There May Be No Plan

We are five books (and a cou­ple of chap­ter­s) in­to it. It's sup­posed to be a sev­en book se­ries. And noth­ing has hap­pened. You may say a lot has, like "this char­ac­ter got killed" and "that oth­er char­ac­ter got killed" (and a hun­dred oth­er char­ac­ters got killed), yeah.

But what has changed in the five king­dom­s?

It's start­ing to feel, these many pages lat­er, as if ... well, who cares what hap­pen­s? The five king­doms will have a king, or an­oth­er. There will be drag­ons (which will sup­port a king or an­oth­er), there is war and ev­ery­one is hav­ing a crap­py time, but hey, all that hap­pened five times in the last hun­dred years or so al­ready.

The hand of the king was killed? Well, so were five of the last sev­en hand­s.

A Tar­garyen may come, lay waste to all the armies of the realm and be crowned? Well, that al­ready hap­pened in the field of fire, and they had Tar­garyens for a while, un­til they ran out of drag­on­s.

The Iron­men may con­quer the north? Well, they al­ready had con­quered it a cou­ple cen­turies ago, and then they lost it.

And so on: any of the pay­offs of the book se­ries has al­ready hap­pened, some of it more than once. So, what's spe­cial about this time around?

Does the au­thor have a plan, some­thing up his sleeve that's go­ing to be a shock? I don't know, but the tricks are start­ing to get repet­i­tive.

What would hap­pen if, af­ter sev­en book­s, it turns out that there's noth­ing spe­cial?

It's Too Earth-Like

The five king­dom­s. Scot­land, Eng­land, Wales, Ire­land and which one? Isle of Man? Be­cause, come on. There's these peo­ple who are al­most ex­act­ly Mon­gol­s, ex­cept they have bells in their hair. There's the pseu­do-viking, the pseu­do-s­cot­s, the er­satz-irish, the fake-i­tal­ian­s, the I-­can't-­be­lieve-it's-not-chi­nese and so on.

There are knight­s, whose ar­mour is ex­act­ly me­dieval ar­mour. There's the sea­far­ing raider­s, on their long­ship­s. Etceter­a, etceter­a, et-f­reak­ing-ceter­a. It's like when­ev­er the au­thor needs to add an "ex­otic" char­ac­ter, he just throws a dart at the map, then an­oth­er, cre­ates a mix 80% one, 20% the oth­er, makes up some sil­ly or­tog­ra­phy rule for names, and that's it.

The Magic is Lazy

So, drag­on­s. And of course, drag­ons cre­ate mag­ic (y­ou can see how lots of mag­i­cal giz­mos start work­ing since the drag­ons came).

So, let's make mag­ic ev­ery­thing. Want to have leg­endary sword­s? Then they are made of Va­lyr­i­an steel. That's mag­i­cal steel, which is why it seems to nev­er need sharp­en­ing. That's why you can have fam­i­ly heir­loom sword­s. Be­cause they are mag­i­cal.

And there's a mag­i­cal door, made of mag­i­cal wood. The mag­i­cal wood comes, of course, from mag­i­cal trees.

And there's fake mag­i­cal sword­s, made by re­al east­ern mag­ic. And there's mag­i­cal as­sas­sin­s. And mag­i­cal coin­s, mag­i­cal can­dles. And so on, and so forth. You can't paint your­self in­to cor­ners when you can count on there be­ing a mag­i­cal paint­brush that lays down paint that does­n't stain the mag­i­cal shoes of the painters of the mag­i­cal land of Painthe­ri­a, whose names al­ways have a dou­ble la­ryn­geal con­so­nant in the mid­dle.

More is More is More is Less

The first book man­ages to tell rough­ly a (earth) year of sto­ry. The fourth and fifth, to­geth­er be­cause they hap­pen si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, cov­er per­haps three month­s. And there are char­ac­ters we have not seen since book three, when they were just about to say some­thing. We are cur­rent­ly en­ter­ing the third book wait­ing to know what the maid­en of Tarth said at that mo­men­t.

There are books that are about one char­ac­ter, there are those that are about a dozen, there are those that are about one hun­dred. None of the lat­ter is any good. The sto­ry keeps ex­pand­ing and slow­ing down. At this step, all of book sev­en is go­ing to be about a sin­gle day in the lifes of 50 first-per­son char­ac­ter­s, and each one will de­scribe their break­fast, be­fore we un­ex­pect­ed­ly get promised (very soon now) an eight book which will cov­er their post-break­fast craps and clear ev­ery ques­tion we may have had about the sub­jec­t.

Fan Service

You, who know what was in the pies served in the feast at Win­ter­fell in vol­ume 5, you are be­ing spoon­fed that kind of thing to make you feel smart and knowl­edge­able. If you don't know what was in that pie... well, YOU MISSED IT.

And how is it a good idea to write three pages that (if you have a good mem­o­ry) shout what was in that pie, when it's a sto­ry about a third-­line and fourth-­line char­ac­ters whose names noone will re­mem­ber?

Well, it's a good idea be­cause it's fan ser­vice, and fans love be­ing served. But it's a cyn­i­cal, cal­cu­lat­ing move. You are be­ing served bad pie there, fan­s.

So, Are the Books Good?

They are awe­some. I can't wait for the sixth vol­ume. George RR Mar­t­in, here's my mon­ey. Tell me a sto­ry.