Skip to main content

A song of ice and fire

What happened to a Song of Ice and Fire.
I still remember being gripped and hooked by the first three books in the series. The books were big but never long to read. I devoured the pages. Scenes still stick out in my head. I loved the way Martin confounded my expectations at every turn. How he twisted the characters and how the POV made everyone seem right. I enjoyed the way he turned Jaime Lannister around in a Storm of Swords. Martin was a writer at the height of his powers but then the inevitable fall began. 
The downfall started wtih Feast and it was a torrid bore. It felt big, there was no tension, there was nothing I could take away from the book. Dance I thought would be better but it too disappointed with everyone just walking from point A to point B. I could hardly believe that this was the same Martin who penned scenes like the Red Wedding. The introduction of the Direwolves set everything up wonderfully. In that one scene you knew who the characters were, what sort of world this was. You knew that Jon Snow was a bastard, one of the Starks and yet not one of them, you knew that Eddard Stark was an honorable man. The entrance of the Lannisters was magnificently written. The twists just kept coming and all the while the writing was stellar. Tyrion just delivered. His wit and piercing insight into affairs made him everyone's favorite dwarf. You could almost always feel the pain when Littlefinger spoke of Catelyn Stark. The story always moved forward. There was no room for standing still. Martin possessed this ability of introducing characters but you felt as if you had known them all along but the magic just vanished.
Feast and Dance were soap opersa in which it made absolutely no difference if you skipped pages and scenes because you became reasonably sure that nothing of note would really happen. There was some memorable stuff but they were so scattered and so few in between that it was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Worse than this was the fact that no mainstream publication seemed to take a stand and say that a Dance with Dragons was boring. Everyone was effusive. It was almost as if they had been paid to do a positive review or they didn't want to risk saying anything contrarian.
Martin was on song in the first three books but he just seems to have lost his muse. I hope he rediscovers it in the Winds of Winter and keeps it focussed and stops it from meandering about. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Murgi’s fun facts

This one goes out to Mrigank Gupta aka Murgi. Murgi is such an awesome dude that even Chuck Norris and Rajnikanth can’t hold a candle to him. Below are Some facts that are indeed facts When Murgi was an infant he changed his own diapers Murgi was born toilet trained Murgi is actually the eldest in his house. He let the others enter this world before him When Murgi was born he got his own birth certificate from the doctor’s office Murgi never sits idle. He is just pretending to be like us Murgi never listens to excuses on the phone. He simply tells you what to do and disconnects. When Murgi will finally take a vacation the world will stop spinning While Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice, Murgi had already finished counting thrice and was solving everyone else's problems. Natural selection does not apply to Murgi. (Courtesy Ikka) Murgi caught an electron at rest.(Courtesy Ikka) When Arthur Eddington was asked if he really believed there were just three peop...

Places to eat in Kanpur

Our real exploration of Kanpur began in our 5th year when we had our stipend to spend so hopefully this article will prove helpful to all the foodies out there. Surprisingly(and I really mean this) there are a number of terrific places to eat in Kanpur. Hopefully this article will prove helpful to many who are looking forward to spend their stipends. By far the best way to reach places to eat in Kanpur is to catch the bus that the institute provides. The bus runs everyday(except Sunday) at 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm. The bus returns at around 10:15 pm. Murgi(Our food and snacks Coordinator, every wing should have one) always takes the phone number of the conductor so that he can stay updated about where the bus is and so that the return is convenient. The bus service is really a life saver and unless you have a bike should be the first option. It is also better to roam during weekdays than weekends simply because there is lesser ruckus everywhere. Going to a restaurant on a weekend is an ab...

The travails of a frustrated compiler

I was thinking about what would happen in case a compiler becomes sentient. Rather than just translating code it would be able to understand things but I suppose because the programs are written by humans are so often wrong the best part would be the error messages. Here are a few I could think of "Hello World again and again. Do you know how many times I have had to print that bloody nonsense. You can do anything else, print your name for gods sake but it always has to Hello fucking World." "Look Lad, not so fast, take a step back, a deep breath and your fingers away from the keyboard, and now think for a second" "Son, you have been trying to do this for an hour now. Honestly speaking you are not cut out to be a programmer. I would suggest you look for the nearest river or the tallest building or best of all find something you are better at" "Does any decent person code at this time in the morning. How would you feel if I dragged you out of your slee...