Quote Originally Posted by DomaDoma View Post
I think you've been reading too much Limyaael, Hamish, if that's how you think most fantasy represents the concept.
Never read Limyaael. Never even heard of it.

Actually, despite the fact that I love the genre, I have to say I'm beginning to loathe most other Fantasy simply because . . . I don't know . . . it bothers the hell out of me how naieve and repetetive it is. Can't tell you how much I despise dark lords on dark thrones and artifacts of doom and all that baloney. I keep buying fantasy series, thinking this has to get better, and actually end up throwing more than half of them out simply because it seems like most of them can't actually craft a decent story, or at least without descending into hamfisted moralizing and long tracts.

In that light, Martin is a breath of damnably fresh air.


Actually, I'm still into this series primarily because
Spoiler
Show
I've got the kind of foolhardy hopes that mean my abs are never properly tensed for Martin's gut punches. I hope that Dany gets a handle on both the ruling thing and the dragon thing, Tyrion by her side. I hope that Jon, Stannis and the children of the forest, why not, team up against Melisandre. I hope that all the lords of the East catch Littlefinger coming on to his bastard daughter, preferably because Alayne arranged it. I hope that there's some kind of good-aligned religion that has power other than giving psychic dreams to a bitter paraplegic boy who can't grasp a metaphor.

Honestly, though, if the world is actually a better place by the time this story is over, I'll be astounded, and a lot of the other fans will feel cheated of their cynical setting.

In my book, we had enough of an idea of the starvation, rape and slaughter of the smallfolk (particularly in book two) that we didn't really need to spend chapter after chapter of a character running into one such situation after another - at least, not given that we knew for a fact she had no chance of finding either Stark daughter.
Hey, I hope most of those things too. I'm just not so beholden to them that my enjoyment of the series is tied up in whether or not there's a "happy ending."