It's an attempt to dramatize the idea of a language without a division between signs and referents, i.e., of a language that does not refer to the real world, but is an extension of the real world. Mieville was absolutely insane to try this (if only because the concept is impossible to the human mind), and it's astonishing that he managed to be about 45% successful with it. All artists in all forms should be willing to sometimes just go for it, and Mieville really did here.

Have you read Ben Marcus, "Notable American Women"?

He took a look at Robert Jordan's career arc, thought, "I could do better than that," and decided that artistic integrity was overrated compared to fame, adulation, and piles of money?

He actually looked at Tad Williams, and said "hey, you can actually write giant epic fantasy... for adults!" and then did just that.

I'm pretty much in agreement with #80, although I think the third book was actually the strongest of the bunch. Books 4 and 5 are where Martin has really lost his way. At this point, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Martin has lost interest in the story. He's taking longer and longer to produce each book, and each book following the third advances less and less of the various plotlines. What he IS producing in those books is copious worldbuilding... loving descriptions of food, places, people, political institutions, etc.

He's either lost sight of the payoff, or has decided that getting there will be too much work, so he's spending his time writing the Lonely Planet Guide to Westeros and Essos. Also, he desperately needs an editor. Somebody who will fix his sloppy, repetitive prose, as opposed to squealing with joy every time he deigns to produce a chapter and passing it along untouched.

Have you read Ben Marcus, "Notable American Women"?

No, but the wikipedia description sounds like it's another example of an artist going for it.

I don't know if it's fair to compare the Sword of Ice and Fire books to the shared-world Wild Cards books that Martin edited and partially wrote. But the flaw in the Wild Cards books, in my opinion, were that they had terrific worldbuilding, set things up really interestingly, and then meandered all over the place until they got cancelled. I feel like the same thing is happening with this, where there's a fascinating beginning that feels like it's a great world, but Martin's ability to close the deal is coming into question.

Never read Mieville (as I've said before, with only a few exceptions -- probably more than I realize, actually, but it's not like I've been keeping notes for the last 3 decades, though once upon a time I used to do just that in the form of keeping lists of everything I read -- I pretty much stopped reading sf when Phil Dick allegedly died), but yesterday I did pick up a half-price (thank you, FCBD sale) copy of the first issue of DC's new Dial H comic, which he wrote. (Exultations by Mieville fanboys over that news when it broke a few weeks back are the only reason I know he's male. I mean, China? Really? What's his middle name? Saipan?)

For a guy named "gef the talking mongoose" you sure complain about people's names a lot.

I know of no foreign country named "gef." I must admit, though, that geography has never been one of my strong suits.

But, wouldn't you make more money with numerous 400 page books rather than occasional 1000 pagers? I mean, they don't charge 3 times as much for a 1000 page book; it's like giving the product away for free.

I suspect that churning out extremely long books is an essential part of the appeal. Reading those things shows you're hardcore, or something. Plus, you have to keep making it a major investment to continue with the series, so people who don't understand the concept of "sunk costs" will think, well, I've put this much into it, no sense giving up now.

But the flaw in the Wild Cards books, in my opinion, were that they had terrific worldbuilding, set things up really interestingly, and then meandered all over the place until they got cancelled.

That's not entirely fair. Some of the early Wild Cards books were actually pretty good at describing a complete narrative arc -- II, III, and VI were mostly-complete stories in and of themselves, and they did a pretty good job of that. But after VI (the Hartman book), they became steadily less focused, with the occasional exception of the full-on novels.

He actually looked at Tad Williams, and said "hey, you can actually write giant epic fantasy... for adults!" and then did just that.

I love Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Possibly my favorite fantasy series. Related to the earlier discussion my favorite part may be the first 120 pages or so where nothing important really happens.

I've always thought Dickens reminded me of Stephen King -- not from a genre perspective, but because they both use characters to advance a plot rather plot as a backdrop for exploring the characters.

That's a very interesting comparison. I always thought of King as amazingly capable of creating a whole backstory for a character that simply exists to have a horrible death.

I tend to disagree with this --

Take War and Peace for example -

Here's the thing. I'm all for giving writers space to freely develop themes. However, given your example of War and Peace. A Song of Fire and Ice is approx. 5 times longer than War and Peace, and it's not finished yet.

Ooh! And how about Robinson Crusoe? That thing's full of the same scene over and over again with tiny differences.

First of all, Crusoe kind of sucks. Second of all, it's only around 400 pages.


I should say that I agree with TGF and others, that the first book was pretty good, the second and third were perfectly cromulent and it's only really broken down in 4 and 5. However, if you think 4 and 5 were self-indulgent, just wait until 6 and 7.

By the seventh book, I firmly believe that somebody else will be writing them.

No, but the wikipedia description sounds like it's another example of an artist going for it.

I strongly recommend it. I think it's near-brilliant. He seems to have written another book that sounds similar as a follow-up. I haven't read it, but from the description, I'm not sure how much it really differs. I'll be interested to see.

By the seventh book, I firmly believe that somebody else will be writing them.

Probably true. A guy in his mid-60's with his impressively round shape likely doesn't have much of a shelf life.

Related to the earlier discussion my favorite part may be the first 120 pages or so where nothing important really happens.

I think you mean 400

Here's the thing. I'm all for giving writers space to freely develop themes. However, given your example of War and Peace. A Song of Fire and Ice is approx. 5 times longer than War and Peace, and it's not finished yet.

Well, in fairness -- Tolstoy also doesn't bother with what's happening in the Americas, Asia, or Africa in the Napoleonic era either...

Okay. Maybe this is a bad idea, but I think that it might help?

Why both Ned and Robb Stark? Ned's death is key to the narrative, directly inspires the war that his son Robb then launches against the Lannisters that is the main narrative for almost the entirety of the next two books.

First of all, the war against the Lannisters is a complete nothingburger. It doesn't matter. We know this because it gets resolved so damn quickly. Second of all, Robb is completely unnecessary. Robb is surrogate Ned. If, at the end of the first book, Ned escaped and raised the north, then died while having some other kind of treaty with the Freys, nothing would have changed in the larger narrative. That is why Robb is a pointless character. He only exists to be just like his father--noble, courageous and ultimately dead.

Arya's chapters have a narrative of their own, a rather good one imo and take place during and in the aftermath of said war. Without her chapters revealing the nature and consequences of the war on the surrounding landscape(a function later taken up by Brienne's chapters) the novels would have been significantly weaker IMO and they do frequently provide important info relevant to the other plot lines about characters like Bolton, both Cleganes, Vargo Hoat and his mummers, Dondarrian/Thoros and I imagine Gendry will be important at some point

So your case for Arya's chapters being useful is that her main use is as a narrator? Arya goes through all these things and changes nothing. She just drifts until she lands in Braavos. Dondarrian is gone, and didn't matter. All the other minor characters could have easily been developed in other storylines or consolidated. What purpose does it serve to have multiple boogeymen? Gregor Clegane exists in the books to kill people and to die. SNIP!

which is another mistake you are making imo; judging and dismissing the narrative importance of characters and events in a series that has thousands of pages yet to come. Pages you probably should not read as you seemingly simply do not like this kind of literature.

I've read over 5,000 pages. I think, as a reader, Martin owes me some clues to narrative importance--and we get them. Bran is important. Denarys is important. Jon Snow is important. Arya might be important. Everyone else is just a casualty waiting to happen.




I liked Embassytown, but it wasn't fully realized. It was a really, really interesting book that didn't quite succeed. There's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather read ten interesting failures than 1 crappy success.

By the seventh book, I firmly believe that somebody else will be writing them.

For whatever it's worth, eh says he's left explicit instructions that the series is not to be finished if he dies

For whatever it's worth, eh says he's left explicit instructions that the series is not to be finished if he dies

I didn't mean I think he'll die first. I just think he'll decide he doesn't like the slog of writing, so he'll do the outlines and hand them over to somebody else to turn out the actual words. Note that even if this doesn't happen, I can just pretend the books are being ghostwritten. It's important to plan ahead!

Kraken was my first Mieville book. I should give him another chance, because parts of that book were excellent.

I'd rather read ten interesting failures than 1 crappy success.

I agree, provided they're ambitious failures and not just wanking (ie, the author intended it to work, not just be interesting).

First of all, the war against the Lannisters is a complete nothingburger. It doesn't matter. We know this because it gets resolved so damn quickly. Second of all, Robb is completely unnecessary. Robb is surrogate Ned. If, at the end of the first book, Ned escaped and raised the north, then died while having some other kind of treaty with the Freys, nothing would have changed in the larger narrative. That is why Robb is a pointless character. He only exists to be just like his father--noble, courageous and ultimately dead.

Robb is there to subvert the common fantasy trope of the hero's journey. Honorable young son grows into manhood, overcomes hardships, avenges noble father's death at the hand of dishonorable bad guys. Except in GOT, Robb's noble and honorable behavior gets him killed, just like it did his father. The Red Wedding is an incredibly effective scene, and we need Robb for it to work.

So your case for Arya's chapters being useful is that her main use is as a narrator? Arya goes through all these things and changes nothing. She just drifts until she lands in Braavos. Dondarrian is gone, and didn't matter. All the other minor characters could have easily been developed in other storylines or consolidated. What purpose does it serve to have multiple boogeymen? Gregor Clegane exists in the books to kill people and to die. SNIP!

I will agree that Arya's chapters are unnecessarily long/repetitive, but they serve the meaningful purpose of giving us a worm's eye view of what war means to the common folk in Westeros. Also, those experiences harden her and catalyze her anger and bloodlust, helping to explain why a playful tomboy embraces becoming a killer for hire. But yeah, too many pages devoted to her knocking around the Riverlands before she gets to Braavos.

I think you mean 400

Not sure what you mean. Either you didn't read those books or don't remember them properly...?

I'm pretty sure I don't want to read thousands of pages about any one particular story line. How come nobody writes 300 pgs. books anymore?

If so, that's too bad. You're missing out on some great stuff. No "Outlaws of the Marsh"? No "Canterbury Tales"? No "Decameron"? No "Journey to the West"? No "Romance of Three Kingdoms"?

What a pity.

Not sure what you mean. Either you didn't read those books or don't remember them properly...?

While I liked the series, I'm quite confident that nothing worth nothing happens in the first 400 pages of The Dragonbone Chair.

I read War and Peace on the train from Beijing to Moscow. I still sadly found it very dull. I wished I read Russian, because all it seemed like was rich people fighting.

No "Canterbury Tales"?

That's not all one story line.

First of all, the war against the Lannisters is a complete nothingburger. It doesn't matter. We know this because it gets resolved so damn quickly. Second of all, Robb is completely unnecessary. Robb is surrogate Ned. If, at the end of the first book, Ned escaped and raised the north, then died while having some other kind of treaty with the Freys, nothing would have changed in the larger narrative. That is why Robb is a pointless character. He only exists to be just like his father--noble, courageous and ultimately dead.

What you are saying can be applied to almost any aspect of any book. The great bulk of the first three books, which even you are saying are the worthy parts of the series, are dedicated to that war you now call a "nothingburger." Your perspective seems almost preposterously linked to tying all literary value to advancing an overall narrative. It's like the opposite of the old saying, "can't see the forest for the trees." You seem willing to throw out all the trees as pointless without realizing there would be no forest left when you are done.
Ned Stark escaping King's Landing and dragging his homeland into a brutal war of succession in which he has no claim is very different from his inexperienced teenage son starting a war of secession to avenge his father's death after declaring himself king. IMO if you consider these differences academic because they don't clearly yet tie into the ultimate ending of the series(that hasn't even been revealed yet) it's not because Martin is a poor writer but rather you are a terrible reader of this sort of fiction. Are you also constantly disappointed with life as well because it generally lacks a tight narrative and not everything is explicitly meaningful to its eventual unknown ending?

I'm quite confident that nothing worth nothing happens in the first 400 pages of The Dragonbone Chair.

Can't disagree more. Just even the one chapter where Simon is desperately crawling through the bowels of the Hayholt, and metaphorically the history of the land itself, traumatized by the sudden death of his mentor and unsure if he will ever see daylight again is haunting and beautifully written. Basically from Simon finding Josua still alive and Pryrates killing Morgenes #### starts happening at a rapid pace and it doesn't really let up much.

I read War and Peace on the train from Beijing to Moscow. I still sadly found it very dull. I wished I read Russian, because all it seemed like was rich people fighting.

We read the abridged version in HS (had the history edited out, which was fine for me b/c I knew all about Napoleon), and I agree; snooze-fest.

I've heard Anna Karenina is much, much better, but haven't read it yet.

What you are saying can be applied to almost any aspect of any book.

No. The Sun Also Rises is between two-hundred and 250 pages. You would be hard pressed to find one page that you could remove without affecting the story, characters or plot. A Canticle for Leibowitz is 300 pages. Lord of Light is around the same number. Lots of books are written well, and don't have a ####-ton of padding. I feel like I'm being a bit rude here, but this is why you need to read better quality speculative fiction.

The great bulk of the first three books, which even you are saying are the worthy parts of the series, are dedicated to that war you now call a "nothingburger." Your perspective seems almost preposterously linked to tying all literary value to advancing an overall narrative. It's like the opposite of the old saying, "can't see the forest for the trees." You seem willing to throw out all the trees as pointless without realizing there would be no forest left when you are done.

I follow the author's queues. The author is the one who tells me that the war between the Lannisters and the Starks doesn't matter. I do not tie all literary value to advancing a narrative. However, if you're writing, it has to do something. Just wasting time doesn't cut it.

but rather you are a terrible reader of this sort of fiction.

Look, here's what bugs me about this. What is "this sort of fiction?" Are we talking about ecriture? About Literature? About speculative fiction? About monstrous, purposefully long works of fantasy? Is bloated worldbuilding a genre now?

If you want to claim that I am a poor reader of "Bloated Worldbuiding" fiction, which conforms to different norms than the rest of literature (and maybe all writing in general), then okay. But that's not much of a point.

Can't disagree more. Just even the one chapter where Simon is desperately crawling through the bowels of the Hayholt, and metaphorically the history of the land itself, traumatized by the sudden death of his mentor and unsure if he will ever see daylight again is haunting and beautifully written. Basically from Simon finding Josua still alive and Pryrates killing Morgenes #### starts happening at a rapid pace and it doesn't really let up much.

Interesting how these things can differ. I told all my friends that nothing happens for 400 pages - then they read it and agreed. I wonder what they'd think if I hadn't prepped them.

Look, here's what bugs me about this. What is "this sort of fiction?" Are we talking about ecriture? About Literature? About speculative fiction? About monstrous, purposefully long works of fantasy? Is bloated worldbuilding a genre now?

I think that's a bit much. It's a style within a genre, and "bloated" really begs the question. There's a difference between "more than is necessary to tell the story in the most concise way possible" and "bloat."

I see Martin's work as a a leisurely stroll through his world. There's a very basic plot but frankly I don't much care who wins at the end, and if anything is true in this world, it's the plain fact that it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference who wins. The plot carries along but what I'm really doing is going on safari in Westeros and looking at the animals.

There's a difference between "more than is necessary to tell the story in the most concise way possible" and "bloat."

5,000 pages and no end in sight. That isn't bloat?

I follow the author's queues. The author is the one who tells me that the war between the Lannisters and the Starks doesn't matter. I do not tie all literary value to advancing a narrative. However, if you're writing, it has to do something. Just wasting time doesn't cut it.

No, you specifically are not following the author's queues to the point where you ascribe no meaning to the main plot of the entire first three novels which is just silly. This series is epic fantasy on a scale that when described just inspired incredulity from snapper. It is thousands and thousands of pages that contain many separate narrative arcs that are densely interconnected and woven together into an umbrella narrative as well that will come into focus (hopefully) in the final novels. It is purposely crafted in a manner that specifically eschews the kind of narrative structure you are saying it should have in favor of an expansive scope, depth, complexity and realism of the alternate reality Martin is creating. Things like the war of the five kings and Arya's journey from King's Landing to Braavos have their own narrative arc that should be judged on their own merit as well as how well they advance the main plot and how well they contribute to the readers understanding of the world it all takes place in, this last part clearly being Martin's main concern and strength a writer. This should have been pretty obvious fairly soon into the first novel and I have no idea how it continues to escape you after having read all the books and into this point in the convo where it has been pointed out repeatedly by myself and others.
To continue one of my earlier metaphors it's like you sat down to eat and wanted chicken but were served a gigantic serving of seafood. For some reason you ate it all and all the servings put on the table after while being unable to enjoy it for what it is because you think it should be chicken to the point that you hold it against the chef for not choosing your preferred meat, think he just doesn't know what he is doing and people that enjoy it must simply be unaware of all the wonderful chicken dishes the world has to offer. When told it's not chicken, isn't supposed to be so and many consider that a good thing the entire concept seems to make no sense to you.

5,000 pages and no end in sight. That isn't bloat?

Martin could write content about this world forever and if the quality remained the same, I'd never get tired of it. This could be a thirty volume set of encyclopedia-sized hardcovers.

I'm enjoying almost every little piece of the world. Why am I in such a rush for it to end?

Gaaah. That should be cues. Sorry. Allergies leave my head fuzzy.

Things like the war of the five kings and Arya's journey from King's Landing to Braavos have their own narrative arc that should be judged on their own merit as well as how well they advance the main plot and how well they contribute to the readers understanding of the world it all takes place in, this last part clearly being Martin's main concern and strength a writer.

Like, I'm fine with this concept, but this isn't what happens in the books. There isn't a narrative arc for Arya's trip from King's Landing to Braavos.

To continue one of my earlier metaphors it's like you sat down to eat and wanted chicken but were served a gigantic serving of seafood. For some reason you ate it all and all the servings put on the table after while being unable to enjoy it for what it is because you think it should be chicken to the point that you hold it against the chef for not choosing your preferred meat, think he just doesn't know what he is doing and people that enjoy it must simply be unaware of all the wonderful chicken dishes the world has to offer. When told it's not chicken, isn't supposed to be so and many consider that a good thing the entire concept seems to make no sense to you.

See, from my point of view, it's like I sat down, ordered chicken, the waiter put something down on my plate, said it was chicken, and then I pointed out it was fish and this makes you mad.



I regret going into detail on why I thought the books had a lot of bloat. Lesson learned there. I get that you really liked these books, and I don't want to insult you any further (because you seem to be taking it personally). I'm just going to drop it. I think that the current trend of never-ending storybloat in speculative fiction is a bad one. Martin started off the series trying to skew cliches, but he's succumbed to gravity.

See, from my point of view, it's like I sat down, ordered chicken, the waiter put something down on my plate, said it was chicken, and then I pointed out it was fish and this makes you mad.

Well, you also insulted the taste of the guy at the next table who loves fish. You did it a few times, in fact.

See, from my point of view, it's like I sat down, ordered chicken, the waiter put something down on my plate, said it was chicken, and then I pointed out it was fish and this makes you mad.

Sigh. This is a huge, sprawling, extended series of epic fantasy novels... no, claiming you went into it expecting a concise structure and tight narrative is nothing resembling reasonable and bashing it and those who appreciate it because you somehow still(!!!) refuse to consider that going about presenting a story in any other way may not be inherently incorrect is even more unreasonable.

(because you seem to be taking it personally)

The problem with saying this is...

You also need to read better quality speculative fiction.

See, I don't blame him for taking it personally, seeing as how you start off by addressing him personally.

Interesting direction the thread has taken, especially from my myopic point of view as I'm in the middle of several of these books. I just finished The City and The City and thought it was okay although the climax was a series of copouts and the main character's suddenly becoming all-knowing and omnipotent is mostly what drives through to the conclusion. I had a similar reaction to the end of The Prestige (the movie), another major copout where the entire story was about how these guys were performing these crazy real-life tricks that looked like magic, and their battle with each other was to try and figure out the others' ingenious but fundamentally explainable tricks. The whole message of the world was that there was no magic, it was all a question of dedication to your craft. Then the reveal at the end was that one had out of the blue somehow bought something that was indeed magic (dressed up as impossible technology) that was therefore unexplainable and unsolvable, neatly wrapping the whole thing up. You've got to play by the rules you've established the whole way through. The whole conceit of The City and The City was that no one really knows anything that's going on. Therefore the characters have to learn things and puzzle them out - they can't just start making guesses that all turn out to be right.

The idea was interesting though. I was just tricked into buying Perdido Street by the same bookseller who got me into The City and The City, so I'll be going for another go-round.

I'm about 300 pages into the first novel of the Baroque Cycle and so far am pretty sure the book could start now and the story would be completely unaffected, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what the story is so far. It has gotten much more interesting in the last 30 pages or so so maybe we're getting going. I do in general love Neal Stephenson - I just reread Snowcrash for the first since I initially read it 15 or so years ago (ouch). Now that is a fantastic, concise, brilliant, interesting story with a relevant conclusion that makes sense.

I haven't read Book 5 of Game of Thrones (screw it, that's what the series is called now) yet. There are some storylines I'm very interested to follow and others I don't care about at all. Jamie Lannister is a great character, but that whole stretch where he was endlessly wandering around the countryside was a bit much. Arya, I have no idea where any of that's leading and I'm not particularly drawn to find out. A lot of the other stuff is great though. The world is sprawling, but definitely not as sprawling as the Wheel of Time books (Robert Jordan). I quit around book 12 or 13 of those. Jordan was still creating new storylines even at that point. He almost seemed helpless - you got the sense he knew he was never going to be able to finish the series both for health and artistic reasons, and was just spitballing. The first 5 or so were great though.

I'm a little annoyed and frustrated with the fantasy and sci-fi genre right now - I've read a lot of stuff lately on a lot of recommendations and haven't found anything particularly great. I'm taking note of what you guys have mentioned in this thread, but if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them!

I'm taking note of what you guys have mentioned in this thread, but if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Cool, a book thread. Since someone has asked for suggestions... In a few months there's this book called Wasteland Knight coming out. It'll be available via direct order from B & N and Amazon, and it'll be on the Kindle. Its a dystopian future setting with Western elements and giant robots. I got an advanced copy and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm a little annoyed and frustrated with the fantasy and sci-fi genre right now - I've read a lot of stuff lately on a lot of recommendations and haven't found anything particularly great. I'm taking note of what you guys have mentioned in this thread, but if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them!

I have really enjoyed C.S. Friedman. She has a couple trilogies that are genuine trilogies. They have a bit of the bloat that people are talking about here, but each book has a plot and most of the things that happen are indeed relevant to that plot. And the larger plot of the trilogy is usually advanced by the sub-plots of each book. Her world-building is pretty good and her explanation for magic is solid. In that magic imposes real costs, and it's clear why they can't just swoop in and fix everything.

She also has some science fiction that is a little bit Iain Banks, a little bit cyberpunk, and a little bit Asimov. I actually think This Alien Shore (a standalone novel!) is the best non-serious-literature book I've read in the past couple years.

I've recommended it around here before, but Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy is really good. Again, interesting magic worldbuilding. And unlike the Martins, Jordans, etc. of the world, Sanderson knows how to wrap things up. I think that's why he got tapped to finish up the Wheel of Time series, actually (which he's doing a pretty good job of).

And in the slightly more horror genre, I can't speak highly enough of Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series. Vampires, magic, the grimy streets of Moscow - it's a solid combination. I've recommended them to lots of people and about 2/3 love it as much as me, while the other 1/3 thinks it's terrible. Make of that what you will.

I'll make my recommendation for the day Vurt by Jeff Noon. Highly stylistic, unique and surreal, full of drugs, incest and aliens. Something for everyone.

This series is epic fantasy on a scale that when described just inspired incredulity from snapper. It is thousands and thousands of pages that contain many separate narrative arcs that are densely interconnected and woven together into an umbrella narrative as well that will come into focus (hopefully) in the final novels. It is purposely crafted in a manner that specifically eschews the kind of narrative structure you are saying it should have in favor of an expansive scope, depth, complexity and realism of the alternate reality Martin is creating. Things like the war of the five kings and Arya's journey from King's Landing to Braavos have their own narrative arc that should be judged on their own merit as well as how well they advance the main plot and how well they contribute to the readers understanding of the world it all takes place in, this last part clearly being Martin's main concern and strength a writer. This should have been pretty obvious fairly soon into the first novel and I have no idea how it continues to escape you after having read all the books and into this point in the convo where it has been pointed out repeatedly by myself and others.

I haven't read it, but IMHO, this just sounds like bad writing. Or maybe bad editing.

It's like writing a history on the Battle of the Bulge, and insisting on recounting the day-by-day movements of every battalion on both sides.

Tolkien created a truly massive world, with thousands of years of history, complete languages, etc., yet still managed to encapsulate it into three normal size books (about 1000 pages total). The trick is, he left a lot of the backstory out. I'm sure if everything Tolkien ever wrote about Middle Earth was in the series, it would be 5000 pages long.

It sounds like Martin is including all that stuff, and I have no desire to embark on a task like that. Given limited hours in the day, I can't imagine dedicating 5000-10,000 pages of reading time (about 100-200 hours for me) to a fantasy series, especially when other authors can give you the same thing in 30 hours.

Maybe my attention span is too short, but 5000 pages is more than the career output of many, many great authors.

Or maybe I just don't get fantasy fiction. I'll admit I never read it, or sci fi.

I'm about 300 pages into the first novel of the Baroque Cycle and so far am pretty sure the book could start now and the story would be completely unaffected, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what the story is so far. It has gotten much more interesting in the last 30 pages or so so maybe we're getting going. I do in general love Neal Stephenson - I just reread Snowcrash for the first since I initially read it 15 or so years ago (ouch). Now that is a fantastic, concise, brilliant, interesting story with a relevant conclusion that makes sense.

I think the Baroque Cycle is brilliant, but the first book for me was the most difficult to get through; after that it was pure joy.

I highly recommend Anathem for nerdy, talky sci-fi. His most recent, REAMDE, was a lot of fun but sort of average.


I'm a little annoyed and frustrated with the fantasy and sci-fi genre right now - I've read a lot of stuff lately on a lot of recommendations and haven't found anything particularly great. I'm taking note of what you guys have mentioned in this thread, but if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Iain Banks' Culture novels are awesome, as is all the rest of his sci-fi work. I cannot recommend Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton highly enough. All three of those are massive space-opera authors, so if you're looking for smaller, quirkier things those aren't them.

especially when other authors can give you the same thing in 30 hours.

Well that's the thing, he's not really doing the same thing. (I mentioned Erikson's over 10,000 page series earlier. You can't really cut anything, but at the same time, you could cut everything... what he's doing depends on all those pages)

Anyways, Daniel Abraham's first series was great, and the books are only about 350 pages each.

Well that's the thing, he's not really doing the same thing. (I mentioned Erikson's over 10,000 page series earlier. You can't really cut anything, but at the same time, you could cut everything... what he's doing depends on all those pages)

I'm not sure what you mean?

He's creating an alternative world, describing it to you, filling in a history, and then creating a story arc with characters (who may or may not develop) that presumably advances to some sort of climax and conclusion. That can be done in far less than 1000 pages, much less 5000.

If you're saying someone needs 5000 or 10,000 pages to create a compelling alternative world, I'm just going to have to disagree.

That's not all one story line.

Technically, it is. It's frame narrative about a storytelling contest... which just happens to include a whole bunch of sub-stories being told at the aforementioned contest.

Cool, a book thread. Since someone has asked for suggestions... In a few months there's this book called Wasteland Knight coming out. It'll be available via direct order from B & N and Amazon, and it'll be on the Kindle. Its a dystopian future setting with Western elements and giant robots. I got an advanced copy and thoroughly enjoyed it.

One cool thing I only recently discovered -- there is a treasure chest of free classics available for kindle... can't speak to Barnes & Noble, but I grabbed about a dozen classics I never got around to.

I'm a little annoyed and frustrated with the fantasy and sci-fi genre right now

Which, see, is what happened with me about 30 years ago. Be careful. (It certainly wasn't because of Phil Dick's death, but rather that's the landmark event that preceded it chronologically. God knows, a few of my favorite sf/fantasy books ever have been written in the intervening decades -- see various Jonathan Carroll novels & Geoff Ryman's Was, just off the top of my head -- but in general what memory tells me was the then-nascent trend toward series after series, which I guess we now see manifest in stuff like Martin's endless minutiae & the fawning fandom* it's generated, started really turning me off. My perception is that things have gotten exponenentially worse since then.)



*Which probably sounds more acerbic than I intended, but what the hell, it's early. I mean, when it comes to PKD, I'm a fawning fan ... though at the same time I'm perfectly willing to admit that a decent chunk of his early novels are pretty poor. See also: Hammer, Vulcan's & Japed, Man Who.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is 300 pages. Lord of Light is around the same number.

I love Lord of Light, but it's not the ideal exemplar for how to properly pace a novel. The chapter with the rakshasas drags, and the concluding battle is terribly rushed.

I'm a little annoyed and frustrated with the fantasy and sci-fi genre right now - I've read a lot of stuff lately on a lot of recommendations and haven't found anything particularly great. I'm taking note of what you guys have mentioned in this thread, but if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them!

I'll second the recommendations for Iain Banks' Culture novels, they're great. Try starting with Player of Games.

For fantasy, Joe Abercrombie is really good. His First Law trilogy is a gleeful subversion of fantasy tropes, and just plain fun to read. He's got a gift for characters and writes some of the best action sequences in the business.

For fantasy with a philosophical bent, R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series is... well, it's a hot mess. He'll sometimes drift into pages of recursive philosophizing, and his female characters are iffy at best, but his world is fascinating and terrifying and utterly compelling. Be prepared for a universe with objective morality, alien rape monsters, and a prophet who's clearly a stand-in for Jesus, if Jesus was a Machiavellian philosopher-ninja. Somehow, it all works.

If you haven't already, read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The masterpiece of one of the greatest prose stylists of the last 40 years. Also, the man invented Pringles potato chips.

One cool thing I only recently discovered -- there is a treasure chest of free classics available for kindle... can't speak to Barnes & Noble, but I grabbed about a dozen classics I never got around to.

Agree, it's great. I've read (in some cases re-read) the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, tons of Austen, Dorian Gray, the entire Quatermain canon (although I had to download some of that from Gutenberg), and quite a few others.

What other free classics are worth reading? I'm not sure I'd be too into Dickens. I'm not sure if I should try Wodehouse.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and speaking of long novels/series, I also read all of the Three Musketeers series for free on the Kindle, plus The Count of Monte Cristo.

Tolkien created a truly massive world, with thousands of years of history, complete languages, etc., yet still managed to encapsulate it into three normal size books (about 1000 pages total).

Sure, as long as you don't count "The Hobbit". Or "The Silmarillion". Or "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil". Or "Unfinished Tales". Or "The Book of Lost Tales". Or "The Children of Húrin".

And of course, part of the reason that Tolkien was able to do it even that efficiently is that he created a world that doesn't include any real moral ambiguity, and all of the complications that result from it. It's just a stand-up fight between Good and Evil, a list of things that happened. He has so much room for world-building in part because he never bothers to build his characters.

Which is fine. But it's not really a fair comparison to a world like Martin's, where bad characters have the ability to do good things, and vice versa.

Sure, as long as you don't count "The Hobbit". Or "The Silmarillion". Or "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil". Or "Unfinished Tales". Or "The Book of Lost Tales". Or "The Children of Húrin".

With the exception of the Hobbit, those others weren't meant to be published, which was my whole point. An author may create 5,000 pages of a fantasy world, but a good writer condenses into the essential 1000 for actual publication.

And of course, part of the reason that Tolkien was able to do it even that efficiently is that he created a world that doesn't include any real moral ambiguity, and all of the complications that result from it. It's just a stand-up fight between Good and Evil, a list of things that happened. He has so much room for world-building in part because he never bothers to build his characters.

Which is fine. But it's not really a fair comparison to a world like Martin's, where bad characters have the ability to do good things, and vice versa.

Yeah, I guess that's a feature, not a bug for me. I can't really be bothered with the morality or character development of fictional characters. That's why I don't generally read novels. If I want moral ambiguity, I'll read history.

If you're saying someone needs 5000 or 10,000 pages to create a compelling alternative world, I'm just going to have to disagree.

I'm not saying that - you can absolutely write great novels (and fantasy) in 300 pages. That's just now what Martin (and others) are trying to do. And I think that kind of diversity helps the genre (although it leans far too much towards those 10,000 page epics. However, I think you'd really lose something if you eliminated them)

What other free classics are worth reading?

Do they have Les Misérables? If you like War & Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo, you'd love Les Misérables. And if you like that and Jane Austen, then at least try Great Expectations.

I have to love a thread where Ben Marcus gets an offhand mention.

WRT plot, following on some of zonk's and snapper's comments: I crave plots, though they don't necessarily have to be breakneck plots full of action. For a good plot, you need to have a character who wants something that's hard to get; ideally, some other character should want something that conflicts with the first character's desires. (The detective wants to solve a baffling mystery, the murderer wants to escape detection.) Action and incident are secondary. "The Beast in the Jungle" is a great story because the protagonist wants something (he wants to be special) and the other main character just wants him to be his unspecial self. Nothing happens in the story, but that's the point, because that's what one character fears and the other welcomes.

For me, plots break down when characters are just milling around being characters, rather than wanting things. In the seventh Harry Potter book (to take a well-known example), Harry et al. take a couple hundred pages out to wander around England waiting for something to happen. They should have desires at this point, because there are Horcruxes or Hallows or some damn thing to collect, but they just succumb to depression, I guess, and they stop functioning. This is perhaps realistic in an odd way (I've had lots of months like that in real life), but a story it does not make.

I am ignorant of Martin, but they few times I've picked up one of his books, I trip on a paragraph where somebody's explaining something to somebody else. I've possibly just been unlucky, but it doesn't make me want to read more. As snapper points out, the beauty of The Lord of the Rings is that 99% of the world doesn't get explained to you. (Miéville's fiction works or doesn't, for me, in proportion to how much exposition he avoids or supplies.)

But tastes vary; I don't think I've described a rule here, but simply my own tastes.

I'm not saying that - you can absolutely write great novels (and fantasy) in 300 pages. That's just now what Martin (and others) are trying to do. And I think that kind of diversity helps the genre (although it leans far too much towards those 10,000 page epics. However, I think you'd really lose something if you eliminated them)

I guess I just don't get it and will remain ignorant of its charms. To be fair, I may be missing something awesome.

I'm not sure if I should try Wodehouse.

From that litany of titles you recite, I'd say yes. Wodehouse's stories resemble Sherlock Holmes combined with adventure stories you name there--with Wodehouse's distinctive comic style. And with Wodehouse, the Holy Grail is likely to be an ugly silver cow creamer that has to be stolen in the dead of night at a posh country estate.

Start with the best of the Wooster/Jeeves. They are all first-person narration (one exception) and Bertie is a memorable character and very likable. The Code of the Wooster, Joy in the Morning (some American editions have it as Jeeves in the Morning), and Right Ho, Jeeves are perfect. If you don't like any one of these, then you won't care for Wodehouse, and it will only take you about an hour to determine that.

Right Ho, Jeeves is online, as are a lot of other Wodehouse stuff. Here, for instance:

Right Ho, Jeeves

Regarding Martin, I tend more to tshipman's view. I really liked the first few books, but the latest one just left me frustrated. And whether you like that or not is personal preference. What I do object to is the notion that by criticizing Martin for bloat means that I don't understand the specific rules of the genre and thus am missing the point. If, for instance, I said that it takes too long for characters to get from one place to another in Martin's world, why don't they use trains or cars instead of horses, then it could be said that my criticism is invalid because I don't understand the rules of the world that Martin has created. But to feel this is going on for too long with too many characters, etc. is a valid criticism. I grew up reading fantasy, I read a lot of it now, to imply I don't understand the genre in some way is rather insulting.

Do they have Les Misérables? If you like War & Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo, you'd love Les Misérables. And if you like that and Jane Austen, then at least try Great Expectations.

I did read Les Miserables, yes. It was very good. I read Great Expectations in high school, but I guess that was 25 years ago now. Crap, I'm old. I could re-read it now.

I think the Baroque Cycle is brilliant, but the first book for me was the most difficult to get through; after that it was pure joy.

I highly recommend Anathem for nerdy, talky sci-fi. His most recent, REAMDE, was a lot of fun but sort of average.

My experience is pretty much exactly this (though I haven't read REAMDE). The Baroque Cycle is one of my favourite series, but it took me a couple years to get into. I attempted to start it, and got bogged down in the early going, and didn't pick it up again for 3-4 years. But in the 2nd attempt I muscled my way through the beginning and fell in love.

Anathem was lots of fun too.

As for Martin and plot vs. world-building...
I should note that I'm the "you" tshipman's original comment was directed at. I'm not sure if I'd say I took the criticism personally, but as he noted we have a difference in opinion on those books that had already been covered to death elsewhere so I mostly took it as a one-off, inside joke call-back to those discussions.

My feelings are probably closest to that of CrosbyBird in #136. I'm in no great hurry to reach the conclusion of the series. As far as I'm concerned Martin can take as long as he wants (in terms of book length...unfortunately he only has so many writing years left so there is a time limit in that sense). Books 4 and 5 aren't anywhere as enjoyable as Book 3, but I'm more than content to just continue being a fly on the wall in this world he's creating. In that sense I'm a bit of a lost cause.

I did read Les Miserables, yes. It was very good. I read Great Expectations in high school, but I guess that was 25 years ago now. Crap, I'm old. I could re-read it now.

I think Dickens is very accessible, and if its plot movement - I do think he's good at that... I'd suggest something like Bleak House for a bit more meat, but the usual Dickens works (Tale of Two Cites, David Copperfield) are still worth reading.

While not a contemporary, I've lately been reading Joseph Conrad -- grabbed Victory and Nostromo, with the latter being a favorite I read ~20 years ago and decided to reread. Neither are quite as symbolically dense as say, Heart of Darkness -- which isn't to say they aren't as good, just that the plots and the characters are richer IMO. I'd highly recommend Nostromo...

What other free classics are worth reading?

A lot of Roman history is surprisingly fun. Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars" does a great job of melding significant history with jaw-dropping sleaze - exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a guy who also wrote a (now sadly lost) work called "Lives of Famous Whores".

If you like Dumas, you may also want to think about delving further into his back catalog, or checking out another writer of swashbucklers like Rafael Sabatini.

The thing that ticked me off about A Dance with Dragons is the way Martin seems to need someone to explain the difference between the words "wrath" and "wroth" to him.

P.G. Wodehouse and Rafael Sabatini both come with my highest recommendations. For something in between the two of them, try Conan Doyle's "Brigadier Gerard" stories.

P.G. Wodehouse and Rafael Sabatini both come with my highest recommendations. For something in between the two of them, try Conan Doyle's "Brigadier Gerard" stories.

I suppose as a cousin to Sabatini -- I also just grabbed Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Mad King; most of his stuff is available free on Amazon.

Looks like I'll need to bookmark this thread. Thanks everyone.

Now please continue the Martin debate...

The thing that ticked me off about A Dance with Dragons is the way Martin seems to need someone to explain the difference between the words "wrath" and "wroth" to him.

While we're listing things about ADwD that ticked us off, the complete disintegration of Daenerys as an effective character is certainly one of them. We've had this story arc with her before; our introduction to the character was basically "Crap, my life sucks, I am a victim of other people, there is nothing I can do about it, woe is me." I don't see the need for a repeat.

Also, not to be a prude, but Martin's obsession with the sex life of a hot teenage girl who is still under the age of consent in 21 states (as of the end of ADwD) is ####### creepy.

A lot of Roman history is surprisingly fun.

Sallust's "Jugurthine War" is a nice account of a story that would make for a friggin' awesome action fantasy novel.

When I think of cousins of Sabatini, I think of Jeffery Farnol and, oh, who's the guy who wrote all the French Revolution stuff... Stanley Weyman. George Macdonald Fraser was influenced by these guys, although his writing is kind of different. (Still worthwhile, though: the Flashman series is one of my favourites ever.) If they have a modern heir, it's probably Arturo Perez-Reverte, most of whose stuff I quite like, especially The Club Dumas, which is totally awesome.

Some spoilers to Game of Thrones/Song of Fire and Ice:

I think tshipman's position is pretty extreme, especially regarding Ned and Robb Stark as redundant characters. Have to disagree on that. Red Wedding is easily the most jarring scene I have ever read in fiction. Also, Arya is perhaps my favorite character.

That said, there is quite a bit of bloat. Specifically, I think Daenarys should be interacting with more characters from Westeros by now.

Tolkien created a truly massive world, with thousands of years of history, complete languages, etc., yet still managed to encapsulate it into three normal size books (about 1000 pages total). The trick is, he left a lot of the backstory out. I'm sure if everything Tolkien ever wrote about Middle Earth was in the series, it would be 5000 pages long.

Even with that I felt like Return of the King was 50 pages too long.

I think Frank Herbert did the greatest job of creating a vast, rich universe and he doesn't spoonfeed you anything.

The thing that ticked me off about A Dance with Dragons is the way Martin seems to need someone to explain the difference between the words "wrath" and "wroth" to him.

That "someone" is called an editor. I'd put my name in for the job, having actually been trained to edit books (though I've only ever been employed editing copy for newspapers &, now, a website), but I have a feeling I wouldn't get the gig. Too, I've never edited fiction, never having touched my old employer's Whitewater coverage back in the day, & for that matter odds are I would shoot myself &/or him in short order.

From most of what's been said here about what he's produced the last several years, it would appear that one of my cats could probably do about as good a job as whatever possible illiterate sycophant now has the job.

Even with that I felt like Return of the King was 50 pages too long.

And the movie was 30 min too long.

Both should have ended very soon after the ring was destroyed. Dennouements need to be short.

From most of what's been said here about what he's produced the last several years, it would appear that one of my cats could probably do about as good a job as whatever possible illiterate sycophant now has the job.

Martin seems to have the same editor that late-career Heinlein and Jordan had, which is to say, none of significance.

And you know, why the #### not? If people will buy whatever he craps out, what is there to gain by cutting anything? All you're doing is shortening the lifespan of your cash cow, antagonizing your superstar author, delaying the release of the next book, and having to pay for someone who can actually edit rather than check grammar and spelling. Just jack the price of the book up another $5 and print all 1,200 pages he turns in.

Well, there isn't much editing left in publishing these days. They don't have the time or the money for it. So one thing that happens is that well-known authors get a lot of license to meander around in their stories, with nobody to tell them not to. Not just Martin: Stephen King, Neal Stephenson, and J.K. Rowling have all come out with some famously sprawling stuff recently that on the one hand I've enjoyed but on the other hand seems like it could stand some discipline.

The book I'm writing is going to be self-published, because I am becoming more and more convinced that that's the way to go these days, but I know I'm going to need some editing, and while I know some people who can do that for me, some of it's going to have to come from me too. I'll be damned if anything's going to come out with my name on it that isn't as good as I can possibly get it to be.

Both should have ended very soon after the ring was destroyed. Denouements need to be short

In RotK, I do like the return journey to the Shire, which fits with Bilbo's "There and Back Again" theme, and the nicely evocative "seeking of the havens" by the various Ringbearers. It's a sense of cycle and completion. What I can do without in RotK is all the King Elessar coming into his throne stuff, which is unbearably stilted (I don't know if the words "forsooth" and "verily" are used, but it's that kind of nonsense). And I could do without the Scouring of the Shire, which I continue to think is a facile political allegory, though Tolkien, I know, insisted over and over and over that it was no such thing. (Authors can perhaps protest too much, and they're often unable to see that their intentions don't determine the meaning of a work once it's published.)

But yes, denouements and returns home should be brisk. The Wizard of Oz is that way, and The Phantom Tollbooth, and for that matter (RIP) Where the Wild Things Are. Usually the whole point of a fictional journey to a wonderful land is that home isn't nearly as interesting to write about, even if there's no place like it.

Edit: And yes, the film of RotK is a real bladder-buster.

Arturo Perez-Reverte, most of whose stuff I quite like, especially The Club Dumas, which is totally awesome.

If you like that, you'd probably also like Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum".

Well, there isn't much editing left in publishing these days. They don't have the time or the money for it.

That's what I figured. Good thing I went into newspapers instead (mainly because there were a whole lot more newspapers than books coming out of my home state, Arkansas, back then -- not that I'd harbored any intentions of moving back there, but any plans I might've had [very likely close to none; I don't believe in ambition] were waylaid by a family situation that Faulkner would've found too far-fetchedly doom-laden to countenance).

Oops ...

But yes, denouements and returns home should be brisk. The Wizard of Oz is that way, and The Phantom Tollbooth, and for that matter (RIP) Where the Wild Things Are. Usually the whole point of a fictional journey to a wonderful land is that home isn't nearly as interesting to write about, even if there's no place like it.

I don't know - I like epilogues... I liked Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road, a post-apocalyptic novel about a search for a lost library of sorts - and my interest was rather piqued by the post-mortem odds and ends... if he had given it another 50 pages, I don't think I'd have stopped reading or otherwise not enjoyed the book as much.

Sure, as long as you don't count "The Hobbit". Or "The Silmarillion". Or "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil". Or "Unfinished Tales". Or "The Book of Lost Tales". Or "The Children of Húrin".

With the exception of the Hobbit, those others weren't meant to be published, which was my whole point. An author may create 5,000 pages of a fantasy world, but a good writer condenses into the essential 1000 for actual publication.

Note that these aren't comparable in any case. Those are all backstory. With Martin (or Robert Jordan) all the wordiness is about the current story, the current world, from many different perspectives. It would be as if LOTR had <strike>sections</strike>books on every battle of the war of the ring, including the siege of the Lonely Mountain and the fighting in Mirkwood and Lothlorien; about the city politics in Minas Tirith before Aragorn arrived; about diplomatic efforts between Gondor and Umbar; about the Shire before the Hobbits returned; about the Haradrim preparing for war; about Rivendell after the Fellowship left; etc. We know about those things because they were mentioned in the trilogy -- but Tolkien let things happen off-screen, so to speak. Jordan and Martin were/are constitutionally incapable of that. If it happened, it had to be shown -- and usually from the perspective of several different characters.

All three authors engaged in "world building," but only two of them are so enamored of the worlds that they built that they felt the need to show every inch of it, forcing characters to spread out into distant places for the sole purpose of giving the author an opportunity to talk about those places. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy Martin and Jordan, too. But they're doing something very different than Tolkien.


EDIT: I should note that I have not yet read Book 5 of Martin. Not that I think it would change my views in any way.

But yes, denouements and returns home should be brisk. The Wizard of Oz is that way, and The Phantom Tollbooth, and for that matter (RIP) Where the Wild Things Are. Usually the whole point of a fictional journey to a wonderful land is that home isn't nearly as interesting to write about, even if there's no place like it.

Well, sheesh, why don't you just suggest that Tolkien write, "And they all lived happily ever after"?

But yes, denouements and returns home should be brisk. The Wizard of Oz is that way

You are aware Baum wrote 14 Oz books, right? (Of course, all rather short, but even so.)


I liked Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road, a post-apocalyptic novel about a search for a lost library of sorts

Which to my immense surprise managed to travel through my post-apocalyptic hometown! It was incredible to see that. I've been meaning to write him and ask how it ended up in his book.

One cool thing I only recently discovered -- there is a treasure chest of free classics available for kindle... can't speak to Barnes & Noble, but I grabbed about a dozen classics I never got around to.

Another great source for free classics is the Mobileread e-book list. It can be a bit awkward to navigate, but there's a lot of great stuff that's generally formatted with a lot of care.

I live for public domain books. Apologies for the information dump.

I've really enjoyed plowing through the works of Rafael Sabatini, most famous for Scaramouche and Captain Blood (both of which were made into pretty good movies, btw). I've really liked a lot of Robert Louis Stevenson's adult books -- Master of Ballantrae, The Weir of Hermiston, and his great travelogue Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes. I had no idea how good he is. Henry Rider Haggard writes ripping yarns. If you've read all of the Aubrey-Maturin books and all of the Hornblower books, you should probably read Frederick Marryat's naval books -- he was an actual captain in the Napoleonic wars and Forester and O'Brien mine his work a lot. I like George McCutcheon's Graustark books and Anthony Hope's Ruritanian novels. I like William Dean Howells a lot more than I thought I would -- Indian Summer is a fine and only somewhat stiff rom-com. There's a lot of fun, trashy Gothic and proto-Gothic stuff out there -- The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Eliza Parsons, Ann Radcliffe if she's not too slow for you, James Hogg's Private Confessions.... This of course leads you to the Bronte sisters. I like William Harrison Ainsworth, who goes from gothic-ish historical romances (Auriol, The Lancashire Witches) to straight historical fiction (Boscobel) and generally keeps up a better pace than most 19th century writers. I like Sabine Baring-Gould's funny little antiquarian books about werewolves and hermits and such. There is some early Willa Cather in the public domain, and I think she's the most underrated major American author. There's a great deal of John Buchan and G.K. Chesterton in the public domain, and there both really fun. Wilkie Collins! Can't forget him, especially his two great works (Moonstone and The Woman in White). I really liked Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, even though it is (in Mrs. McGunigle's words) "a novel for old women". There are lots of minor adventure classics available -- Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, Talbot Mundy's stuff, The Lost Continent by C.J. Hyne, the aforementioned Haggard and Buchan's Hannay books, Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel books, John Meade Falkner's Moonfleet. In a completely different vein, George Eliot really is as good as her fanatics think she is. Read the very short Silas Marner if you're not sure. I like Doyle's non-Holmes work, especially his Brigadier Gerard stuff, the Polestar collection, and his historical novels. There are several early fantasy writers that should probably be read by people interested in the genre's past -- William Morris, George Macdonald, Andrew Lang's fairy books, Lord Dunsany, The Worm Ourobos by Eric Rucker Eddison. Old Peter's Russian Tales by Arthur Ransome is a children's classic. Throwing out a few more names -- Rebecca West The Return of the Soldier, A.M. and C.M. Williamson's driving novels, Israel Zangwill's grotesques. There are endless slow-but-decent historical romances in the public domain, by people like Edwad Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Reade, Stanley Weyman, Percy Westerman, Robert Chambers, and Marjorie Bowen.

Another worthy set is the full corpus of Anton Chekhov's short stories, in the Constance Garnett translation. He really is the master of the form. This gets to one issue with the free classics, that of translation. The Constance Garnett translations of Chekhov and Turgenev are still the standards 100 years later, but Garnett's and other freely available translations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are generally quite poor when compared with the recent ones by Pevear and Volokhonsky and a couple of others. I think that they are almost all abridged, and really miss a lot of what's going on in the books and don't capture the two authors' greatness and strangeness. There was a lot of flattening that went on in 19th and early 20th century translation, and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky especially suffer from it.

There are some authors who are easily Englished and who don't lose much in out of copyright translations -- Verne, Dumas, and Zola spring to mind, as well as a lot of lesser writers of historical romances like Eugene Sue and Mor Jokai. You can also dig up classic translations that have been superseded but not replaced -- Pope's Homer, for instance.

Project Gutenberg has Christy Mahewson's Pitching in a Pinch, which is essential, and John Montgomery Ward's Base-Ball, which isn't. Also Henry Chadwick's Spalding Guide for 1895 (only the plain text version is legibly formatted) and a Zane Gray baseball novel I haven't read.

A more recent recommendation -- the great speculative short story writer Kelly Link has her first two collections available as free downloads under a Creative Commons license.

All three authors engaged in "world building," but only two of them are so enamored of the worlds that they built that they felt the need to show every inch of it, forcing characters to spread out into distant places for the sole purpose of giving the author an opportunity to talk about those places. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy Martin and Jordan, too. But they're doing something very different than Tolkien.

I've had bad luck with this lately so I'll start with a disclaimer: this is not intended to dispute the point you're making here (which I mostly agree with), but rather is simply using your analysis as a spring-board.

The one place where Martin does allow off-screen (or at least obscured) action is the past. You get the sense that pretty important stuff happened at Summerhall and is somehow connected to Rheagar, prophecy and Jon Snow's parentage. Not really sure if we'll ever get straight-forward answers on any of that, but I think if the treatment of Summerhall and the Tournament at Harrenhal are any indication it wouldn't hurt Martin to have a bit more stuff happen off-screen. In the same way Stannis and Dorne were almost more interesting before we got a first-hand view of what was going on there.

Also, regarding McDevitt, I've read a lot of him but I'm still not really sure if a.) I like him and/or b.) if he's any good.

You are aware Baum wrote 14 Oz books, right?

Sure, but a sequel (or a series) is very different from the denouement of a single book. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy clicks together the heels of the Silver Shoes, she's back with Auntie Em that same page, and then the final chapter of the book is two paragraphs long. Awesome, because we've established that there's nothing in Kansas worth writing about.

The Oz books that follow are very uneven, in ways that illustrate my point about plots and characters who desire things. When Baum kept desire and quests and seeking for things front and center, he wrote great stories (The Marvelous Land of Oz is even better than The Wonderful Wizard, IMO). He wrote much weaker books when he saw them as galleries of our favorite characters re-assembled to do nothing in particular (The Road to Oz).

DMN's joke in #181 does highlight why the end of The Lord of the Rings is successful despite its protraction. The problem is that Frodo can't live happily ever after. For reasons blessedly unexplained in the main text, having had the Ring at all makes him (and Bilbo too) immortal in a Struldbrug kind of way, and necessitates them leaving for a mysterious faraway place. I like that ending a lot: it avoids having the epic fantasy end the way a World Series does, with a group hug and champagne shower.

REAMDE, was a lot of fun but sort of average.

REAMDE was great until the last 50 pages.

Fernigal McGunnigle has listed a whole lot of good stuff there. One thing I want to add: Arthur Ransome is better known for his "Swallows and Amazons" series, which... let me put it this way.

I didn't read the Narnia books or the Anne of Green Gables books or the Little House books until I was a grownup. And then by the time I did, it was too late; I just couldn't get into them the way I might have been able to when I was a kid.

Similarly, I read the Swallows and Amazons books for the first time in my mid-thirties. And I loved them immediately; reread them I don't know how many times. I don't know why nobody ever told me about them before that.

If you like horror, M.R. James has some story collections in the public domain, little bites of nicely restrained supernatural horror that are genuinely creepy at times. Lafcadio Hearn's collections of supernatural Japanese stories are less restrained, but quite a lot of fun.

Actually, BDC, Tolkien was very clear that they don't become immortal. Even upon traveling to the Undying Lands, they retain the Gift of Men. The Ring preserved them, but with its destruction, they're going to age normally again.



Also, I agree with Greg Pope above about bookmarking this page.

The Oz books that follow are very uneven, in ways that illustrate my point about plots and characters who desire things. When Baum kept desire and quests and seeking for things front and center, he wrote great stories (The Marvelous Land of Oz is even better than The Wonderful Wizard, IMO). He wrote much weaker books when he saw them as galleries of our favorite characters re-assembled to do nothing in particular (The Road to Oz).

Man, is that ever the truth. The Oz books really degenerate into travelogues composed of weird stuff children sent in. But then (right around Patchwork Girl of Oz) Baum pulls it together again.

Well, sheesh, why don't you just suggest that Tolkien write, "And they all lived happily ever after"?

Well, isn't that what he did? Sam had seen Frodo off, returned home, picks up his kid/baby and says, "Well, I'm back."

Martin seems to have the same editor that late-career Heinlein and Jordan had, which is to say, none of significance.

You know those "unedited" versions of Stranger in a Strange Land and The Stand that came out after the authors had apparently transcended the need for editing? How long until that happens for A Game of Thrones?

For some out-there SF in the vein of Arthur C. Clarke, I'm digging Stephen Baxter, and I was overjoyed with just how good Blish's 'Cities in Flight' turned out to be. Another vote for 'The City and The City', too, though I felt that occasionally the narrator was prodding me to make sure I understood the various plot points. (I've made some of these recommendations before, so apologies for redundancy.)

There's also some great SF being written in comics. Jonathan Hickman's 'Pax Romana' is a good place to start, and Warren Ellis' work is dripping in imaginative SF work. For a quick hit, try 'Orbiter' and 'Ministry of Space', but there's plenty of good, solid SF scattered through 'Transmetropolitan'. Which is too much fun not to read at least once in your lifetime.

You know those "unedited" versions of Stranger in a Strange Land and The Stand that came out after the authors had apparently transcended the need for editing? How long until that happens for A Game of Thrones?

I thought the unabridged version of The Stand was much better than the originally published version. I thought the longer version also gave the characters a bit more life and depth; I'll still stand by my critique that King uses characters more as props than people, but a few of them in The Stand do stand out a bit.

Tolkien was very clear that they don't become immortal

I admit to confusion about many a backstory. But perhaps this point highlights the difference between an evocative text and an explanatory backstory. Just in the main text of the books, it's not clear why Bilbo, who must be eleventy-twelveteen by this point, isn't dying. Except that he's had the Ring for so long that he just doesn't. That's nicely mysterious. It's like the problem of who the hell Gandalf is. Is he an elf, or a bound-servant of the Elder Valar, or the second baseman for the House of David? Who knows or cares. He is a weird old guy and he appears to have been bogarting an elf-ring all along. I like that kind of touch and I am glad (when reading) not to know more definitely.

Ooh, also meant to mention 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi (you bet I looked that name up). An interesting sort of Thai-flavored 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' Not sure it says a whole lot that's genuinely new, but an interesting setting and some fun characters make it a pleasant ride.

I thought the unabridged version of The Stand was much better than the originally published version.

I like it too, but it's a dangerous precedent.

Jonathan Hickman's 'Pax Romana' is a good place to start,

I need to get back to this, having sort of lost track of it during a really, really long publication delay. Unless I'm thinking of Red Mass for Mars. Or maybe both of them. (Picked up the first issue of Manhattan Projects this weekend during a half-off FBCD sale, but haven't read it yet. And a used copy of the Red Wing collection is wending its way to me even as I type.)

and Warren Ellis' work is dripping in imaginative SF work. For a quick hit, try 'Orbiter' and 'Ministry of Space', but there's plenty of good, solid SF scattered through 'Transmetropolitan'.

All of which I need to pick up at some point. I liked Planetary just fine, though (speaking of long delays) I've never quite gotten around to reading the final issue, as well as some 5-or-so-issue straight-sf mini for, IIRC, Avatar that isn't to be confused with all the other Avatar stuff of his that's often more superhero-oriented & didn't do much for me. (Not that I have anything against superhero comics per se. Nextwave was a skewed take, but I loved it.)

I wasn't a big fan of The Stand in the first place. It's very readable, of course, like most of King's stuff. But I don't like its antitechnology stance and I thought the ending was stupid. So whether or not I get to hang out with Trashcan Man for a hundred more pages is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned.