>read 30 chapters>still sucks ballsWhen does it get good?
When Robert dies.
When you stop reading.
you need 160+ IQ and high-functioning autism like Preston Jacobs to properly enjoy GRRM's magnum opus.maybe try something more your speed, like Goosebumps, Animorphs, or the Redwall series?
>>24835782>GRRM's magnum opusAs opposed to?You say that as if there's anything else GRRM has ever written that is even noteworthy. I'm aware he has a bibliography, but nobody has even heard of anything other than ASoIaF.
>>24835739it's well written honestly
>>24835739I'm not an unsophisticated reader but I kept not being able to get in to ASOIAF. I got about halfway through A Game Of Thrones before I dropped it and haven't looked back.In particular I found the characters kind of dead and lifeless. A lot of them are pointlessly cruel and there's not many of them you actually find palatable. My favorite character was Ned, and since the show has aired I know what happens to him in the end, so I don't know why I should bother continuing to read.Honestly my favorite bits of the book were the asides where Martin would randomly start to talk about the details of the flora and the fauna of the world, or the strange people that would come and go around the main characters as they were making their way through Westeros or Essos. But I realized if I really wanted to experience that I could just read the ASOIAF Wiki with all its articles on the lore, the lands, and the various species of creatures and things like the Giants and the Children of the Forest.The actual story of ASOIAF has failed to hold my interest.
>>24836846Plot-wise, A Game of Thrones is a crime thriller/whodunnit
>>24835782>the Redwall seriesBetter than anything Martin could dream of producing
>>24836846ive only read the first one it does pick up pace by the middle and ends in a cliffanger iirc
>>24835782>GRRM's magnum opusWhat an odd thing to say.He isn't reading Tales of Dunk and Egg.
>>24835739>When does it get good?When it describes the sexy underaged white girlboss
>>24836820thats what makes it the magnum opus, pseud
>>24837159A magnum opus isn't just "good" but implies being the ultimate culmination of an existing body of successful work.
>>24836820Dunk and Egg mogs asoiaf
>>24837116Remember how fun and cool and weird the art around these books could get before the show ruined it all?
>>24837930I still have the original RPG (d20 system), it is full of kino art from the 2000s before 2010
>>24835739Read until chapter 65, if you still don’t like it drop the series me.
>>24837958To add in to this, it’s an Arya chapter. It has a big twist at the end. You’ll know it when you get there.
It doesn't, it might have its peaks like Tywins death and Varys plans but as someone who knows this I can tell you that most of the fans do not want to admit they enjoy what COULD happen more than what does.If they didn't they wouldn't be bitching about Winds forever.That said Storm and Clash then a few parts of Crows are the best parts.
>>24835782At least the Animorphs books have an ending.
>>24835782>high-functioning autismThen you're just wondering why there are no cities on rivers, and why (if there will soon be an indefinitely long winter) everyone is wasting time fighting instead of constantly stockpiling massive amounts of resources, and how a complex agrarian society could develop in a world with such unpredictable weather patterns
>>24835739the theon chapters. dont remember which book tho.
Chapter thirty-one.
cersei chapters are kino
>>24835739I read all the books and the first couple are the only decent ones. The rest read lile a script.
>>24839032I guess if you like reading from the perspective of a character who literally cannot do a single thing right.
>>24836882It's a murder mystery with no mystery.
>>24837966>most of the fans do not want to admit they enjoy what COULD happen more than what does.I don't know if I would call myself a fan, but I'm the first to admit that the best part of the series is what it promises rather than what it delivers.
>>24835782>you need 160+ IQ and high-functioning autism like Preston JacobsPreston is a retard, will never understand his dick riders.
>>24836846>A lot of them are pointlessly cruelName five characters in A Game of Thrones who are like this>>24835739>When does it get good?When the best character shows up.
>>24835739Michael Moorcock used to say that he considered himself a "bad writer with big ideas, which is better than being a big writer with bad ideas". In a lot of ways GRRM is the same, specially because he too is part of the "muh subversion of high fantasy" crowd, much like Moorcock. Reading this specific book, the first of the ASOIAF series was like being hit by a car to me with how terribly written it is. This book manages to have good and bad prose simultaneously within the same paragraph. Genuinely good descriptive, atmospheric paragraphs that then jump to exposition delivered by either the narrator or dialogue with as much subtlety as writing the information on a baseball bat and hitting the reader on the face with it. The first Catelyn chapter tries to expose Jon Arryn's role in Ned's life, his relationship with Robert Baratheon, the seven gods in relation to the old gods, Mance Rayder, the long night, how old Rickon is, who Robert is married to, who the Lannisters are, the Wall, the wildlings, and so on and so on within like six pages. Weird how some moments that require good descriptions like when Daenerys sees her dragon eggs for the first time, which the narration mentions is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen, are delivered in this blasé, simplistic prose, while other random moments of Tyrion eating a turnip are more densely embellished, as if the author can't control his own energy levels towards writing his own scenes, and bursts of spontaneity come to him at random. Action scenes are very hit or miss but centrally cathartic ones like The Mountain vs The Red Viper are writing in this material, objective, simplistic, blasé style, that delivers no tension, no escalation, no stylistic measures to increase and decrease a sense of speed, anything. At some point in the fight a young squire is hacked to pieces and it's delivered with such blasé language you have to do a double-take. Extremely on the nose with how it is leading its characters and its history beats. Everything is very one-dimensional and forced, you have blatant despotic royals who practice or are products of incest, you have an actual estimative done by fans that within five books there are 214 rapes either depicted or mentioned. Indulgently edgy in many of its portrayals independent of its intention being a "muh feudalism bad" take that comes very timely in 1996.Reading it is disappointing to a straight up macro-level, because it really makes you face how under-exposed normies are to prose fiction in general. When they read the wrestling of a dorky fat kid with attempting poetics they gush about how well written it is. It goes to show that it was a commercial fiction fad that could have easily been stuck within "niche" literature of edgy and overly dense historical fiction inspired fantasy, but ended up being popular with people when they're only 15 and never read outside of their genre. All around mediocre at best.
>>24836837LOL
>>24835739I couldn't even finish the first chapter, especially when I came across the line:->No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade.Absolutely unreadable illiterate trash. Life's too short for this shit.
>>24835739the first 3 books are peak, so it sounds like kind of a you problem
>>24840141I don't see the problem with that line
>>24840208I bet you don't. But while you're here, why don't you explain what "human metal" is?
>>24840346NTA and not too keen on the lore but could it mean "no metal known to humans"? Or no metal from this world. Or even no metal forged by human hands. Was the sentence in relation to Arthur Dayne's sword?
>>24840356Could've been worded better (very easily) in either case>No earthly metal was used to forge that bladeOr>No living man knew what kind of metal was used to forge itIdk though, always seemed unfair to poke at a few bad sentences. It's possible for a well written book to be poorly worded in some places (although from the few selections of his books I've seen, grrm is a pretty mediocre writer)
ASOIAF is just decently written fantasy.There's nothing transcendental about it, unlike LOTR. The author being a corpulent golem should be a tell.
>>24840399True, we the readers are paying his adiction to fast food.
>>24839752>book bad because rapeshow tits
>>24840399I think this is kind of true and why I can't get into most fantasy, including ASOIAF. I love LOTR, but LOTR is simply a different sort of story with different ambitions.What I always remember about my reads through The Lord Of The Rings is how incredibly full of sadness certain sections are. Like when Frodo laments the Elves going away, or when Galadriel sings as the Fellowship is leaving Lothlorien. Or when Theoden remarks on how much seems on the verge of being totally lost. Or the section at the end of ROTK when Elrond, Gandalf, Celeborn, and Galadriel talk long into the night, and the text remarks that they might be statues made of stone, or shadows of smoke.This incredible sense of how beautiful everything is, and how much is about to be lost, never to be regained, is extremely strong in LOTR and I basically don't find it in any other fantasy. I certainly don't find it in ASOIAF. I don't find any deep beauty, or deep melancholy, in Martin, compared to Tolkien.There are no songs in ASOIAF, either, no real ones. There is no poetry, only prose. There's no elevation to a higher mode of linguistic expression in Martin's work.
>>24838174>Then you're just wondering why there are no cities on riversLike basically all the major Westerosi cities are on rivers or the coast. King's Landing is on the mouth of the Blackwater, Oldtown is on the mouth of the Honeywine, White Harbour is on the mouth of the White Knife, Gulltown and Lannisport are on the coasts.
>>24840393Can't remmember if that sentence was uttered by a character or the narrator. If it was by a character, I don't see anything wrong about characters speaking incorrectly. Nobody does speak correctly at all times. But yeah, some of grrm's critics ate just nitpickers. Many crticisms are perfectly valid, that being said.>>24840554Yeah, LOTR is about a world that's about to end and the coming world lacks the wonder and the beauty. Could be Tolkien lamenting the old world that ended after WWI. Anyway, I agree that nobody captured the sadness of that sentiment as beautifully as Tolkien.
>>24840399There is something transcendental about ASOIAF, you just didn't pick up on it. Like I said, you need at least 160+ IQ and high-functioning autism to really "get" GRRM's magnum opus.Remember how much effort JRR Tolkien put into his made-up fantasy languages? GRRM puts just as much effort into his world's history. There is an entirely different story being told in the minor details of the noble houses and their history. 99% of readers will never pick up on it. It's for the 1%.That's why midwits pick up ASOIAF and think it's just a normal fantasy series. It's absolutely transcendental, midwits just don't pick up on it.
>>24840346Metal refined by a humanNigga
>>24835739There's people who swear that GOT is the best of the ASOIAF books because it's so simple compared to the rest, but I genuienly have always found it to be the most bland and boring.I think it's by far the weakest one in the ASOIAF universe, I prefer a million times the bloatedness of of Dance than it, desu.Only redeeming quality is whenever Ned is thinking of Lyanna, or Rhaegar, you can really feel his conflict within.As others have said tho, the second half of the book is bettter than the first half.Clash and Storm mog it tho.
>>24841144>just read slop to get to the good part>yeah I know I said the series was good but I wasn't referring to the parts you've read alreadynah
I'll give ASOIAF a try when grrm croaks and whoever gets his estate scrapes together some semblance of an ending.
>>24840881You missed the point about transcendentalism completely, funnily enough.
>>24840881>10,000 year old gothic castle>700ft tall wall>800ft tall stone tower>clown car ships that each hold thousands of men and horses at a timeno he doesn't
>>24840554LOTR fags are the worst. LOTR is one of the worst written books. Anyone who has read it without influence from public perception knows this. The pacing and poise are all inconsistent(Things just randomly happen and requires constant backtracking) . The only thing that hypes LOTR is being the first of its kind and nostalgia from millennial nerds. GRRM is a far greater writer than Tolkien. I read ASOIAF before the tv-show and GRRM mogs Tolkien in everything.>I don't find any deep beauty, or deep melancholy, in Martin, compared to Tolkien.Adult literature is not for you.
>>24841250>>clown car ships that each hold thousands of men and horses at a timeIt's completely feasible that a 14th century style ship could carry ~100 men, that's only 10 ships per 1k
>>24839456yeah thats the best part, finally getting inside the head of a character who seemed to be well put together and smart only to find out they are dumb as a stump
>>24841387>muh pacingLOL. You're not watching a movie, Gurmtard. Learn the difference.
>>24840356>>24841115Then why didn't he write "no known metal" instead? It would have been precise and unambiguous.(Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question. We all know why.)
>>24841387When you grow up, you'll understand.
>>24840881>glup shitto wookiepedia articles >trancendental
>>24842316"No known metal" sounds clunky and autistic, whereas "no human metal" evokes something spooky and otherworldly.
>>24842331>"no human metal" evokes something spooky and otherworldlyAnd retarded.
>>24842381Only an autistic person would even think "no known metal"Do you think the limited third person pov narrator was mentally listing through all known metals, and concluding that this was some kind of undiscovered alloy? It's clearly just a short way of saying the blade looks odd and not recognizably human-made.
>>24842397>Only an autistic person would use language accurately>This is what pulp fantasy consoomers believe
>>24842397>Only an autistic person wouldThat's sort of the point when you're writing a fantasy novel in a made up universe whose story is based off a 15th century war for succession
>>24842428>he doesn't understand limited 3rd person narration
>>24835739>When does it get good?when you start getting Jaime chaptersalso doing my first re-read of the series after reading it 10 years ago, takeaways (no real spoilers)>this series is essentially a metaphor for why women should NEVER be in charge of anything, ever>Catelyn is a smoothbrained midwit, if everyone just told her to shut up and did the opposite of what she suggested, 90% of the Stark/Tully characters would still be alive>Cersei will do anything and harm anyone in order to avoid doing her duty, which is mostly just being married and staying quiet, thousands die so that she doesn't have to suck it up and be a good wife>Dany is damaged goods due to childhood trauma of being a beggar and having an angry brother, this leads her to mistrust wiser elders, and she will commit genocide against anyone who tells her no, her instincts from the very beginning (and she is open about this) is to holocaust anyone who wont bend over to give her whatever she wantsother notes>jaime becomes irrevocably based after being blackpilled in the dungeon of riverrun>every stark besides arya is sub-90 IQ>renly/stannis decision to destroy each other rather than come to some compromise and easily overrun the lannisters, who killed their brother, is the most inexplicable decision in the book by two otherwise (relatively) intelligent charactersi just started AFFC, honestly i had forgotten this series was basically just a series of people shooting themselves in the foot and stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. if catelyn just refrained from seizing the dwarf with zero thought, tens of thousands would have survived and Ned probably would have discovered the truth of Bran's attempted murder. eventually he would had just shown the dagger to Robert he would have gotten his answer.
>>24842438I have no clue what you're talking about, it's just extremely funny to say "this is autistic" as a negative thing when you're talking about epic fantasy books lol. Autism is kind of the entire point
>>24842453An autistic person would realize the character whose head you are in typically isn't autistic
>>24842448>Ned probably would have discovered the truth of Bran's attempted murder. eventually he would had just shown the dagger to RobertExcept he was capable of doing that anyway, and he didn't
>>24842448>i had forgotten this series was basically just a series of people shooting themselves in the foot and stealing defeat from the jaws of victoryYep. Pretty much every character has a death wish. Bunch of lemmings running out of a cliff. It gets even worse as the series progress.
>>24842609The fact you can see their demise coming is called tragedykino. Ever heard of a little thing called dramatic irony friendo? Imagine being mad when unfavorable things happen to characters because you want to see le heroes win.
>>24842591>Except he was capable of doing that anyway, and he didn'tone of his POV chapters explicitly states that he doesn't because there's>a slight chance robert knew>theres no hard evidence and the imp would just deny the dagger was ever hislittlefinger obviously encourages this mindset bc he knows cat will do something retarded (she does) before they find proofwhy do they listen to this obvious scoundrel? once again, because cat is stupid
The best book is the second
>>24842580no, they wouldn't. autism is famously the tism that prevents those with it from seeing outside their perspective lmao
>>24842617In classic tragedy, it's fate what brings characters to their doom. The archetypical tragic character is one that knows, or at least somewhat foresees, that his course of action might lead him to his demise but he has no choice and in spite of his doubts he has to do what he has to do.In ASOIAF most characters are just retarded. It's also very clear in the books that the author knows and purposedly wrote them that way. There's a few exceptions.Ned is bound by duty and honor in a world where those words mean shit to the rest of the characters and that's what gets him killed. He's playing by the rules while the others are cheating.Jon Snow shares that worlview with Ned but is even more shortsighted, maybe because he's like fifteen or so. He should have seen it coming.Tyrion is another tragic character, shunned by something out of his control or say.Catelyn, Cersei, Rob and other POV characters are mostly retarded, and much of the non-POV characters are even more retarded.
>>24842331>evokes something spooky and otherworldly.Exactly.Dude, you are trying to explain simple stuff to pseudo-intellects who think their low quality autism makes them smart nerds.
>>24840393If your brain can't decrypt something as simple as "No human metal" then your autism is a result of being dropped on the head as a child. Give up on literature(fantasy & sci-fi) and stick to board games.
>>24842321>When you grow up, you'll understand.You just repeated what I told.Your mental proficiency is equivalent to that of a high school girl.
>>24837930I hate the show so fucking much. Yeah the art was better.
>>24843929Once again,>human metal
>>24843949>Your mental proficiency is equivalent to that of a high school girl.What a remarkably clumsy sentence. Is that you, George?
>>24842448>renly/stannis decision to destroy each other rather than come to some compromise and easily overrun the lannisters, who killed their brother, is the most inexplicable decision in the book by two otherwise (relatively) intelligent charactersThis is one of those things I think about a lot regarding the series. You need to remember, Renly up and declares himself king before Robert's body is even cold. Stannis wasn't even on his mind. As far as he was concerned, he was cutting Joffrey and Tommen in line because they were kids (Joffrey, the one taking the throne, a particularly shitty one). Robert was a usuper. As far as Renly saw it, the new mode of succession was might and popularity. Robert took the throne? Cool. I'm basically Robert reborn? Don't mind if I do. Don't forget a freshly spurned Loras Tyrell was riding his dick and telling him what a better king he would make than the others. Renly was riding high and rightly knew he could make his move and win. He would have too if not for blood magic getting in the way. Speaking of.When Stannis announces the illegitimacy of Cercei's children, he does so once Renly already has half the fucking Reach marching towards King's Landing. So, while you are right, they could have been better of compromising than tearing each other apart, the timing is awkward. Renly's already crowned, he's got a Queen, a new Kingsguard. Politically speaking, Stannis was asking too much in wanting him to stand down when so much was already in place for him. Don't get me wrong, I do like Stannis, his claim is the most legitimate, but if Renly's great flaw was cutting in line, Stannis' mistake was biding his time too long, not telling Renly or even Eddard wtf Cercei was pulling behind Robert's back.
>>24843938>If your brain can't decrypt something as simple as "No human metal"... give up on scifi&fantasyUnironically good advice
