George R.R. MArtin - Winter is... Pending
George R.R. Martin - Game of Thrones author or a hack writer than nobody likes?
By Morgon Slayer
What is the deal with George R.R. Martin? Is he good, indifferent or is he as bad a writer as some readers have suggested? For many people, this is a question of utter irrelevance since, with 90 million plus copies of his A Song of Ice and Fire series sold, the answer would seem obvious. However, I hope to show you through reasoned argument and ruthless logic that he is not just, not good, but actually quite hideously terrible in almost every area of his literary endeavours.
I think it’s important to establish my bona fides in this area. I am a fan of the fantasy fiction genre and have been reading this type of book since the mid-80’s. Trying, with greater and lesser degrees of success, to keep on top the works of both the classically considered greats and the best of the new authors. Tolkien, Moorcock, Hobb, Pratchett, Lewis, Gemmell, Jordan, Le Guin, Abercombie, Eddings, Fiest, Burroughs, Sanderson and Erikson, are just a few of the names that have graced my bookshelves – read, and in many cases, re-read. I love the genre! It speaks to me in ways that others don’t quite manage. All of this experience allows me to observe that George doesn’t quite have the chops to remain with the greats and that after a certain period he will fall by the wayside as many others have. But why do I maintain this position when so many seem to hail him as a luminary?
I’ll tell you for why!
He tends to be derivative
The first observable problem is that he is derivative. George, perhaps thinks that we cannot see that all of his ideas and story twists come from historical events with few, or none, being created imaginatively. Perhaps he simply doesn’t care or imagines that we lack the intelligence and insight to see. Take a moment to look at the map of Westeros. Anyone should be able to blatantly see that it’s Great Britain and Ireland rotated by 180 degrees and mashed into each other. In terms of the story, the parallels between the historical periods known as The Anarchy and the Wars of the Roses appear to be his primary sources, with Daenerys substituting for Empress Mathilda and the houses of York and Lancaster being represented Stark and Lannister. Honestly, it’s almost too obvious!! The concept of the free cities located in Essos is also too clearly inspired, or should I say sourced, by the city states of renaissance Italy. And, don’t get me started on the Dothraki, where the source could not be more obviously the Mongols if it tried! It’s a little boring to see these things played out, over and over again.
To George R.R. Martin’s credit, I will say that he has some skill in character creation. This is probably a relic of his days working as a TV show script writer. But the effort he puts into the creative process seems to be balanced out by his lack of ability to have those characters grow and change. He replaces the idea of progressing a character with introducing a new one instead. Thus, we end up with an unending sequence of new characters. There are 2084 named characters in the five books, (being A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows & A Dance with Dragons) published so far. He has made it a bit easier on himself by repeating some names, for example there are no less than sixteen Brandon Starks mentioned, which makes it no easier on us! Even worse than this is that the core character’s personalities do not seem to alter no matter what happens to them. They may lose a hand or gain the ability to change their face, but their core personality remains the same. Cersei for example is a cold, manipulative, over-protective monster at the start and is, despite the loss of more than one child and massive public humiliation, the same in her last scene in the books, I feel sure that Sigmund Freud would approve! Quite frankly, the vast majority of his characters are inhumane monsters anyway with such traits as would make them eminently unlikeable. It is with sense of the Grand Guignol that we read about the Red Wedding, and a feeling of creeping horror that we envision the Other’s implacable approach and with utter revulsion we discover the lascivious description of Cersei and Jamie’s incestuous relationship.
He has developmental issues
When moment is taken to think about it, perhaps a longer moment than George took to plan it, it becomes easy to see that there are a few problems with the development of his stories. To be fair, a concession should be made that the first two books seem to have a continuous development of the various plot arcs, but this may be an artifact of the slow release of lore into the noosphere of the fictional world. At any rate, the structures of the first two books show progress, according to the accepted seven-point system. However, the third and fourth books seem not to follow through on the story beats introduced in earlier books or the plot lines introduced within them. Basically, there remains a lot of significant actions left unresolved. A better way to say this is that A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings make sense as stand-alone novels, but the others don’t. A good example of this is that in the fifth book we are introduced to a character named Quentin who goes on a quest, only vaguely connected to the main story, then dies halfway through, with no perceptible reason or impact on the larger story. Truly baffling!
He is really lazy
It can scarcely be possible not to pick up on the underlying theme that runs through this article, which is that George R.R. Martin is a genuinely lazy writer. Lack of personal creativity and not knowing what to do with his characters, or the story itself, are strong indicators of poor planning! Another sign of his laziness is that it has become apparent that he has no real intent to complete the series. It’s like he’s not holding his end of the deal. Generally speaking, when you begin a series, particularly if it achieves popularity, you have entered into an implicit contract with your readers. You have to finish the work, so your audience is not left wanting! My understanding is that he started work on this project in 1991, with Game of Thrones published in 1996. Then, the next three books were released over the following nine years and the fifth book wasn’t published until 2011. A line showing his publication schedule has achieved an asymptotic curve. Or, in words George R.R. Martin would understand, it’s flat-lined. Or, is it possible that greed has got the better of him? It should be noted that prior to the HBO show, 12 million copies (of all books published at that time) had been sold. Now that number has skyrocketed to over 90 million, according to figures released in 2018). However, other sources have suggested that he was earning around 1 million dollars per episode of the show. We can all do that brand of mathematics!! All of this shows a very casual regard for his audience. He’s cashed out and given up!
He is an arrogant piece of crap!
All of this, however, pales against his greatest transgression. That is, his all too ludicrous claim that he is a superior author to J.R.R Tolkien. The gall of it, to claim, in an interview, that he is better than a man who has inspired generations of readers and writers, and who effectively created, out of whole cloth, the genre that he has chosen to write in. The arrogance is unbelievable. George is, with the best will in the world , a fairly minor contributor to the grand tradition of fantasy. Whether he remains that way depends on his ability to pull his finger out and finally get around to completing his work. We must doubt that this will ever happen.
I hate him so much!
Having been made far plumper by his HBO and publishing-house cheques, he is unlikely to feel the need to do so. Appearances at book and TV show cons will serve to further reinforce his ego. His attendance at red-carpet events, and the Hollywood schmooze that goes with them, has divorced him from the people that truly matter. Going on chat-shows such as the Late Show, 60 Minutes, Last Week Today, Conan and Late Night to be lavishly praised for his work has puffed up his ego until he has allowed himself to be consumed by it. Suffice to be said that his id and superego are having serious trouble keeping his head out of the clouds. Many believe that he thinks that doing what he needs to do is now beneath him.
In conclusion
All in all, we might consider George R.R. Martin as a writer who, under colossal, monumental influence wrote a semi-decent part of a story. He then got rich and bailed on the whole thing. As a result, of all the reasons mentioned before and so many more minor points, we have to conclude that George R.R Martin is not a good writer, nor even an acceptable one. He is only thoroughly mediocre and isn’t that a damning statement? For a man who wanted us to engage in flights of fancy and revel in the extraordinary, to be only ordinary, just mid, is unaceptable. It would be sad, if it were not so frustrating. As it is, we might we feel entitled go get a little angry. Or more than a little. Oh, sod it!! Damn you to hell George, damn you to hell! We could damn you to the world of your own creation, but that would be unnecessarily cruel.
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