Comparing R. Scott Bakker with George R. R. Martin

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

I'm a bit late to the conversation, so hopefully I will not be too redundant of a voice. I prefer Martin to Bakker, and it's primarily due to characterization. For all of Bakker's marvelous world-building, metaphysics, and 'intellectual' ponderings, the world does not quite feel real to me. It's a fantastic world with tremendous depth of history, but it lacks the human quality that grounds it all in the "real." It's not the alienness that alienates me from the world, but the lack of "real people." Bakker's characters feel more like anthropomorphic metaphors and symbols than actual characters or real people. You could replace Kellhus Anasurimbor's name with simply "Modernity," Esmenet with "Whore," Cnaiur with "Heternormative Sexual Repression" and the story would read fine. To draw a comparison to "classical literature," Bakker's characterization feels more like the thinly veiled symbolic characters of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, while Martin's characterization feels more like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Heart of Darkness focuses on a smaller cast list filled with characters pondering, symbolism, anthropomorphic metaphors. The "world" around the characters is made to feel exotic and alien. Kellhus' journey to "Kill Moe" could even be read in light of Marlow's journey to find Kurtz. Through Pride and Prejudice, Austen delights in the "real" and the commonplace. There is a large cast of characters, especially of supporting characters who occasionally just show up to round the story out. The dialogue is dry, witty, and organic, flowing almost effortlessly from their characterization. More importantly, the characters feel like real people who each possess and use their agency for their own ends.

Edit for Gross-Simplification:

Martin's strength is narrative, but his weakness is getting overly bogged down in telling that narrative.

Bakker's strength is message, but his weakness is getting overly bogged down in delivering that message.

But remember, dear children

That though the No-God would fell us

If things really turn ugly

We can all trust in Kellhus.

From the Night before the Second Apocalypse.

Wouldn't a reappropriation of "Der Erlkönig" be more appropriate?

[Happy Ent]

Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,

was furchtbar’ Nicht-Gott mir leise verspricht?

Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind,

bist offensichtlig ganz durch den Wind.

[Happy Ent]

The dialogue is dry, witty, and organic, flowing almost effortlessly from their characterization. More importantly, the characters feel like real people who each possess and use their agency for their own ends.

Yes the first second, but emphatically no to the second.

It Martinworld, the second spearman from the left speaks with panache and wit. It’s extremely entertaining and engaging.

But nobody talks like that. Bakker’s characters have conversations and inner monologues that feel much more real to me. That means they’re inconsistent, repetitive, conceited, fragmented. Imperfect.

And sometimes trains of thought just …

[Cirdan]

Yikes. It's comments like these that make me think GRRM is vastly overrated. I definitely think ASOIAF being the best thing since Tolkien is an overstatement. GRRM may have popularized "darker, grittier" fantasy, but I don't think he's really revolutionized or even really broadened the scope of the genre in a fundamental way.

Read again. I've said "one of the best, if not THE BEST thing after LoTR". I mean, I'm sure that he is one of the most relevant author in the history of the fantasy genre and it's hard to dismiss that claim however you put it. And while I'm still not sure that GRRM is truly "the American Tolkien", I struggle to find a serious competitor if I consider the various standard that could be used for such a judgement (critical success, artistic accomplishment, commercial appeal and general popularity).

I certainly wouldn't say ASOIAF is more complicated or original than Bakker's series. Perhaps more convoluted and somewhat less linear.

ASOIAF's is more complicated than Bakker's series: for me it's self evident but again, everyone is entitled to his position. To put it simple: TPON narrative is a straight line with some deviation or circle here and there. It's basically a quest, a voyage from point A to point B, where little subplot that finally converge in the same direction. ASOIAF narrartive structure has multiple "arrows" that goes in different direction and that just "touch" in some instances. Convoluted? It's a little ironic that you use that term when I think that one of the main weakness of Bakker's series is the convoluted and redundant (and somewhat pointless) philosophical discourse that plague the entirety of the books to give a semblance of depth where everything is mostly surface at the end. Herbert made a better and more moderate use of that style in Dune's good books (I mean, the first and parts of the second one).

Even though Bakker rips history and uses conventional fantasy tropes, he does so in an innovative and insightful way. ASOIAF is essentially, "What if the War of the Roses, but the Romans rode dragons and looked like Elric of Melnibone? And there are frost zombies that never do anything?" While the blow-by-blow particulars of the narrative might be more "original" because they don't make use of high fantasy tropes, I never felt them to be breathtakingly original. They just seemed more mundane, that's all.

First, I respect your view but I think that you fail when you try to belittle ASOIAF's plot. You know, we could make fun of every plot in that way: Moby Dick is just the story of a mad sailor that want really badly to kill a big white fish. I mean, there's a lot more than the plot to judge the overall originality of a book. Martin's epic fantasy is more original because he completely escapes Tolkien's structure and tropes also managing to find the correct storytelling tools to achieve that goal. I'm sorry but Bakker's feels a lot more derivative.

Which, again, is fine, there's nothing wrong with that, and in some cases I prefer it. I actually really like reading GRRM for the pure soap-opera entertainment value. But I don't think that merits GRRM being the greatest thing to happen to fantasy since Tolkien.

I read the soap-opera critique many times but honestly I find it hard to accept it. I cannot find the common faults of soap opera in ASOIAF. Can you explain?

And by what standards are we assuming that books like ASOIAF are harder to write?

ASOIAF is harder to write because of A) narrative structure (Bakker's story is linear while ASOIAF is not) B) charachter consistency (Bakker's charachter change on the fly from times to times according to the plot, Martin's charachter are consistent) C) Depth and scope of the cast (even tertiary charachter in Westeros are strong and believable while Bakker masks the superficiality of most charachters and their role as mere plot tools with redundant and convoluted monologue) D) Martin's prose requires more work because he tries to write something that is at the same time functional and artistically acceptable. Honestl, it does not seem to me that Bakker's has the same concerns on an artistic level.

[red snow]

I think both authors are at the top of their games. George has a bigger story in terms of characters and side-plots but Bakker has a far more complicated story in terms of all the metaphysics and history. Bakker is far darker which is saying a lot when compared to GRRM but that doesn't neccessarily mean he's better.

I suspect (sure someone can confirm this) that they have different approaches, GRRM definitely has an organic approach to the series with general goalposts, whereas I suspect Bakker has a very tight idea of his story (or he's exceptionally good at winging it) and probably only alters the pacing style as he goes along.

I'm glad that we have both authors and wouldn't want to be put in a scenario where I'd have to choose between "winds of winter" and "Horns"

[Arthmail]

Bakker’s characters have conversations and inner monologues that feel much more real to me. That means they’re inconsistent, repetitive, conceited, fragmented. Imperfect.

No way Jose. They are thinly veiled distilations of the authors philosophy pounded out again and again like a hammer into the readers skull. Everyone in Bakker's world is looking at the filthy, and thinking of the filthy. By that i mean they almost never laugh, they are always critisizing the lying ways of men and whorish hearts and all of that. As i have said before, i have no idea why Bakker's characters don't kill themselves.

Their conversations and thoughts, by the by, do not always seem consistant because Bakker just rams his philosophy in at all times.

ASOIAF's is more complicated than Bakker's series: for me it's self evident but again, everyone is entitled to his position. To put it simple: TPON narrative is a straight line with some deviation or circle here and there. It's basically a quest, a voyage from point A to point B, where little subplot that finally converge in the same direction. ASOIAF narrartive structure has multiple "arrows" that goes in different direction and that just "touch" in some instances:

I would not really say either is more complicated. Multiple character narratives is not that difficult to achieve. I agree on Bakker's philosophy, and i sort of agree on the straight forward aspect, but there are multiple characters looking at events as they progress. Not as many as Martin, for sure, but Martin has gotten bogged down in all of that shit. I mean, for me a strong critique of Martin is that he's taken far too fucking long to get to this point. Sure, a great deal has happened, but i don't feel like a great deal of it helps the overall narrative. From the first book the Others looked to be some sort of big bad, a real threat from the north, but by book five we've barely seen them. The character meant to deal with them is possibly dead, and people are just wandering the fuck around. I feel like the tight narrative thread of the beginning books is gone.

Part of that all leads me to simply not caring when Martin puts out his next book. I'm not punishing him, and i honestly don't really care anymore. But come on man, pull this shit together. Dance was not bad, certainly better than AFFC, but characters such as Dany spent endless amounts of time doing nothing. I know as a hopeful author its hard to write scenes were not a great deal goes on, but her narrative was fucking boring, boring, boring. I thought she'd be crossing the sea right now with all of those Unsullied. But no. More fucking around.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Then what did Arya's, Sansa's, and Bran's chapters accomplish in a Clash of Kings?

The former two gave us insights into the War of the Five Kings (and character development: Arya turned vigilante, and Sansa lost her naivity), With Bran we saw his interactions with Theon, and learnt about the significance the Old Gods, etc. All three were set against plot-heavy storylines like, say, Tyrion's or Theon's, giving the reader some pay-off.

Compare that with Tyrion in ADWD, where we see him mope and describe turtles, yet still not get to Daenerys by the end, or Cersei in AFFC where characterisation went backwards.

[polishgenius]

ASOIAF is harder to write because of A) narrative structure (Bakker's story is linear while ASOIAF is not) B) charachter consistency (Bakker's charachter change on the fly from times to times according to the plot, Martin's charachter are consistent) C) Depth and scope of the cast (even tertiary charachter in Westeros are strong and believable while Bakker masks the superficiality of most charachters and their role as mere plot tools with redundant and convoluted monologue) D) Martin's prose requires more work because he tries to write something that is at the same time functional and artistically acceptable. Honestl, it does not seem to me that Bakker's has the same concerns on an artistic level.

Pretty much all of this can be turned around another way though. Bakker is harder to write because:

- aSoIaF is concerned almost solely with story and character while Bakker must balance those with the strong and intrinsic thematic elements and merge them into a coherent hole.

- Bakker must maintain character across long timejumps, trying to keep them consistent while also not having had them be still in the interim, whereas Martin deliberately abandoned a planned timejump that would have made it necessary to do this.

-The scope and complexity of the mythic backstory - fairly simple in Martin and not yet having much more than a McGuffin effect on the plot except in a few cases, it's not only much more complex in Bakker, it's intrinsically tied in to the current plot and he has to time the proper release of information so that he strikes a balance between infodumping and vagueness while also making it make sense from the character perspective.

-Bakker's prose requires more work because he's trying to marry a Tolkienistic epic narrative with a biblical religious feel and also trying to get his own philosophical concerns across in a coherent manner, whereas Martin writes in a simpler manner designed to get the plot across. In addition, Bakker's prose is more tied in to the whole - for me, the atmosphere for Martin largely comes from the things he talks about rather than the way he writes them, whereas the style is a great part of the feel of the books in Second Apocalypse.

The point being this- they're writing very different works and while you can argue about how successful each is at what they do, the implication that Bakker's work is easier to write because he's weaker in aspects that aren't his focus is pretty unfair.

Btw, while Martin is clearly strong on character, am I the only one who thinks he's not always entirely consistent? I mean, I love Jaime as a character, but I've always struggled to reconcile 'the things I do for love' with the character we later know he's always been.

[Screaming Turkey Ultimate]

Yes the first second, but emphatically no to the second.

It Martinworld, the second spearman from the left speaks with panache and wit. It’s extremely entertaining and engaging.

But nobody talks like that. Bakker’s characters have conversations and inner monologues that feel much more real to me. That means they’re inconsistent, repetitive, conceited, fragmented. Imperfect.

And sometimes trains of thought just …

I agree with you. Martin's dialogue is incredibly artificial in some places, with characters throwing perfectly timed witticisms all over the place. The introspection of Bakker's characters does hit me hard sometimes because of how realistic it is, excepting some of the heavier philosophical stuff.

[Pineapple]

I'm glad that we have both authors and wouldn't want to be put in a scenario where I'd have to choose between "winds of winter" and "Horns" (The Unholy Consult)

No argument here!

[Kalbear]

Well yes, he leaves because The Great Ordeal is starting. And because Mimara arrived. All of which has been arranged for to some extent. What's the issue?

The issue is that it seems odd to do...well, nothing for 20 years. Again, it's Kellhusian programming, but it rings false to me to be obsessed with something for 20 years and take no action on it. This is Akka - a person who refuted the godemperor of the world, who risked the damnation of the world for his love. This is not someone who hides, skulks. But that's what he does for 20 years - until it's time for us to catch up with him.

Geez, maybe he's changed Kal? Wait, no, you just claimed he didn't. Something about these complaints doesn't add up....

That's the thing, Shryke - he hasn't changed. As soon as he meets Mimara he's totally fine teaching her. He likes it, and comments as much in his internal dialog. So for 20 years he does nothing of the sort, and then again conveniently he goes back to what he was. Sorry if I didn't make that clearer.

But nobody talks like that. Bakker’s characters have conversations and inner monologues that feel much more real to me. That means they’re inconsistent, repetitive, conceited, fragmented. Imperfect.

That's an odd argument to me. So many of Bakker's characters have the exact same monologue that it's very difficult to differentiate, down to the verbiage they use. By comparison, look at Cersei or Aeron or Tyrion's monologue about their personal feelings and their worldviews. Look how Cersei justifies her actions that we know to be reprehensible and compare it to Jaime's thoughts on the same actions. This I think is a strength of Martin's work - not only do we get differing monologues with differing verbiage and views, we get them about the same events, so we know they're unreliable narrators and see things. I mean, Sansa thinks she kissed the Hound!

In Bakker we get realization of duplicity and ignorance - that's what passes for revelation. Akka suddenly realized he got played by the skin eaters, and goes through and looks at all the ways he did get played. everyone's coming to revelation instead of simply staying in their ignorance. Do you really think that that's more realistic?

[Pineapple]

The issue is that it seems odd to do...well, nothing for 20 years.

The Unification Wars?

That's the thing, Shryke - he hasn't changed. As soon as he meets Mimara he's totally fine teaching her. He likes it, and comments as much in his internal dialog. So for 20 years he does nothing of the sort, and then again conveniently he goes back to what he was. Sorry if I didn't make that clearer.

He is most certainly not okay teaching her the Gnosis at the beginning. It comes to a point where he teaches her to just escape for a moment from craziness that is The Slog

That's an odd argument to me. So many of Bakker's characters have the exact same monologue that it's very difficult to differentiate.

Though you might be right, I can't differentiate between the ponderings of Cnaiur and Achamian. Zsoronga and Cleric, Esme and Conphas, etc

[polishgenius]

I don't know why there seems to be a conception that realistic dialogue is a good thing, anyway. Realistic dialogue is, like, fucking boring and doesn't... what's the word... flow, at all. It doesn't flow at all. That one film, Glengarry Glen Ross, is all about the dialogue being realistic and there's only one scene in which it isn't and that's the best scene in the whole fucking movie. The rest of the film is repetitive and dull.

Dialogue that feels real without being, that's okay. I'm not sure why it's sometimes considered the only way to go though. Sometimes I like reading or watching something where people speak entirely in Sorkinese.

[Arthmail]

For me, i'd rather have dialogue thats witty than dialogue that focuses endlessly on philosophy and how bad humanity is. I mean, Akka and Mimara basically fight all of the time. I can almost understand it, but they are both so petty sometimes its hard to like either of them - and its hard to get away from the notion that Bakker makes them petty on purpose so as to increase tension, cause friction, or perhaps have moments were people just don't relate important events to each other.

I would say most everyone in Bakker's world is fairly petty. When it comes to the metal meeting the meat, sure, they shine through as better people. But in the every day, i wouldn't want to know any of them.

[Pineapple]

I would say most everyone in Bakker's world is fairly petty. When it comes to the metal meeting the meat, sure, they shine through as better people. But in the every day, i wouldn't want to know any of them.

Come now, I think everyone would enjoy a night on the town with Conphas

[Callan S.]

I thought the tabby cat was alright....

[Kalbear]

The Unification Wars?

Was specifically talking about Akka.

He is most certainly not okay teaching her the Gnosis at the beginning. It comes to a point where he teaches her to just escape for a moment from craziness that is The Slog

No, but he's teaching her almost immediately. Their first conversations are about him giving her a lesson. Akka is a teacher; that's his prime thing he likes to do. Which is why it's so odd that there's no mention of it for 20 years.

Though you might be right, I can't differentiate between the ponderings of Cnaiur and Achamian. Zsoronga and Cleric, Esme and Conphas, etc

I'm tempted to go through the series and find quotes and see if people can identify who they're from.

[unJon]

Was specifically talking about Akka.

No, but he's teaching her almost immediately. Their first conversations are about him giving her a lesson. Akka is a teacher; that's his prime thing he likes to do. Which is why it's so odd that there's no mention of it for 20 years.

I'm tempted to go through the series and find quotes and see if people can identify who they're from.

Well he did try to teach "the world" by writing the book about the truth of the Holy War. Maybe Akka was stuck the rest of the time trying to figure out how to make a 20-year gap work for the sequel?

Also, to be fair regarding the similarity of inner dialogues, IIRC it's mainly an issue in WLW, not the prior books.

[Screaming Turkey Ultimate]

For me, i'd rather have dialogue thats witty than dialogue that focuses endlessly on philosophy and how bad humanity is. I mean, Akka and Mimara basically fight all of the time. I can almost understand it, but they are both so petty sometimes its hard to like either of them - and its hard to get away from the notion that Bakker makes them petty on purpose so as to increase tension, cause friction, or perhaps have moments were people just don't relate important events to each other.

I would say most everyone in Bakker's world is fairly petty. When it comes to the metal meeting the meat, sure, they shine through as better people. But in the every day, i wouldn't want to know any of them.

But everyone is like that in the real world. We are all petty and selfish at a fundamental level. Sure, maybe it isn't as entertaining to portray characters in that way, but it hits closer to home, and that is more compelling to some readers. And Martin does this anyway. We get a lot of introspection from Tyrion, and he comes across as self-pitying and entitled at times, but he's still a great character.

[polishgenius]

We are all petty and selfish at a fundamental level.

I hate it when people do this. I'm quite petty but I ain't selfish and I know plenty of people who aren't either. Everyone being miserable bastards is just as unrealistic as everyone being wonderful and happy.