Martha May 05, 2011

did not like it bookshelves: read-as-much-as-i-plan-to, reviewed

Recommended to Martha by: a stupid internet search I shouldn't have trusted Recommended for: no one 's review

I am on page 470, and although it pains me to put a book down unfinished, it is simply time for me to quit.



A Song of Ice and Fire is the Grey's Anatomy of fantasy. It isn't perfect in the beginning (it's pretty flawed, actually), but you think "That's okay, the premise is good! It will improve!" And then before you know it, everyone is having everyone else's baby and murdering their mother (who is also their sister, and a schizophrenic) and traveling around on horseback setting things on fire for no apparent reason.



The characterization is painfully, painfully flat. I'm tempted to go through the text and count the number of times Jon Snow is referred to as a bastard. I get it! His mother is not his father's wife! He is a bastard! Please, god, can we move on now? No, we can't move on; here on page 470, AGAIN, Jon points out in dialogue that he is a bastard. (Cue self-inflicted eye-stabbing.) The kicker: Jon Snow is probably the deepest character in the book.



And exactly like Grey's Anatomy, there comes a moment (often when a character married to two people at once and pregnant with some other dude's baby decides to throw herself off a bridge, and then survives, but is left in a coma that can only be cured by the medicine her dead best friend left in her nightstand) when you just can't take one more bit of drama just for the sake of it. (Plus, I totally cheated and looked up what happens in the sequels, and the plot only gets more convoluted and depressing.)



So yeah, thanks so much to all you guys who rated this FIVE STARS. I would like to know what you've been smoking, because it apparently gives you the power to turn crap into gold.