Having just finished A Feast for Crows, the only things I can do before A Dance with Dragons comes out is re-reading the first four tomes of the series, preaching the Gospel of Martin and discussing it with other devotees.

I will start the discussion with this statement: A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the very best fantasy series out there, easily pwning 90% of the derivative crap you find these days. Disagreement will be met with the fiery wrath of R'hllor.

(Sorry, I'm still all excited about it. By tomorrow I'll have cooled down. Probably.)

I'll stick with my usual line about fantasy: everything is derivative from Lord of the Rings, or Dungeons and Dragons (which was itself derived partially from LOTR). I haven't seen much fantasy with a different enough style to really say anything else. However, being derivative doesn't make it bad, if your cursed tropes have shown anything it's that stereotypes make things easier to understand.

but at the moment I'm finishing off Narnia: the Last Battle. Not exactly well-written, though it is amusing reading the word queer or gay every few lines (in a book written by a conservative christian no less). It can get a bit boring when "god fixes everything" (The Lion Aslan being a very subtle metaphor for god) is a deus ex machina used at least once every book. Might cure myself with some God Delusion or Pratchett next.

honestly, never heard of the books you're listing.

I like your definition of "very subtle".

What he said.

Besides, I'm still getting over the post-Watchmen aura of awesomeness that I've been stuck in since Friday night.*

*btw, it was an awesome movie. See it now.

I read the first two last year. Haven't gotten around to picking up the other two. The ones I read were pretty decent (although somewhat less dark and sadistic than I had been led to believe).

I must confess I am having a few misgivings though, what with the fact that there are, in fact, seven planned novels and things by book two were already starting to look just a little padded. It seems to be a common failing of the American fantasy series though, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Haven't heard of them either. I'm reading Wheel of Time at the moment.

I've read the first two and am on literary hiatus before coming round to the others. I do think the series is awesome, although "awesome" does of course cover a range of values. It's not The Bible The God Delusion Discworld awesome¹, but it's the first real deconstruction of fantasy that I've read, it's got great characterisation, it's not high fantasy (which for me is a pretty big bonus all in itself) and it seems quite original. Obviously it's not impeccable (yeah, seven novels? Did he just decide on a number before he'd written a plot outline?) but I would rate it as one of my favourite series.

That was something that rubbed off on me, too. Narnia was fine up until The Last Battle but then it just got weird. I was too young upon first reading it to pick up on the metaphor, but certain aspects of the whole Heaven scene always felt fundamentally wrong to me. Like how the god-figure felt it morally right to consign those who were afraid of him to death or worse and nobody called him on it or how it was somehow all okay that so many people had died in the accident.

---

1: Couldn't find anything else to take the place of a holy text.

Aren't good Christians supposed to be afraid of God? Here, take a look.

And if you want moral dissonance, read The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Or rather, don't. Not worth your time.


I've never read Narnia. Is it good if you can ignore the 'very subtle' Christian metaphors?


Oh, one last thing. At the Internet Book List, A Song of Ice and Fire is #2 in the list of top-rated series, based on 1005 votes (and the prequels, Tales of Dunk and Egg, are #4). By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is #12, based on 2176 votes. Also, the tomes 1, 2 and 3 of A Song of Ice and Fire are respectively #4, #2 and #1 in the list of top-rated books.


Edit: Happy birthday, DarkHand6, if you're still around.

*has now finished the last battle

hmm, the end was worse than I expected. You're right, there's a lot sick about the ending, and as a story itself it is also pretty unsatisfying. I was told to expect some stupidity but this was just beyond belief. How pathetic is an ending of "oh, by the way, everybody dies. All the characters you read about for 7 books have died in a completely unrelated train crash. Except Susan, she doesn't get to die in the crash because she doesn't believe and has turned into a whore." Then you realise he's set up a guerilla war with a small team to reconquer Narnia, but for no reason each of them is butchered in a pointless battle. I'm all for last stands, but it is completely different to the other Narnia books, especially because they don't actually achieve anything throughout the book.

Most of the books are ok: I'd recommend the series - even if only because it is a classic. It's definitely a kid's book, but is fun enough. Also quick and easy. Like I said earlier, it is extremely predictable, and if you can't predict what the children will do, predict "god did it". In the end, it's just one of those books you have to read.

That's not the point. The point is that my six- or seven-year-old self was disquieted by this event without fully understanding it. That just shows you how fundamentally odd the whole sequence seems. There was no justification or anything - just this completely horrifying twist that I knew was not good, suddenly coming from the most important character in the book.

Really, when you experience that most basic sort of revulsion towards a theme, you can tell there's something wrong with it, regardless of how "right" the action is supposed to be.

I'd forgotten about the Susan bit - another none-too-subtle metaphor that went flying over my head years ago.

As for the series itself - I agree. The first six books are actually good, and the symbolism isn't too strong. I would also recommend reading the series, but maybe just finishing with The Silver Chair. Or reading The Last Battle solely so that you can pick it apart. So, yeah, a worthwhile read on the whole, because it only really gets weird at the very end.

I've got to say, I think the obnoxious side of Lewis' faith is present throughout the Narnia books, and not just in the Last Battle (although the Last Battle is particularly dreadful, with its treatment of Susan... and I always wondered about whether the fact that the antagonist is an ape was some lingering anti-Darwinian sentiment). Most obviously in the characters' relationship with Aslan - Aslan isn't obliged to help anyone, no matter how much trouble they're in, and if terrible things happen that Aslan could have prevented (i.e. pretty much everything), it's the fault of those who didn't put total, blind trust that he would do so - who only seem to have their position reinforced by the fact that he doesn't. It's the whole warped theodicy of the problem of evil superimposed onto a god who not only actually exists, but actually spends a good deal of time wandering around in physical form, just not giving a damn unless people are adhering with total rigidity to the capricious (and frankly wrong-headed) conditions that he sets down in order to play favourites.

A classic example is Prince Caspian: when the Pevensies & co. try to solve problems themselves, the moral of the story is ultimately that they are doomed to failure: the only way to victory is by believing Aslan will save them. My brother and I find it very funny to read them back (or to watch the recent films), seeing it from the perspective of Aslan just being a sick bastard who likes to torment children.

There's also the little detail that the titular last battle is mainly faught against armies of arabesque fantasy muslims who worship a deity who is rather obviously hinted to be the devil.

Oh yeah. The particularly grating thing about this is that he insists on being completely invisible to everyone save Lucy for around half of the book for no understandable reason whatsoever.

Well, there was that part of the end of Dawn Treader where he appears to them as a lamb and says he exists in Earth too, just with a different name...

To be honest, I basically lost interest with the series as a kid after PC. I really didn't like Eustace at all. The only reason I can think of now to read them all is as a study to chart the author's ever-decreasing amounts of subtlety and restraint as the years wore on, to the point where it starts verging on GP Taylor levels. This is supposed to be even worse in his other series, but I've never bothered to verify it.

Yeah, well, it's been years, close on ten, so maybe it was rather more overt than I remembered.

I'm gonna have to go back and read the entire series again now, just to see what it was really like.