I know I said no Saturday post this week but I can't -
I can't -
I'm so annoyed by this book and I have to get it out and I don't want to use up my entire character count on Goodreads so I'm going to post rants here, broken down into units of one hundred pages each.
Here are my responses to pages 1-100. It's all quote-and-reaction.
1. Bram thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.
Ham-handed 'OH LOOK AT MY MORAL CHARACTER' and poor writing. This is a trope of the fantasy genre; if Martin intends to invoke it, he needs to do something new with it.
2. "Let them see that you have a woman's shape now." His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. "You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. "Do you?" he repeated.
"No," Dany said meekly.
Her brother smiled. "Good."
I have a lot of issues with the sibling relationships in this book, but the one between Dany and Viserys is by far the worst. Something about a brother grabbing and twisting his thirteen year-old sister's nipple just crosses a line for me. Go figure.
3. She was Illyrio's favorite, a fair-haired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen who chattered constantly as she worked.
Martin does understand that 'wench' has a very specific connotation, right? Right? And that it's not a word to toss around casually?
... clearly not.
4. He smiled sweetly at her. "I'd let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army."
Viserys needs to die. End of story. Also, so many people praise Martin for writing no truly moral or immoral characters. What, I wonder, is wrong with their moral compasses if they think Viserys isn't dyed-in-the-wool immoral and written as such?
5. Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled. Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn.
GODDAMMIT THIS IS NOT HOW TO END A CHAPTER. It would be fine, albeit a bit cliche, without the second sentence. With said sentence, it just feels... flat. Like it got hacked off, instead of neatly tied with a bow as a chapter should be. Or, you know, like it was written by an amateur.
6. "No, I just want to stand on top of the Wall and piss off the edge of the world."
You know, I think this actually captures my problems with this book in a nutshell: good ideas, like the Wall (700 feet high, made of ice to keep the monsters out? yesplease) which have been urinated on by fantasy tropes that were stale when they were new, crassness with no meaning, 'realism' which only shows a lack of understanding of the genre, and characters who are neither likeable nor sympathetic.
7. No quote for this, but it's splattered all over - Jon Snow and his terrible, stereotypical, ANNOYING AS FUCK status as Author's Darling In Chief. Martin makes it seem like Jon can do no wrong. He's kind, willing to give things up for his half-siblings, respectful, good with a blade, tall-dark-slender-quick, and he's got an albino direwolf to follow him around. I'd bet good money that his shit don't stink. It's nauseating.
101-200 to come soonish.
