sadpanda

I read the Lord of the Rings when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was downhill from there, in terms of fantasy novels. Nothing else quite ever recaptured the feeling I got. The evocative names, the luxuriously rich history, the vivid detail of locations... After that, it was David Eddings, Donald Stephenson, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks. I lost heart. R.A. Salvatore was the only author to give me hope, but that was a thin ray of light.

Then some friends turned me on to this Song of Ice and Fire guy. I'd seen his stuff on the shelves before, along with Terry Goodkinds enormotron epic, and I never picked it up. I'd felt burned by Jordan and had vowed I would never pick up another fantasy novel series. But my friends insisted, and wanted to tell them, "No, you don't understand, I've read this and this and this other thing, and it's always the same."

Eventually, I bought the paperbacks on a lark while browsing through my local bookstore. I brought them home, and they sat on a shelf for weeks. When I finally dug into the first book, it was slow going. The plot arc is glacial. For hundreds of pages, nothing seemed to happening. Then I realized all the problems The Game of Thrones didn't have: cheesy prophecies, omens of doom, an over-the-top nemesis, vaguely described magic, ungainly chunks of world history, a magical talisman that would save the world, et cetera.

More than that, the characters are vivid and distinct. More than that, the novel reads like painstakingly researched historical fiction instead of tired genre exercise. There aren't wizards dancing around throwing fireballs, no painfully obvious (and mind-numbingly bland) Hero Messiah, no inherently benevolent Gandalfian mentor. There is evil in the world, and genuinely good people... and a huge spectrum of shades of gray. Real people, real conflicts, and real real resolutions.

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