Arriving In Westeros; or, I Just Started the Song of Ice And Fire Novels

[Satan's Onion]

So I've been reading more.

• Oh, Brienne. I realize that a society like that in Westeros has no real concept of "gaydar", but still. She is terrible at getting a damn clue.
• I've officially moved from "Who the fuck is Theon Greyjoy?" to "Now that I know who the fuck Theon Greyjoy is, may I please see him punched in the face repeatedly?"
• Hey, look, Catelyn's doing stuff! For realsies!
• Tyrion, you amazing, magnificent asshole. I almost have a crush. He's just that preposterously awesome.

[Magus]

My favorite character is, of course, Darkstar. He kills people and doesn't afraid of anything.

On a more serious note, Brienne appears to be the woobie of the universe, perhaps to even a greater extent than Sam. You'll see what I mean eventually.

[Satan's Onion]

Sooooo it's been a while, hasn't it?

• Not to put too fine a point on it, but seriously. Tyrion's the bestest. He runs the kingdom leads epic charges into battle outwits his sister slaps that little shitstain Joffrey ( ) and doesn't afraid of anything except maybe the prospect of anyone hurting Shae. D'awwwwwww.
• You know, Jaime's kind of a cool dude, as long as you don't think too hard about HE FUCKS HIS SISTER WHAT THE SHIT IS WRONG WITH HIM GODFUCKINGDAMMITTOHELLFUCKSHIT
• Arya's still pretty cool, even if she apparently got trapped in a revenge thriller by mistake. I like to hope that all this is simply to hone her into the baddest ass that ever badassed it badassly who isn't Tyrion.
• Looks like Theon bit it, which makes me kind of sad. Now I'll never get that scene I keep imagining where he gets held down and repeatedly punched in the balls with a mailed fist for being a giant pouty whiny self-centered turdmine.
• In that fantasy, the rest of his family are getting genital-punched too. The apple doesn't fall very far from the cockbite tree in that family.
• Does Stannis keep that flaming magic sword he made up his butt to save the cost of a sheath? That'd explain why he's such a humorless shitmunch.
• Also: Were the last bits of this possibly written by Michael Bay while GRRM wasn't looking? Just sayin', there's a whoooole lot of pyrotechnics going on up in there.

I've just started A Storm of Swords, of which more eventually.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Has anybody been watching the tv series of this? Is it any good? I ask because I've been hearing a lot about the books but never read them myself, so I was wondering if the show would be a good substitute instead.

Or should I just go out and buy the books instead?

[Satan's Onion]

There's a thread about it somewhere on the second page of this subforum, actually. I'd have thought it would be more active, what with the Big Huge Gigantic Momentous Plot Event Thingy that went down in the latest installment (according to the recaps--I don't have that fancy-pants cable teevee).

And while I'm told the TV series is accessible to newbies, the books themselves are awesome enough in their own right that I'd recommend them to you anyway. See if you can get the first, A Game of Thrones, from the library or something to see if his style is to your taste or not.

[Magus]

The books are much more detailed and involving. The series is a pretty good adaptation, though, probably as good as you could get (probably coulda went the whole 12 episodes instead of just 10 but hey you can't have everything, it hits all the important stuff).

As for why people haven't been posting in it, I dunno. I posted in it through episode 6, if I remember correctly.

[Satan's Onion]

It turns out that I got the Song of Ice and Fire series for my birthday, a bit early 'cos it was too hard to hide. Flipped though A Feast for Crows, just 'cuz, and didn't see a single Tyrion chapter. No Daenerys or Arya either. Didn't even see Sansa, for fuck's sake. Did see an awful lot of Brienne, though, and Cersei for some reason. I suppose I'm intrigued to see how much mileage there is to be wrung from "blahdeblah duty duty duuuuuty" and "blahdeblah I'm the meanest woman in Westeros" respectively, but overall I'm not looking forward to it .

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Hawk

Has anybody been watching the tv series of this? Is it any good? I ask because I've been hearing a lot about the books but never read them myself, so I was wondering if the show would be a good substitute instead.

Or should I just go out and buy the books instead?

If you're not doing both you are doing it wrong.



Heads up to folks in the States looking to purchase the novels: Make use of online storefronts. For example, Barnes and Noble is selling all four for ~17 bucks on the site, but it's twice that in the store itself. Just purchase it online and select in-store pickup and *poof* it's 17 bucks in the store, basically. That's about the same sale price Amazon has right now.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Satan's Onion

It turns out that I got the Song of Ice and Fire series for my birthday, a bit early 'cos it was too hard to hide. Flipped though A Feast for Crows, just 'cuz, and didn't see a single Tyrion chapter. No Daenerys or Arya either. Didn't even see Sansa, for fuck's sake. Did see an awful lot of Brienne, though, and Cersei for some reason. I suppose I'm intrigued to see how much mileage there is to be wrung from "blahdeblah duty duty duuuuuty" and "blahdeblah I'm the meanest woman in Westeros" respectively, but overall I'm not looking forward to it .

AFfC definitely does drag a bit on, yes. AFfC and A Dance with Dragons were originally one book, but the manuscript imploded and formed a small black hole, so Martin cut it into half. Then if I'm remembering my GMMR shenanigans correctly, he completely rewrote ADwD a couple of times, and it's been five fucking years jesus christ how hard is it to write one goddamn book.

The upshot of all of this is that ADwD is apparently focused on the parts of the cast that didn't get screentime in AFfC, sooooo, Tyrion, Arya, Daenerys and everyone else who's totally bitchin' (Darkstar lolitrollu).

[Magus]

Man, I can't wait to see the return of all our favorite A Feast for Crows characters in The Winds of Winter, like Areo Hotah, Podrick Payne and Darkstar. 2017 can't come fast enough!!!

On a more serious note, I actually like A Feast for Crows insofar as it's fairly short (if you look at the typeface and page count in comparison to A Storm of Swords it's really something like half as long), has a lot of mysteries regarding the fates of certain characters that will keep you guessing, wraps up a couple of plotlines (while introducing a crapload of new ones, of course), and new developments that are actually fairly interesting regarding the fates of long running characters, and I personally have only had to wait a couple of years to read A Dance with Dragons which is coming out next month, so unlike the longtime fans I'm much more forgiving of A Feast for Crows.