Okay look, here's the deal. If I'm going to devote myself to a 5 part series of books, each one ranging from 700 to 1100 pages long, I better damn well be entertained and you better damn well tell a story. None of this standing around business while characters chat when things should be happening. I like books that are plot driven, and if there's not enough plot to carry me through 1000 pages of text, I'm gonna give up on it.
George R. R. Martin has an insane fan base. His books are good. They're well written, I think, the characters well developed along with the world. And I thought the first book was maybe one of the best fantasy books I've ever read.
The second one though. My god. People just mill about for pages and pages, talking about battles that are going on around them.
"Oh yeah, we won that battle down south. How'd you guys do up north?"
"Oh we did okay. Still kickin', you know! Things are all right."
"Well where should we go from here? East?"
"Yeah, east sounds good!"
No! I want beheadings and limbs getting chopped off and carnage and violence, not tea time with the queen!
You don't get to see any of these battles (and I know Martin can write them, because they were in the first book), instead you just get to hear about who won and who lost and whose army is moving where... for 1000 pages. After 500 pages I had to give up on it and read the spoilers where I learned that people get beheaded and someone comes back to life as a zombie, at which point I tossed the book across the room in a fit.
When you've got giant wolves and scary monsters and witches and dragons and kings killing each other you'd think something would happen in the span of so many pages, but not much did. Wah. Oh well, just gotta move on to whatever I read next and hope it's better.
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