueness to give it its own flavors. 

So in your characterization of Martin's strengths, if world building is his weakest, it is still pretty strong to me, which makes the rest that much better.

English history with the names changed does not strike me as particularly compelling world-building. I mean, it functions perfectly well for what Martin is trying to do, but unique it is not.

[brunhilda]

On 8/16/2017 at 2:20 AM, Pecan said:

1) Epic in scale with solid world building and the sense that there is a big, big world out there with a deep history

2) Strong characters that we can identify with and have empathy for

3) Prose that flows and isn't distracting (for an example of terrible prose, try Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings)

4) Low magic

5) Politics and intrigue included, dynastic rivalries and conflict - that sort of thing

6) It should be about people, not elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, faeries, sprites, etc. 

The Coin and Dagger series (5 books) meets your qualifications pretty much. I don't think it's as good but I think it's quite good. Like GoT, I think it does good villain.

Stormlight Archives misses on point 4 and is weak on point 5 and very good on 1 but is a very strong series overall.  

I won't bring up Kingkiller because the concluding Book 3 is never going to be finished and the main character is contra 2 and weak on 5.

[polishgenius]

I was just gonna say that OP seems to be describing Dagger and Coin: it's not quite as epic as aSoIaF but other than that it hits every point. Long Price is a better series- personally I like that one quite a lot more than aSoIaF- but it's not quite as GRRM-like.



On Malazan: I love it, also a lot more than aSoIaF, but it really doesn't fit the bill here. Even in world-building, it's a bit all over the shop: in small pieces the scene-setting is brilliant but the whole really doesn't come together in any kind of convincing shape. Part of the issue is that Eriksen, sometimes seemingly purely for epicness's sake, uses historical timelines that are simply too big (there are a couple of aspects where all those zeroes are probably needed, but it causes so much historical empty space for everything else that it seems counterproductive) that's not the only issue.
I just re-read Midnight Tides though and I hope that once he's finally done with Malaz world Eriksen turns his hand to a slightly smaller-scale story that focuses more within a specific area, like that book does for the most part. The Karkhanas prequels kind of aim to do that already, but they're obviously still connected.

 

 

On the great seasonal debate: I'm presumably not the only one who thinks it's really likely that the seasonal variations are something to do with the long-term mystical war between R'hllor and the Great Other (who is powering, you know, The Others)? Though it probably won't turn out as simple as 'R'hllor good, Other bad'.

[House Balstroko]

 

16 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Because Malazan is trash.*

 

*after Midnight Tides

Malazan is most definitely not trash.

16 hours ago, Corvinus said:

OP states the ASOIAF successor should also be mostly about humans, and with low magic, so Malazan doesn't qualify. As to world building, I've only read the first 3 books, and don't care to continue, so I don't know how good it is supposed to be.

Fair enough, I was mostly looking at a few points mentioned like the world building, the interesting characters and the political intrigue though the last one isn't quite as prominent as the one found in ASOIAF.

15 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

I have to agree. Malazan started off with a lot of promise but compromised the plot and characters for a lot of unnecessary world building that ultimately led to the demise of the series. Erikson could also have benefited from a strict editor, especially in the later books. To me it shows that world building ain't shit if that's all the author focuses on. Yet RBPL ranked Tolkien's creation (which I adore) in the same order as Erikson so it just goes to show there's no perfect formula to creating a good fantasy series based on emphasis alone. 

When did the plot get compromised? The Crippled God solves most of the threads from the series, with a few smaller ones left for Esslemont's books. 

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

On Malazan: I love it, also a lot more than aSoIaF, but it really doesn't fit the bill here. Even in world-building, it's a bit all over the shop: in small pieces the scene-setting is brilliant but the whole really doesn't come together in any kind of convincing shape.

Part of the issue is that Eriksen, sometimes seemingly purely for epicness's sake, uses historical timelines that are simply too big (there are a couple of aspects where all those zeroes are probably needed, but it causes so much historical empty space for everything else that it seems counterproductive) that's not the only issue.
I just re-read Midnight Tides though and I hope that once he's finally done with Malaz world Eriksen turns his hand to a slightly smaller-scale story that focuses more within a specific area, like that book does for the most part. The Karkhanas prequels kind of aim to do that already, but they're obviously still connected.

 

 

 

Why does a fantasy series need to follow human timescales? The tiste races are immortal by nature which is why the story covers such a large timespan. Sure, it may seem less tangible when there are such huge gaps, but we are dealing with multiple immortal sentient races.

[baxus]

10 hours ago, redeagl said:

And yes, ASOIAF is epic fantasy. Not even "low fantasy" either.I mean: Shadow babies, a character getting resurrected 6 times, Ice zombies controlled by anOther race , a magical wall of ice that's huge as fuck, dragons, immortal green children etc etc.... How the hell is that not fantasy? 

And all of that is accepted, but "irregular season changes" require a scientific explanation.

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

Why does a fantasy series need to follow human timescales? The tiste races are immortal by nature which is why the story covers such a large timespan. Sure, it may seem less tangible when there are such huge gaps, but we are dealing with multiple immortal sentient races.

The problem isn't inhuman timescales. The problem is that between a few very specific points in the history, everything seems really really static, on those inhuman timelines. He could have lopped a zero off most of the backstory dates given and changed very very little. The only thing that would actually feel accelerated is humanity's appearance and rise after the ritual of Tellann would be a lot faster than the real-world timeline of about 200,000 years to which it roughly corresponds, but given the level of magic involved, and where humanity came from, I don't think an extra little dollop to move the timeframe to 20k years would have even been noticed- 20,000 is still far far longer than recorded human history, after all. In fact even there it might have made more sense if you think about where the Imass are when the ritual happens.

[Ghjhero]

4 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

When did the plot get compromised? The Crippled God solves most of the threads from the series, with a few smaller ones left for Esslemont's books.

The plot was compromised by the fact that the world building overtook the few already shallow characters I was interested in and made it hard for me to care about them. By the end, I wasn't really interested in what was happening, I was reading merely to finish the series. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

On ‎2017‎/‎08‎/‎17 at 10:40 AM, Happy Ent said:

What does that mean? Does the magic move the Sun, and does it keep doing so? (It can’t move the World, because there is a fixed North Star. Or it would have to move the World very, very carefully.) This is exactly what we were discussing ten years ago. There is no satisfying explanation ‘from magic,’ unless you posit that the World is not a sphere orbiting a star. Which would be mighty, mighty weird. Discworld-like cosmology. Has GRRM confirmed this, or a new theory evolved?

Imagine a magical energy field that surrounds Planetos. The planet continues to orbit the sun normally. But the magical field captures the sun's energy, blocks it from the hemisphere that is experiencing Winter and redirects it to the hemisphere that is experiencing Summer.

The magical field waxes and wanes in strength over time. And at times, the natural season (lower case) breaks through the magical Season (upper case). This causes a spirit summer or false spring in the middle of a long Winter, and causes summer snows in the North during a magical Summer. So it may be magical Summer in the North, but the planet is currently in its orbital position around the Sun where the northern hemisphere would naturally be experiencing winter. And occasionally, this natural season breaks through the magical field, allowing the natural snows to fall in the North, even though it is magical Summer.

And the other way around too.

There, that's a magical explanation that fits all the evidence.

 

[Happy Ent]

39 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Imagine a magical energy field that surrounds Planetos. The planet continues to orbit the sun normally. But the magical field captures the sun's energy, blocks it from the hemisphere that is experiencing Winter and redirects it to the hemisphere that is experiencing Summer.

An explanation like that worked until the day where GRRM decided to have the sun set earlier in Winter. Your magical energy fields needs to displays the photons from the sun and make their image appear in a different place above the atmosphere, so that it looks as if the sun is in another place than where it is. And that would just be insane.

So, no, your explanation does not fit the evidence. The most plausible explanation still is that GRRM wrote himself into a corner. He clearly has no idea about how seasons work (almost nobody does), nor the basics of celestial mechanics. And that’s fine. But the “it’s magic” argument simply does not fly. There is no explanation even from magic that accounts for the phenomena he describes, unless (as I said) you posit Discworld-like cosmology, where the sun is not really a star, and the Planetos does not actually orbit it.

For the record, I have nothing against authors screwing up cosmology. (GRRM doesn’t care about worldbuilding.) What irks me is the “it’s magic” argument.

[mormont]

5 hours ago, baxus said:

And all of that is accepted, but "irregular season changes" require a scientific explanation.

It truly doesn't. That's not how fantasy actually works.

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

An explanation like that worked until the day where GRRM decided to have the sun set earlier in Winter. Your magical energy fields needs to displays the photons from the sun and make their image appear in a different place above the atmosphere, so that it looks as if the sun is in another place than where it is. And that would just be insane.

So, no, your explanation does not fit the evidence. The most plausible explanation still is that GRRM wrote himself into a corner. He clearly has no idea about how seasons work (almost nobody does), nor the basics of celestial mechanics. And that’s fine. But the “it’s magic” argument simply does not fly. There is no explanation even from magic that accounts for the phenomena he describes, unless (as I said) you posit Discworld-like cosmology, where the sun is not really a star, and the Planetos does not actually orbit it.

For the record, I have nothing against authors screwing up cosmology. (GRRM doesn’t care about worldbuilding.) What irks me is the “it’s magic” argument.

Maybe the shield just blocks out the sun in Winter. Doesnt mean the sun sets below the horizon. Or maybe it slows or even stops the orbit of the planet for all we know. Lengthening the seasons.

[Happy Ent]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Maybe the shield just blocks out the sun in Winter. Doesnt mean the sun sets below the horizon. Or maybe it slows or even stops the orbit of the planet for all we know. Lengthening the seasons.

How does this “shield” work? What kind of model of the world do you have in mind for “magic” to do that? I’m genuinely and constantly puzzled by such claims. (And we do have textual evidence for the sun setting earlier. It’s not something I make up. GRRM does.) 

Except if, as you say, there is constant, planetary-size magic at work right now (not magic that slows down the orbit, but that changes the rotation axis, of course.) This magic must be of such awesome power that Malazan or Moorcock stand in bafflement before the scope, ambition, and grandeur of the author’s willingness to employ magic as an explanatory device. And this magic must work at this very moment (there is no earlier event that can have put “wobble” into the spin axis for it to display the effects that we see.) Yet all this god-like might and agency required for this phenomenon is used for – what? 

Some source of magic has levelled up to level 800, yet the only spell it commands is “Change the rotational axis of the planet at will”? 

Compare the cost of accepting these implausibilities (and utter breaches of narrative frame, scope, atmosphere in routinely yet obliquely including such a strange magical phenomenon) with the rather mundane assumption of “GRRM screwed up, doesn’t really care (nor should he), and just tries to hand-wave it away by calling it magic.” The latter I believe (for its parsimony), the former baffles me, as does the readiness of the fanbase to rationalise it (still without building even the most basic of coherent models).