Video Game Adaptation In the Works For A Song of Fire and Ice 183
On Wednesday, French game development studio Cyanide announced that they will be working with George R. R. Martin to bring his popular fantasy series, A Song of Fire and Ice, to the realm of video games. The press release implies that there will be more than one game, and the games will come out for PCs and "next-gen consoles." Apparently an HBO television series is in the works as well, in addition to board and card games related to the books.
Oh god (Score:3, Insightful)
The books suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The story is so formulaic. Here's the formula:
1) Create a likable character.
2) Create a hideous character.
3) Have Character #2 rape Character #1.
4) Have multiple other people rape Character #1.
5) Kill Character #1 in an ignoble fashion.
6) Choose a new Character #1. Repeat steps 3-5.
"Murphy's Law of George R.R. Martin":
If you like a character, that character will be maimed, raped, and/or killed in the next book. There are no exceptions.
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Re:The books suck (Score:4, Funny)
"Murphy's Law of George R.R. Martin":
If you like a character, that character will be maimed, raped, and/or killed in the next book. There are no exceptions.
Yes there are. I liked a character that didn't even survive the FIRST book!
You are incorrect. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no formula in ASoIaF. That's what frustrates people so much about the series - it defies expectation.
There's no script immunity for viewpoint characters. And, without being spoilerish, there are no villains that are simply villainous. Nobody in Westeros wakes up and says, "I think I'll go be awful today!"
There is rape, but not like you've described it. I'm trying to think of a likeable character that gets raped - the only multiple rape I can remember is that of a character nobody likes much to begi
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Oh, geez. I gotta be so literal.
Ok. Robb Stark wasn't penetrated by icky things. But that dude got raped, numsayin'?
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Yeah, it's so awful. I mean, nobody else has been copying Shakespeare for the last several hundred years but George R. R. Martin.
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That's the biggest and most successful meta-spoiler I've ever read.
Thanks asshole!
You mean "A Song of Ice and Fire", right? (Score:4, Funny)
Or is this one of those Chinese knockoffs, like "backstroke of the west" or "Harry potter and the big Funnel"?
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I would prefer... (Score:5, Insightful)
... if George R.R. Martin would just finish writing the damn series!!!
Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Insightful)
... if George R.R. Martin would just finish writing the damn series!!!
and artists would prefer if fans stopped thinking of them as their bitches.
But that's not very likely is it?
Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Informative)
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He made this promise or his manager/publisher made this promise? Crucial difference.
Not when his name's on the book. His name was used to promote the promise. If he doesn't like it, he should work with a publisher who doesn't tell lies in his name. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
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The problem appears to be that he really likes planning out plots. He came up with a nice tight plot outline for a trilogy, but as he was writing it, he's not interested in just going through with his original plan. So for every book he writes, the projected length of the series gets 2 books longer.
Whatever. What might have been an iconic pillar of modern fantasy will not be because he'll with it unfinished. It's his own art that is dama
Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Martin's fans (and I'm one) have been fairly patient overall. It is a huge (and wonderful) work and certainly requires a lot of time to make it as good as it is. It's not like he came to my house and signed a contract with me to finish at any particular time. On the other hand, starting a series like this does seem to make a kind of promise to the readers that it will (at least eventually) be finished.
Where people lose patience is when it seems that lots of other things (calendars, figurines, tv series, games....) are taking up more of Martin's time than the books, and when those fans care about the books and not about the tchotchkes they (the fans, not the tchotchkes) - however selfishly and unrealistically - feel slighted and cranky.
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The biggest offence he commited in my mind was writing feast for crows :( Gah. The first 3 books remain my favorate of all time, and this is after having read a ton of other fantasy books. I think he was on the right path, but in that 4 year wait he got big, and probably got leeway from editors, and decided to split the book off into the next 2 books, feast and dance. What a mistake, feast sucked so hard, and to have waited 4 years for it, that bastard.
But really, he's only a bastard cause the first 3 were
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I don't understand why people think Feast for Crows sucked. To me, it was just more of the same great stuff.
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Mostly because he split off the "Good" characters into Dance (Jon, Tyrion, etc...) and gave us fucking Brienne of Tarth as a PoV character... WTF?
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I'm curious to know why you think Brienne is not a "good" character? I find her just as interesting and her story just as compelling as any other character in the series.
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I find her just as interesting and her story just as compelling as any other character in the series.
I don't. That's why I don't consider her a "good" character. :) I also loathe Sansa and Jon Arryn's widow (what was her name?).
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It will never be finished. Look at the projected length of the series when each book was published: it has grown by 2 books every single time. It has never gotten as close to finished as it was when he hadn't started yet.
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They are our bitches. Without readership they make no money. End of story.
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They are our bitches. Without readership they make no money. End of story.
You need to start perusing some real art, this pop culture crap seems to be rotting your brain away.
Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Informative)
You may want to read Neil Gaiman's comments on the issue [neilgaiman.com], as it seems the grandparent poster has.
Although I think that R. K. Milholland's take on a similar issue [superstupor.com] is right on target too.
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From Gaiman's posting:
>George R. R. Martin is not working for you.
Yes, but the publisher basically is. Unless they start publishing books 1-4 with a warning label, "This series is unfinished, and may never be completed" any new readers have right to complain.
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If you can't figure out by looking at the cover [amazon.com], or at least the first three pages of a book that it is part of a series, and are also unable to locate other books by the same author and determine by looking at them whether or not the in fact exist, then maybe the act of reading may be a bit too challenging.
The fact that books do not carry warning label
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Artists or Engineers or any other professional, if you make a commitment to your client or customer, you need to work bloody hard to keep to it. If I as a engineer, make commitments to my customer, and do
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Well, I read Gaiman's article, and if that's the approach an author wants to take, then so be it.
At the end, Gaiman states, "...the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you."
If Martin is not working for the reader, who IS he working for? Who pays his salary, and more to the point, who pays his royalties? In the end, it IS the reader. Without us spending our money on his books, there is no publishing deal and no royalties.
If I go with Gaiman's line of reasoning, then my re
Nobody's Bitch. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like it if writers stopped thinking of their customers as their bitch. If he does not understand the impatience and irritation of his paying customers in not delivering product according to a promised schedule, he's not going to have the franchise grow very much farther than it already has. A professional writer is an artist, true... but more importantly, a professional writer is a paid professional. It's a major disservice to the craft of writing to string your readers along the way he has.
It's one thing to say, "Hey, guys... I lost my mojo on this. I may come back to it in a few years or I may not." Hey, whatever, crap like that happens. Stick to single-volume novels, and your readers will give you another chance.
It's another thing to sneer at your readers and insult them for questioning your grandiose "art." That's not only rude, it's dishonest.
It's not the reader's fault you managed to paint yourself into a corner with your sub-plots. It's not the reader's fault you can't break the story down into novel-length chapters... it's your failing as an =artist=.
Entitlement? Demanding your readers adore you and your works uncritically after having failed them so spectacularly is probably one of the grossest examples of "sense of entitlement" I've come across.
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This attitude of sneering condescension towards your meal-ticket is inexcusable in any industry. Not even Steve Jobs would be able to get away with going five years between iPods. Mr. Martin is no Steve Jobs.
SF/F lives and dies by the Fandom. They're not just smelly geeks... they're the entirety of your net income. You cannot gain or keep an audience except by word-of-mouth, and as we have seen, there are far fewer kind things said about ASOIAF today than there were five years ago.
Maybe he's hoping the HBO
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Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Funny)
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"How do you think us Wheel of Time fans feel?"
After book 6 or 7, I didn't think there was any fans left.
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Hey, 6 was good, and 9 was awesome. 7 was forgettable. 8 & 10 do not exist. I heard 11 was excellent, but I'm going to wait for Sanderson to finish the series.
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But when did you last read something where even the author dies before the grand climax?
I don't know, but Atlas Shrugged was clearly an attempt to kill the reader.
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... if George R.R. Martin would just finish writing the damn series!!!
Are you sure you'd be happy with it if it came prematurely? Mostly Harmless comes to mind. Summary: Random chaotic shit, and everyone dies at the end.
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... if George R.R. Martin would just finish writing the damn series!!!
Are you sure you'd be happy with it if it came prematurely? Mostly Harmless comes to mind. Summary: Random chaotic shit, and everyone dies at the end.
HEY! Spoiler-tags motherfucker! ;)
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Not possible. We've reached and passed the time where it should have ended.
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I think that's the summary for the entire series.
That would be random chaotic funny and entertaining shit.
Re:I would prefer... (Score:5, Insightful)
So far, all the books written have served only to introduce us to the setting, with a vague hint of "winter is coming". We cannot actually say whether the winter is the main plot line or not.
It's like a soap opera. There's nothing happening, except characters acting and reacting. No one is accelerating the main plot (because we dont know which plot that is).
Tolkien said very early on, "here's a ring, the story will concern its destruction". David Eddings - evil god does bad things, here's a story about his demise.
And when we read those books, we form expectations about what is going to happen, and we start to trust the author when that happens. That's an important connection between author and reader.
Song of ice and fire, well, anything can happen. Hell, the bad guy in book X is the good guy in book X+2. I respect Martin because he can pull it off.
I do, however, not trust him to take sufficient care of the characters I enjoy the most - he's proven he has no qualms about killing them off (or leaving them out entirely from a book), then resurrecting them and making them evil. And then the 3 year cliffhangers...
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Dude, the story is the characters. It really is a fantasy based soap opera where all the excitement is the interaction between characters and you wondering whether your favorite will die on the next page or not.
If you really want a main plot, Daenerys (sp?) is going to come overseas with a huge army and then confront The Song of Ice and Fire (aka a main character in the books that I won't spoil), and either they fall in love or kill each other, or both. Everything else is just more reasons for more charac
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It is a fantastic retelling of "War of the Roses". England, 1455. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses [wikipedia.org]
Like any biography or true story there is usually no single grand ending because it is based on historic events that is based upon the rise and fall of many different characters. Each character has a story and we are taken through this by the author.
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I do, however, not trust him to take sufficient care of the characters I enjoy the most - he's proven he has no qualms about killing them off (or leaving them out entirely from a book), then resurrecting them and making them evil.
I however trust him to kill off major characters or have them react very badly to the overwhelming hardships they've suffered. Part of the charm of that is there are no scenes where you feel absolutely certain the character you're reading about is going to survive. Keeps it genuinely suspenseful.
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Whoa there, Cat was pretty twisted from the start. Blame her Whent ancestry.
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The killing off of major characters and showing the more noble side of previously loathed villains is an interesting subversion of the usual predictable fantasy tropes. I think that's part of its appeal to me - it reads more like a history, and less like another iteration of the "Monomyth [wikipedia.org] of the Hero". Or at least it would, if our history books and documentaries didn't usually reduce the real world's personalities to fantasy-esque narrative caricatures.
On the other hand, The Song of Ice & Fire's non-com
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I hear they're going to open a restaurant in the new one!
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Yes. You paid for those books. That means that George R R Martin worked for you.
He has no obligation to continue doing so, however.
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I also have no obligation to spend a single dime on anything connected with Martin until I feel like it, and right now I don't feel like it.
I'm also losing interest in the series over time. It's big and intricate and I've forgotten too many details. If I can't read the new one every couple of years or so, I might as well wait until the series is finished, or Martin's dead (if I outlive him) and pick up the ones I've missed as used paperbacks.
I admit that I, personally, haven't given him a whole lot o
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George R. R. Martin's response to you. [livejournal.com]
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Relevant quote: (Score:2)
I saw this on someone's blog:
"Every time someone asks when the next book is coming out, GRRM kills another Stark."
It explains a lot.
*sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll probably end up similar to the three hack n' slash Lord of the Rings games on the Xbox - Gameplay might be fun, but you could remove the setting entirely and not make a difference. Personally, I think the best style for this game would be something more akin to King of Dragon Pass. [a-sharp.com]
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tfa:
"Development on a game for PC and "next-gen consoles" has begun, and George R. R. Martin will help out"
so maybe wont be so bad after all eh? I guess as long as Mr Martin has some say so , or rather put Cyanide lets him.
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[Assuming the networks don't decide to remove the incest and childkilling, and so on.]
They will, I'm sure :P
But I highly doubt videogame developers are going to focus on anything but violence, violence, violence with this.
Could be an RTS... The Game of Thrones board came was pretty good (at least before they came out with the Clash of Kings expansion with the imba-as-hell Unique House Orders...)
What sort of game is it going to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cyanide studio (http://www.cyanide-studio.com/) has previously published mostly sports games, although they currently got a Blood Bowl esque RTS -game in develoment along with a cartoonty MMO called "Dungeon Party".
I'm personally bit wary of this SoI&F game they've announced, as their track record of games doesn't really fit in too well with what I'd hope from a SoI&F game. I think something like A Sharp's King of Dragon Pass could well enhance the Soi&F exprience far better.
Still, I guess Cyanide has displayed ability to jump genres with their new productions, so pretty much anything is possible from the SoI&F game?
Subgames? (Score:3, Funny)
Will there be sub-games/mini-games for the following:
* Braid pulling.
* Adjusting ones dress.
* Complex embroidery design? Maybe have a web portal where other players can design complex dresses. Dress design will be rated by the length and detail of descriptions (minimum description 3000 words or one chapter). MMO even?
Excellent franchise to choose as both the TV series and games can produce multitudes of series/upgrades with no conclusion to plot or story.
A Tip for anyone contemplating reading the whole series. After book three, skip every twenty pages.
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Book 8?.. Hmm... not sure. Was that the one where 800 pages were dedicated to progressing the story 20 minutes? You know... where they nuked the ...very bad.. place? Then did book nine move the story along another 10 minutes?
Thankfully its all a blur.
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The last chapter of Book 9 was where they did the "very big thing", and that chapter almost made up for all of book 8. Unfortunately book 10 made virtually no mention of the "very big thing" and the only good parts of it were the M&T interactions.
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Ok, so it was mentioned, but it MADE NO DIFFERENCE. This was, after all, a VERY BIG THING. After finishing book 9, everyone couldn't wait to find out what VERY BIG CONSEQUENCES resulted from it. And Book 10 instead focuses on some stuff that goes on at the same time.
The ASOIAF equivalent would be if "Winter came" to Westeros and the Others overran half of it in one volume, while the next volume is all about Daenerys, where once in a while someone remarks "it's chilly for this time of year, isn't it?"
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It wasn't about expectations. It was the equivalent of a humongous cliffhanger that doesn't get resolved the next episode. Except unlike TV episodes, it takes a bit longer than a week to wait for the next book. And it didn't help matters that there was almost nothing interesting in book 10 aside from the entertaining Matt & Tuon interactions.
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Which is why the '12th' book will actually be books 12, 13 and 14.
Srsly.
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Yep, but I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments on the other series.
Song Of Fire ... (Score:4, Funny)
If you don't count The Wheel of Time, but that's quite different story.
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Is it now? Or is it "the hero discovers his inner strength and struggles against the great evil, aided by his three wise women and his two trusty companions"?
It might be, if only we could figure out who the hero is. Let me know...
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Let's hope this series will actually end in the author's lifetime ....
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...with the new book being announced to come out this year.
No it hasn't.
Martin has made promises the last couple of years that he would focus and get it finished, but has instead published 4 books in the Wild Card series and edited/coauthored several other works. The last formal update on his site was another "I'll get it done this year" dated January 2008. Informally, he's stated on LiveJournal several times that he's hoping to complete various chapters "soon."
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GRRM has been publishing SoI&F books on very steady intervals (a Game of Thrones '96, a Clash of Kings '98, a Storm of Swords '00 and a Feast for Crows '05)
You must a definition of "steady" I was not previously aware of.
GoT->CoK - 2 years
CoK->SoS - 2 years
SoS->FfC -> 5 years
FfC->DwD -> 4 years and counting...
You just got my hopes up. (Score:2, Funny)
MTW2 mod Westeros Total War (Score:2)
The Official RPG (Score:2, Informative)
Blood Bowl (Score:2)
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Re:Is it good? (Score:5, Informative)
A Song of Ice and Fire is, in my opinion, the best fantasy story out there. Makes Tolkien look like a confused old fairy tale uncle.
Realistic characters, lots of greys (as in bad guys act bad for a good reason and the other way around), no hesitation to kill off main characters/heroes, etc.
I'd rate it as the second best, actually, behind Stephen Erikson's Tales from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. However, they are two incredibly different styles, and while I think Erikson has the edge in execution, both of these guys are highly talented authors. Very hard to make a fair comparison between such radically different styles, I guess.
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Allow me to dissent.
"A Game of Thrones" suffers from an excess of underdeveloped characters. I counted 10-12 major characters, plus dozens of supporting cast. Daenerys, the exiled dragon princess, seemed interesting, as did Arya, the waterdancer-in-training. However, I finished the book without really caring about any of them.
In some ways, the whole book felt like nothing more than background for plot lines that won't be developed until well into the second or third novels. For example, the very first chapt
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If the book has grown too far beyond its bounds, the correct response is to murder your darlings [sfwa.org].
You can fault Martin for a lot of things, but being squeamish about killing off his characters? Are you NUTS? There are gadflies with longer life expectancies than a SOIaF character...
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A Song of Ice and Fire is, in my opinion, the best fantasy story out there. Makes Tolkien look like a confused old fairy tale uncle. Realistic characters, lots of greys (as in bad guys act bad for a good reason and the other way around), no hesitation to kill off main characters/heroes, etc. While you wait for the next book, I suggest 'The First Law' series by Joe Abercrombie.
Well... that's your opinion... mine is that it HAD THE POTENTIAL to be one of the best fantasy epics ever. The first half of the first book really wowed me... but as the series dragged on it became more and more obvious that Martin had no idea where he was going. Given how good that first bit was I was very miffed to slog through the last volume and put it aside with relief not looking forward to the next installment at all... "Missed it by THAT much."
Re:Is it good? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it is that good. The writing is only fair, but the characterisation, plotting, and world-building are absolutely outstanding. The best fantasy series I have ever read, and I'm including LOTR. It's epic.
You get war, intrigue, politics, a giant wall of ice hundreds of metres high, torture, incest, dire wolves, eunuchs, castles, tournaments, rape, duels, slavery, dragons, fratricide, patricide... all the good stuff :)
Re:Is it good? (Score:4, Interesting)
A bunch of subplots centered in a confused mishmash and a vague promise that "winter is coming".
We don't even know what that means, except that the wildlings are supposed to invade from the north. Only - the wildlings were killed off in the last book.
I see everyone begging Mr. Martin to please finish the series - but how would it be finished? There's no end condition.
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How it's going to finish is really straight-forward.
When the seven kingdoms have sufficiently weakened themselves via in-fighting, the Others will overwhelm the wall. Danerys lands on the shores of the seven kingdoms with her dragons. Jon Snow, who is clearly the prince-who-was-promised, joins forces with her to fight off the Others fulfilling the title of the series.
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While I do agree on the characterization part, I cannot agree with you about the plot, because there is none yet.
A bunch of subplots centered in a confused mishmash
True to some degree, but each subplot is well constructed. There have been hints that all the strands of the story are part of an overarching plot, though Martin has been slow getting there (particularly in the last book). I don't mind the delay, however, because the journey is so enjoyable.
a vague promise that "winter is coming".
We don't even know what that means, except that the wildlings are supposed to invade from the north. Only - the wildlings were killed off in the last book.
The Others are presumably the "big bad" of the series.
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I hate people.
"could do without the softporn."
But you are ok with everything else in the book. I'm glad they chalked it full of violence, but man, hes just pushing it by including sex.
What. The. Fuck. is wrong with this fucking country?
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Can someone tell me if this "A Song of Fire and Ice" is any good and worth a read? Is it worth an entire media blitz?
My advice it to read, and enjoy, the first volume. Then pretend that the author died and let your imagination fill in the cracks.
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I really fucking hate Joffrey.
You don't say...
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Shit. I'm not paying $60 for a game where I survive 10 minutes...