A Song of Ice And Fire

 

A household name, yet for all the wrong reasons. It's almost impossible to mention this attempt at a fantasy series (and that's what it is - an attempt) without mentioning the sour taste the TV show left in many a mouth. Without these books, there'd be no household name for this series thanks to the global success of the TV show. Ultimately, the bastardisation of that show only has the books to thank for that. Adaptors of media needs source material as a painter needs canvas.

Despite enjoying what content GRRM provided the reader over thousands of pages (myself very much included), when we regrettably let the dust settle on these books over the years (decades?) and pretend the TV adaption never happened, we can take a far more objective stance to the books as exclusive entities based upon fundamental writing categories and respective qualities and achievement.

Much like the TV show, the first three books were thoroughly enjoyable. GRRM's prose is far more elaborate and skillful in these pages, displaying a far greater degree of aptitude than his other fantasy series contemporaries. Characterisation and narratives are nuanced with an emphasis and balance of moral, ethics, and cultural attitudes. GRRM managed to break down the doors of fantasy tropes, but ultimately his siege upon the cliches of the genre became his undoing. The once praised complexities in plots became his grave as he dug down so far he could no longer see the surface. There were no limits to the number of characters written to the page, no constraint or discipline to refrain from fractals of subplot. The man wrote himself into the ground in the deepest, darkest hole and took us all along a journey into that abyss with him.

His rebellious leanings towards standard fantasy hero fare (now in hindsight) proved devoid of logic or substance. He hadn't killed off just another character, but entire the narrative. Characters still remaining in the story are mere husks, tumbleweeds gently rolling over Essos as Westeros still returns a 404 error. After the events of ASOS, the entire civil war plot (the only plot to have light at the end of the tunnel) came to a crashing halt, and birthed the narrative monstrosities that were AFFC and ADWD respectively. Apologies to readers were printed in some publications, with an explanation in ADWD that around the first half of that book takes place the same time as the prior entry. AFFC is simply that. Sustenance, arguably, but hardly a feast for the eyes of the reader, who's tricked into believing that world building alone can carry a story.

Perhaps that's what it was really all about: a false hope. By the time you've read what may well be the final entry of this series, GRRM has let the Ice melt and the Fire burn out many moons ago. The dust has settled, the flame has dwindled and finally one's emotional attachment to the world of Ice and Fire passes with those last dying embers. What once were vast hordes of fans storming through these pages have in turn fallen into the same pit GRRM so eagerly dug for us.

What's left is a false legacy. A TV adaption that overtook it's source material. An author disinterested in his life's work. Yet most importantly ASOIAF no doubt provides us all with a greater lesson: only start what you intend to finish. Like any student involved in many a discipline, this work is one of those greater historical mistakes that all who intend to follow must learn by the mistakes of those that came before. These books are the Chernobyl of fantasy literature.