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Finished ADWD just now. I loved it just as much as Feast if not a bit more, for all the craziness. The worldbuilding has done so much good for this series and I'm glad for the breather after ASOS. Plus, Martin's prose in these two books is so far beyond the first three that it reaches phenomenal quality.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 02:00 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 02:03 |
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Did anyone else get annoyed when GRRM started using "whilst" and "amongst" in AFFC after using "while" and "among" in the first 3 books? "While" is innocuous and its use isn't really noticeable, while "whilst" just kind of stands out more and makes the writing somehow awkward. It's most noticeable when he's writing dialogue for some of the outlaws that highlights their lowborn slang, but then shoves a "whilst" into the middle of it that you'd expect from some of the pretentious dudes in the court at King's Landing. I know that it's a really minor thing, but for whatever reason it irked me a bit, and I think it's because SA has ruined that word for me. 've become so used to terrible writers on SA using "whilst" to add some pomp to their posts, when it just comes across as weird or pretentious, so I can't really read the word anymore without imagining some guy posting a boring, hard-to-read 10 paragraph story. bub spank fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jul 17, 2011 |
# ? Jul 17, 2011 07:48 |
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burf posted:Did anyone else get annoyed when GRRM started using "whilst" and "amongst" in AFFC after using "while" and "among" in the first 3 books? "While" is innocuous and its use isn't really noticeable, while "whilst" just kind of stands out more and makes the writing somehow awkward. It's most noticeable when he's writing dialogue for some of the outlaws that highlights their lowborn slang, but then shoves a "whilst" into the middle of it that you'd expect from some of the pretentious dudes in the court at King's Landing. Whilst I agree with you,
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 08:07 |
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burf posted:Did anyone else get annoyed when GRRM started using "whilst" and "amongst" in AFFC after using "while" and "among" in the first 3 books? "While" is innocuous and its use isn't really noticeable, while "whilst" just kind of stands out more and makes the writing somehow awkward. It's most noticeable when he's writing dialogue for some of the outlaws that highlights their lowborn slang, but then shoves a "whilst" into the middle of it that you'd expect from some of the pretentious dudes in the court at King's Landing. It's all I can do to agree with you.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 09:09 |
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I must needs agree with you on this point, serjeant.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 09:59 |
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Words are wind says my nuncle.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 10:11 |
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bigmcgaffney posted:I must needs agree with you on this point, serjeant. I'd give half a groat for the insight, were I not too busy eating mine neeps.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 13:37 |
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This post is as useless as nipples on a breastplate!
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 14:58 |
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Seriously though, it's almost as if Martin chose 30 hammy literary devices in advance to wildly overuse to the point of being annoying. He is... Well, not a good writer. Even his similes are pretty terrible. As fickle as a woman oh ho ho
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 14:59 |
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I'm reading ASoS now, about 25% through. It seems like A Feast for Crows is generally considered the weakest of the series so far. Do people just dislike the lack of certain main character's perspectives or is the book itself poorly written / uneventful / whatever else compared to the first three?
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 15:27 |
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regulargonzalez posted:Words are wind says my nuncle. I've told you this four-and-twenty times
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 15:27 |
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i am not so sure posted:Seriously though, it's almost as if Martin chose 30 hammy literary devices in advance to wildly overuse to the point of being annoying. He is... Well, not a good writer. Even his similes are pretty terrible. As fickle as a woman oh ho ho Well, when you get down to the sentence level, yeah, there's not much there that's very interesting. A lot of it is quite mediocre. But he spins a good yarn, he subverts conventions, and he develops (most) characters beyond simple types, which is far more than can be said of most fantasy writers.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 15:39 |
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Holy cow, a page that isn't >50% black bars in the non-spoiler thread!
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 15:40 |
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Luckily its all about what a terrible writer GURM is.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 16:33 |
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quote:I'm reading ASoS now, about 25% through. It seems like A Feast for Crows is generally considered the weakest of the series so far. Do people just dislike the lack of certain main character's perspectives or is the book itself poorly written / uneventful / whatever else compared to the first three? Feast has some good poo poo, but a number of the new POVs are pretty weak both as characters and as plotlines, and its pretty short on actual events, though there is some significant character development and there's a lot of setup going on for important poo poo down the line. I enjoyed it the first time through, but the reread was a slog, which wasn't true for his other books. Dance is much better than Feast, not just in that it has more good POVs, but more poo poo happening. Not SoS-levels of poo poo happening, but a lot more than Feast.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 16:41 |
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Ross posted:I'm reading ASoS now, about 25% through. It seems like A Feast for Crows is generally considered the weakest of the series so far. Do people just dislike the lack of certain main character's perspectives or is the book itself poorly written / uneventful / whatever else compared to the first three? It's fine if you're just bowling through the series. The only story that seemed overdone to me was Brienne, everything else was good.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 17:31 |
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Ross posted:I'm reading ASoS now, about 25% through. It seems like A Feast for Crows is generally considered the weakest of the series so far. Do people just dislike the lack of certain main character's perspectives or is the book itself poorly written / uneventful / whatever else compared to the first three? Part of the problem is that ASOS's second half is non-stop, action packed, holy-poo poo-did-that-just-happen types of stuff, and the previous two books also had lots of great action scenes, and AFFC is almost purely politics and seeing the fallout from books 1-3. There are some great storylines in AFFC, but there's no equivalent to, say, ACOK's Blackwater Bay. That said, I think it gets a bit of a bad rap.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 19:57 |
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colonel_korn posted:One thing that was interesting when re-reading AGoT is that there seems to be a lot of fuss made over where Robert Arryn was going to be fostered, before Lysa took him back to the Eyrie. King Robert mentions to Ned at the start of the book that he was going to send him to Casterly Rock, but later on both Lysa's maester at the Eyrie and Walder Frey insist to Catelyn that he was going to be fostered with Stannis at Dragonstone. Stannis says the same thing in the prologue of ACoK. I know this is from a while back, but I wanted to comment about it. (spoilers up to the end ASOS). I think the point is that we learn that Robert was going to be sent away before Jon Arryn died. Look at this quote: quote:
Part of the reason that Lysa killed Jon is because he was going to send their son away, and learning that Jon was going to foster Robert at Dragonstone is an early hint at that.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 20:31 |
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A Stannis-fostered Robert Arryn would have been amazing.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 20:36 |
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I'm over half way through Feast and Why did you do that thing Arya, that was stupid. I don't even understand why she would think that was a good idea, did she honestly just need a third story to tell the priest? Now I'm mad.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 20:49 |
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Charlie Mopps posted:Luckily its all about what a terrible writer GURM is. This reminds me, I noticed just the one instance in the first book of someone actually drinking water as opposed to wine, beer, more wine, Jesus Christ so much wine. He gets better over the next couple of books but people in Westeros must have some pretty hosed up livers.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 21:42 |
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rejutka posted:This reminds me, I noticed just the one instance in the first book of someone actually drinking water as opposed to wine, beer, more wine, Jesus Christ so much wine. He gets better over the next couple of books but people in Westeros must have some pretty hosed up livers. This is pretty true to life. Prior to modern water sanitation, people would drink beer and wine almost exclusively. It was alot less alcoholic then modern stuff though.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 22:04 |
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rejutka posted:This reminds me, I noticed just the one instance in the first book of someone actually drinking water as opposed to wine, beer, more wine, Jesus Christ so much wine. He gets better over the next couple of books but people in Westeros must have some pretty hosed up livers. People really did drink like that in the Middle Ages. Drinking water was basically asking for some disease or infection of some sort, so everybody drank alcohol, albeit heavily watered down alcohol.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 22:06 |
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Huh. There's me wearing orthopedic shoes then.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 22:08 |
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Black tar rum, baby, that poo poo aint watered down, tis the devils drink
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 00:20 |
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Jakabite posted:About 26% of the way through and Baby Aegon! That was a big surprise. In fact that was an all round awesome chapter. I loved how bizarrely nonchalant the whole reveal was. It's early in the book and it's a huge revelation, but it's not an end-of-chapter cliffhanger and no one denies it or anything.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 02:59 |
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Quick question, does anyone know which book/chapter-ish the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree is in?
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 04:39 |
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Capsaicin posted:Quick question, does anyone know which book/chapter-ish the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree is in? http://towerofthehand.com/books/103/025/index.html Bran ch. 2 in ASOS. Goddamn, this chapter plus the one where he goes to the Nightfort, remembers all the creepy stories from Old Nan, then meets Sam pretty much make his chapters the best part of ASOS for me Go read the Knight of the Laughing Tree story again, then use that link I posted to find out all the references. edit: Also, when I first read this chapter I was like what is this story they're telling, come on, get back to the plot. And then halfway through I realised what it was about, and I was like Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jul 18, 2011 |
# ? Jul 18, 2011 04:42 |
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Dance page 704 spoilers: holy gently caress dany riding drogon holy poo poo so cool
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 06:02 |
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i am not so sure posted:Seriously though, it's almost as if Martin chose 30 hammy literary devices in advance to wildly overuse to the point of being annoying. He is... Well, not a good writer. Even his similes are pretty terrible. As fickle as a woman oh ho ho 30 hammy literary devices or close enough to make no matter.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 06:09 |
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Bananaquiter posted:I'm over half way through Feast and She had her own justification for it, but in ADWD (not really a spoiler) the kindly man calls her on it
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 06:36 |
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Gangringo posted:
Besides, regaining Arya and Brienne well outweighs losing Jon. PS. who's to say Jon stays dead with Melisandre in da house.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 11:23 |
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pigdog posted:PS. who's to say Jon stays dead with Melisandre in da house. Yeah, I realized that soon after I wrote it, still (Dragons spoilers) no matter what it takes our viewpoint away from the wall. Even if Jon comes back there's no way he's going to be able to hang out around Castle Black. The whole Others vs. Night's Watch confrontation has been building up since the very first chapter of the very first book. If it all happens "off camera" it's not being bold or defying convention, it's just being a cock-tease and poor narrative. This is of course all conjecture, maybe GRRM has it all planned out and will dazzle us with his magic.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 11:43 |
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I'm 30% in to ASoS and nothing grand has happened yet. When does the start?
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 12:16 |
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Gangringo posted:The whole Others vs. Night's Watch confrontation has been building up since the very first chapter of the very first book. If it all happens "off camera" it's not being bold or defying convention, it's just being a cock-tease and poor narrative. This is of course all conjecture, maybe GRRM has it all planned out and will dazzle us with his magic.[/spoiler] The biggest problem I've seen with the Others vs Night Watch overarching plot is that a malignant force of nature doesn't really have a place in the narrative. In order to keep the conflict in line with the rest of the series what he really needs to do is get some people in on the side of the Others. Some of the tastiest hints we have gotten are those that are setting up Bran (the darkness is your friend etc.) and Arya (servant of the god of death) in opposition to R'hllor, as well as setting up the Maesters against dragons, both of which we assume will be the ultimate weapons against the Others.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 13:18 |
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Ross posted:I'm 30% in to ASoS and nothing grand has happened yet. When does the start?
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 14:15 |
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pigdog posted:I actually felt relief when they killed Jon. I'm willing to bet that Jon isn't dead, it's usually pretty apparent when a character dies, and even then (Catelyn cough) it doesn't alway stick. Plus, I'm sure we'll get Tormund Giantsbane as a POV character in Winds, I'd be incredibly shocked if we didn't.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 14:23 |
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I accidentally highlighted a Dance spoiler and literally read three words. The problem is those three words where they killed Jon. Fucks sake, this is almost as bad as when I was reading the show spoiler thread and came across a list of everyone who died in book 3.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 16:06 |
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Yuran M. Bazil posted:I accidentally highlighted a Dance spoiler and literally read three words. The problem is those three words where they killed Jon. factorialite posted:Plus, I'm sure we'll get Tormund Giantsbane as a POV character in Winds, I'd be incredibly shocked if we didn't.[/spoiler]
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 16:38 |
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 02:03 |
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Yuran M. Bazil posted:I accidentally highlighted a Dance spoiler and literally read three words. The problem is those three words where they killed Jon. I did the same thing Accidentally scrolled over a spoiler for half a second, but it was enough for me to read the first sentence of the post about what happens to 3 major characters. Stupid me for reading stupid threads when I haven't grabbed DWD yet
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 17:01 |