My Take on the GRRM Thing
Let me talk about me for a bit. I don’t read fantasy. Sword and sorcery is more my bag, and even then, I really only go for Robert E Howard or, at a stretch, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yeah, I read Lord of the Rings, but that doesn’t count.
But then there’s George R R Martin’s epic series, A Song of Ice and Fire. After being perpetually disappointed by genre fantasy, I’d all but given up, until a nice on the Internet suggested I try out the first book, A Game of Thrones. And it was okay. It was like a campy telling of the Hundred Years’ War, offset by moments of brutal edginess. It wasn’t great, but it kept me reading, and I kept on reading until it became great, which for me, was book three — A Storm of Swords.
Then came book four, and it wasn’t so great. I pushed through it, of course, but when I came to the end, I felt a bit empty. It didn’t cover the best characters, didn’t close up any sub-plots, and I was dizzy from about ten frustrating cliffhangers.
But then I read a little note by GRRM in the back. It said something about book four and (the unreleased) book five being two parts of a big book, and this was the first half. The second half, A Dance with Dragons should be out shortly. Joy!
That note was written four years ago.
People Are Angry
This is the kind of thing that makes your average fan angry, and if you haven’t read A Song of Ice and Fire, you won’t appreciate precisely why fans need the next book. They’re disappointed, and according to GRRM, rude, abusive, and batshit crazy about it. So GRRM has posted this short missive to his ‘detractors’, who only want him to finish the damn book:
Some of you are angry about the miniatures, the swords, the resin busts, the games. You don’t want me “wasting time” on those, or talking about them here.
Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall. You don’t want me “wasting time” on the NFL, or talking about it here.
Okay, I’ve got the message. You don’t want me doing anything except A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. Ever. (Well, maybe it’s okay if I take a leak once in a while?)
Fair enough, I say. And so have Charles Stross and Jack Scalzi, who’ve also posted in GRRM’s defense. Their message is obvious, simple, and logical: the book an author wants to write will be better than one he rushes out to appease people — do you want a good book, or a bad one?
But on the other hand, I don’t think this is a case of ‘fans angry at late book’. GRRM has assured his readers that a new book is ‘coming very soon’ — even to the point of printing a letter to his readers in his last book. It’s a repetitive cycle of expectation and disappointment, which, on the Internet, turns people into gibbering madmen. If it had simply been a case of ‘when it’s done’, then I doubt we’d see this type of outcry. Not that this excuses bad fan behaviour, of course, but there is something to be said for managing someone’s expectations, especially fans.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that this is unlikely to motivate GRRM to finish the book, let alone the series. The expectation is now huge. Fans are starting out pissed at him, so the book needs to un-piss them before it can impress them.
But, I’m okay with that. Take your time GRRM. Make it a cracking book, one that makes you proud. And rest assured that even if it isn’t, we’ll all still buy it, and everything else you do, too.
