neonleon
Player Valuation: £35m
After watching the televisation of this gritty fantasy genre saga, it got me inspired to read the books.
They are most addictive, even after three books of reading his prose style ,very little is grating - with perhaps the exception of endless descriptions of insignia, shield emblems and banners unfurling in the wind.
Epic sweeping story, intrigue, skull duggery, violent. Wonderful characterisation - he treats his characters frequently like **** and it makes for interesting plot developments. Alarmingly unafraid of killing off major characters with a flick of his pen. Paints a bleak, savage and deadly world - a world of brutality, sudden death and raping and pillaging.
The writing is quite strong, he has a capacity to fashion characters you really care about.
If your only familiar with the genre via Tolkien I recommend this radical rethinking of the fantasy milieu - its stripped down, bare bones, violence, perversion, sex and back stabbing - a far cry from hobbits as you'll likely get (incidentally the best character is a dwarf - not like Tolkien's dwarves but like the real ones look like - who whores, drinks and plots his way through all the battles and political horse trading).
Its not crawling with monsters and magic like most of the weaker variants out there. The world feels believable and the deviations from our own world he introduces gradually enough that your suspension of disbelief isn't tested overtly. Mostly it just feels medieval; and I love the way the ice wall that keeps the savage 'wildings' out of the civilisation of westeros, is really just a blatant metaphor for them savages on the other side of hadrian's wall.
They are most addictive, even after three books of reading his prose style ,very little is grating - with perhaps the exception of endless descriptions of insignia, shield emblems and banners unfurling in the wind.
Epic sweeping story, intrigue, skull duggery, violent. Wonderful characterisation - he treats his characters frequently like **** and it makes for interesting plot developments. Alarmingly unafraid of killing off major characters with a flick of his pen. Paints a bleak, savage and deadly world - a world of brutality, sudden death and raping and pillaging.
The writing is quite strong, he has a capacity to fashion characters you really care about.
If your only familiar with the genre via Tolkien I recommend this radical rethinking of the fantasy milieu - its stripped down, bare bones, violence, perversion, sex and back stabbing - a far cry from hobbits as you'll likely get (incidentally the best character is a dwarf - not like Tolkien's dwarves but like the real ones look like - who whores, drinks and plots his way through all the battles and political horse trading).
Its not crawling with monsters and magic like most of the weaker variants out there. The world feels believable and the deviations from our own world he introduces gradually enough that your suspension of disbelief isn't tested overtly. Mostly it just feels medieval; and I love the way the ice wall that keeps the savage 'wildings' out of the civilisation of westeros, is really just a blatant metaphor for them savages on the other side of hadrian's wall.
