George Martin, A Dance With Dragons

The fifth volume in the seven-volume series A Song of Ice and Fire was released yesterday. It counted nine hundred and fifty nine pages, and I turned the last one minutes ago. A decent book. Few (I can only remember two) graphic sex scenes and no - that's right, zero - tweaking of nipples. How thrilling!

Dance is a fun book, I shall readily admit. Despite its almost inexcusable length, it is swiftly paced and quite a page turner. My complaints of A Song still, remain, though I will admit Martin has grown more accustomed to writing about religion, at least the paganism of the North. His work has the power to sweep you completely into Westeros and beyond in the same way that Tolkien was able to do. But Martin's work is simply not beautiful. The Lord of the Rings ached beauty from almost every page, and even in the victory of the Third Age tragedy showed itself. There is no such thing here. All is gritty, dark, and after calamitous misfortune strikes again and again endlessly, one comes only to expect the worst. Thus, when the virtuous and/or noble are overcome by the vicious, I cannot say I am surprised or shocked; for Martin and the writers of the television adaptation (which incidentally is better than the written saga in several important respects) seem quite convinced that cruelty, injustice, and deception are mightier than, and superior to, the virtues: courage, honor, and nobility especially. It's almost the starting position of Alcibiades in the first dialogue of his name, and I shall look into this problem more carefully. But there are two more books to go, and given how convinced of his position Martin seems to be, I cannot see how there possibly can be a noble ending, for the Stark family is all but extinct, Daenerys exchanges authority for weakness, and Jon Snow betrays his vow to the Wall. The best I can hope for is for Tyrion to survive, as Martin, given his preference for Odyssean cleverness over the honorable heroism that so formed Achilles and Diomedes, seems to indicate.

Every now and then, I find an exhilarating portrayal of power and the lengths men will go to obtain it. Every now and then, a moving section on honor. Very rarely, an honorable, valiant man, however doomed he might be (and usually is). I suppose that is all that I can expect. Who would we rather follow? Ned Stark or Tyrion? Honorable death or dishonorable life? On the one hand, what good is honor and nobility if it gets you killed? But on the other, what good is life if you become dishonorable?

I definitely shall not buy the books in hardcover; either in the cheapest paperbacks I can find or not at all, but I am glad I read them. After all, few have written so well about impending, unknown terror, and the frightening isolation that is the North.

"Not all men are meant to dance with dragons."

The Chronicles of Prydain

I love fantasy. I always have and I always will. I never passed into the middle phase where Lewis says we are too old for fairy tales and must wait till we are old enough again; I grew up on Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Sometime later, in my early adolescent years, I discovered Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three. Over winter break I read it again, along with the later four novels that comprise the five-part series. The Chronicles of Prydain is a work which so far has grown with me. I may not learn anything new from here on out, but will always retain a fondness for it. 

The Prydain books are about what it means to be a man, and it traces the life of one such man from impetuous boyhood through the suffering required to achieve self-knowledge, wisdom, and greatness. In particular I loved the fourth volume, Taren Wanderer, where the hero undergoes a quest of self-knowledge. He is unable to perform that which he most longs to do, which naturally resonated strongly with me, for precisely that occurred to me as well. 

Alexander may be a modern democrat with Christian-esque views of greatness, but his work is fabulous, moving, and even tragic at times. And yes, in the end, Taran becomes great. 

A Song of Ice and Fire

It's almost shocking how little modern, populist literature I read nowadays. Almost invariably this gives me pleasure; I am not a plebe in a coffee shop who thinks he's sophisticated for reading Chomsky and Vonnegut with the New York Times on the side. I hate the term 'sophisticated' anyway, having connotations of Subway lurking in my subconscious. But every now and then I hear of a book which captures my attention. A Game of Thrones caught my eye so on impulse I bought it from the bookstore.

My qualms are minor; atheists really shouldn't write about religion for their work is unconvincing, and Martin's style of "I'll-kill-off-major-characters-to-make-you-worried-about-the-ones-that-really matter" wearies the soul. I doubt Martin would be careless enough to kill Jon or Arya (my personal favorite) merely to flout the system. If he does, I shan't care for the series anymore, nor do I find his method to work for me; I merely become angry when the Young Wolf and his mother dies, and the enemy - and there is an enemy, despite what popular criticism would say - prevails.

But these are minor qualms. The writing is vigorous, gritty, and often dark, sometimes oppressively so. Occasionally I wish there were not quite so much graphic sex depicted, but few writers have written so evocatively of the North. The battles of the Wall, the freezing isolation, the perennial darkness; the honor, the courage of the Stark family, who could not love such things?

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.