Quote:
Originally Posted by Frazod
I wouldn't say they were breezy by any means. Martin writes like Stephen King - takes a great 1,000 page story and makes it 1,500 pages long. Five page expositions of bit characters or descriptions of meal selections that sound like they're straight out of the vendor trays of Life of Brian really aren't necessary. But I did enjoy the first three books, which I read in rapid succession after learning HBO was producing the series. The fourth book sucked, and the fifth book wasn't much better. Considering how the show ended and that Martin will probably die of old age before finishing the next book and certainly die of old age before finishing the last, I would absolutely not recommend the books because there's just no point.
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Yup.
I wouldn't try to convince anyone to get into the series at this point. He's not going to finish and HBO pretty much nose-dived into the runway on the landing.
Why bother? As you noted, the first lap through can be a little tedious because of the amount of unnecessary detail and then you'll find yourself late in the series feeling like you missed stuff. So you go back through and re-read them for detail (I'll once again recommend the 'ball of beasts' re-packaging for books 4 and 5, if anyone chooses to beat themselves over the head despite our warnings).
And here's the real concern - by all accounts this book will be LONG and dark as hell. And lets say it comes out in the next 2 years - he'll be 75 by then. He's not living to 85 so there's no way he'll get through the final book anyway. If anyone read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy they'll tell you that 'Mostly Harmless' was ****ing depressing. A few years later Douglas Adams did an interview where he acknowledged that he screwed the series up and he needed to write another book to put it back on the rails because he was just in a bad space when he wrote it.
Then he died. And he'd botched the whole thing so badly that the replacement author just didn't have the chops to salvage it so "And Another Thing" was equally pointless.
It all just left such a bad taste in my mouth. But the distinction is that you can read through "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" and really come to a good conclusion to the series. You can't do that with ASOIF so on the off chance he ends up getting Winds of Winter out there, it's just going to be a ponderous and miserable slog. Then he's going to die and that's where you'll be left.
So as you noted - what's the point?