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A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones
Oct. 11th, 2011 10:19 pmWhew. I have, over the last six weeks or so, read all five so-far published volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire and, this weekend, watched the first season of Game of Thrones (adapted from the near-eponymous first volume). I actually only meant to read A Game of Thrones before watching the TV series, but got hooked and carried on.
First, the non-spoilery comments. I very much enjoyed the books, and I loved the TV series (with a couple of caveats). If the books have a flaw, it is that they sprawl so much that the pace is lost. Like a river approaching its estuary, the wider George RR Martin's narrative becomes, the slower it flows. This of course has led us to the third book being so thick it was split into two halves for publication, and the fourth so much thicker that it became two parallel books, one arriving five years after the other. At least reading the whole series in one mammoth push I didn't have to wait ten years to find out what happened to one particular much-liked character. Another issue that arises from the growing sprawl of characters and locations is that even setting aside the way that previously significant characters get less and less time centre-stage, whilst some minor but still important ones disappear for entire books at a time.
How the TV series will address this is an interesting question; I wouldn't be surprised if the writers simply mine the source material in internal chronological order, with seasons 4 and 5 - assuming continued renewal, and that we stick with one book per season - being assembled from the appropriate bits of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons together.
( Spoiler Stuff )
First, the non-spoilery comments. I very much enjoyed the books, and I loved the TV series (with a couple of caveats). If the books have a flaw, it is that they sprawl so much that the pace is lost. Like a river approaching its estuary, the wider George RR Martin's narrative becomes, the slower it flows. This of course has led us to the third book being so thick it was split into two halves for publication, and the fourth so much thicker that it became two parallel books, one arriving five years after the other. At least reading the whole series in one mammoth push I didn't have to wait ten years to find out what happened to one particular much-liked character. Another issue that arises from the growing sprawl of characters and locations is that even setting aside the way that previously significant characters get less and less time centre-stage, whilst some minor but still important ones disappear for entire books at a time.
How the TV series will address this is an interesting question; I wouldn't be surprised if the writers simply mine the source material in internal chronological order, with seasons 4 and 5 - assuming continued renewal, and that we stick with one book per season - being assembled from the appropriate bits of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons together.
( Spoiler Stuff )
