George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is, I think, a classic. I don’t think anyone who writes SFF for the next several decades is going to be able to do so without going through him, in some way. I want to get that statement out of the way now, because I’m going to spend the rest of the post explaining why, even though it’s very important, it’s basically a failure as a series. What’s most important about it, though, is that its failings are the very thing that make it improtant.
As someone who got bored of the TV adaptation a long time ago, I experienced a certain amount of schadenfreude when everyone hated the last season and then found House of the Dragon to be mid at best. But I didn’t get bored of it because it was, as one actor memorably put it, ‘just tits and dragons‘. It wasn’t even because of all the sexual violence, nor was it Aiden Gillen’s insane, possibly Irish, accent.
No, instead, it was something more profound to the series. The key problem was George RR Martin’s doomed attempt to break traditional narrative structures. This attempt failed, but it failed in a fascinating way. Narrative structures look the way they do for a good reason. Martin’s noble attempt to do something new with fantasy gave us a series of books which is not suspenseful, but badly plotted. It’s not a deep work that requires thought and interpretation, it’s simply that important information is hidden or just left out. It’s not an example of deep, detailed world-building and character development; it’s just that a great deal of irrelevant information is included and often expounded at great length. There are too many characters and we hear too much about them. This is why people were disappointed in the final season of the show and why it’s taking Martin so long to finish The Winds of Winter: it’s been badly written for so long that it’s probably unfixable.
But it was a big hit! Yes, it was well-cast and had an unusually big budget for a TV show, so that it didn’t look like anything else on TV. People tuned into a big, dramatic show with Sean Bean in it, and were quickly introduced to a world of political intrigue and ice zombies. What’s not to like? Then, there were some big plot twists: again, gripping stuff. The problem is that the twists broke the show. There was, essentially, a pretence that this wasn’t your normal fantasy fiction. We’re told that magic has gone out of the world but it plainly hasn’t. We’re told that just because you seem like destiny’s appointed hero doesn’t mean you’ll survive but then Daenaerys reveals that she can walk through fire and Jon Snow, made up as the crucified Christ, literally comes back from the dead. So, it turns out, it is your standard fantasy fiction. There’s magic. The hero lives. We just came to the same conclusions we always do by a circuitous route, much like the heroes of the show.
To further illustrate the narrative problems, let’s imagine that Lord of the Rings, the ur-fantasy novel, was structured like ASOIAF.
The book begins as we remember. Bilbo has his party, attended by Frodo and lots of characters who are introduced and discussed at some length, but never referred to again. Bilbo does his speech and vanishes, Gandalf explains the plot to Frodo, then Frodo waits years before setting off on his journey (note that this particular bit of strange and mostly unnecessary plot detail is in the original but was sensibly adapted out in Peter Jackson’s film version).
So far so good. But! Imagine if, additionally, from very nearly the start, we follow not just Frodo and friends, but everyone who eventually becomes a member of the Fellowship. We spend hundreds of pages with Boromir as he treks to Rivendell, alone. Ditto with Legolas and (separately) Gimli, who at least bring some buddies to talk to as they trudge along to they know not what, yet. There’s some talk of an evil ring, but what with spending so long with Gimli and co., it seems quite possible that the book is not about a magic evil ring at all, but in fact about mining rights or something. Because we spend so long with Boromir, we most likely hear about his relationship with his father and brother at this point. These random threads of character building will then be ignored for thousands of pages until we actually meet the rest of Boromir’s family, by which point we’ve forgotten who they are.
When Frodo eventually does start off on his quest, he and the Hobbits do all the already-excessive stuff with Tom Bombadil, then they get to Bree, but only after several hundred additional pages featuring Aragorn just killing time at the Prancing Pony, getting to know the horrible locals. Once the Hobbits get away from the barrow wight, they and Aragorn run around for a bit and Frodo gets stabbed by a Ringwraith. All of this is interspersed with more stuff about Legolas, Gimli and Boromir, slowly arriving at Rivendell and hanging out with elves, while also listening to even more songs than you remember.
We also, at this stage, read the whole narrative with Gandalf being held prisoner by Saruman, so that we know exactly why he didn’t show up in Bree as scheduled. We probably also follow Bilbo to Rivendell, where he sits around and gets old, much like us, the readers.
At last, the Hobbits, with Aragorn, also get to Rivendell. But! Instead of Frodo just waking up there and Gandalf telling him what’s been going on, everyone waits a week for Frodo to wake up and we read about the whole week. There are more songs.
After Rivendell, several secondary characters who we’ve spent hundred of pages with (i.e., the various elves and dwarves who accompanied Legolas and Gimli to Rivendell) vanish forever. Before we actually go on the quest, the story is interrupted by Frodo spending a great deal of time telling a heavyhanded story about his childhood which reveals something we already know about his character, because, as we know, real people are both willing and able to explain all of their character traits with trite just-so stories about their childhood.
At this point, we are one thousand pages into the novel. Inexplicably, a new major character is introduced: Galadriel, yet another elf queen, not obviously related to any of the other elves at this stage, is hanging out in her cool tree house. We spend 200 pages reading her thoughts about her cool tree house.
The Fellowship, though, are finally together and questing. This part of the book proceeds more or less as you remember, albeit interspersed with Galadriel looking in her cool mirror: the gang’s altogether! Quests are very stressful and feature setbacks! There’s a big battle! Gandalf dies!
After this, the eight remaining members of the Fellowship arrive in Lothlorien. Finally, the audience sort of understands why we spent two hundred pages with Galadriel: she’s very important! Okay, she’s gone now, forget about her.
Again, the narrative proceeds approximately as before: they get to the Falls, where Boromir falls, redeems himself, then falls again, only this time in a dead way. Thus ends the Fellowship of the Ring, both the book and the gang. You are 3,000 pages into this series of books.
The Two Towers begins! We start off following a previously unknown character, Theodred, who is the son of a king you’ve never heard of with the frustratingly similar name of Theoden. Also, the king is mad. After spending three hundred pages riding around with his cousin, Eomer, in a place you might vaguely recall if you spent a long time looking at the map glued to the inside cover, Theodred dies without at any point interacting with or even hearing about any of the main characters. His lingering death is described in lingering detail for fifty pages. He says ‘AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH [sic]’ several times.
Finally, you return to some of what’s left of the Fellowship: Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are in Rohan, the kingdom of Theodred’s dad! Perhaps they’re going to meet Theodred and that’s why we spent so long with him? No, don’t be silly, he’s dead. We instead also spend a hundred pages with Eowyn, who is obliquely implied to be the sister of Eomer, Theodred’s buddy who you’ve probably forgotten about. The book does not come with a family tree attached, so you cannot remember any of this or understand why she’s nursing the old king. An old man turns up, shouts at Theoden for a bit, then steals a horse. We don’t see this bit, we just hear Eowyn half overhearing some of a description of it given by a washerwoman, with a lisp, which ith typed out in the tekth- the tektht- the thing you’re reading, to a blacksmith, who is hard of hearing.
We spend five hundred pages with Treebeard, who is just so boring, wandering around a forest and complaining.
We finally get to see Frodo and Sam, who are lost in a swamp with Gollum. It takes an incredible amount of time to cross the swamp, because George RR Martin is the kind of person who complains that characters in TV shows never have to look for parking. He would prefer if every sitcom featured long sequences of people going, ‘Oh, there’s a — oh, wait. No, I thought there was a space, but actually there’s a Mini in it. Oh! There? No, that’s a disabled spot. Ah!’ It took a really long time to travel in pre-modern times, and George RRR Martin is damned if it shouldn’t also take a really long time to read about.
Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin do their thing and meet Treebeard. We’ve already spent five hundred pages being bored by Treebeard, so it’s incredibly frustrating to spend another five hundred pages watching Merry and Pippin slowly get to know him, too, only to also discover that he’s boring, but, tough: that is exactly what you are going to have to read in this, The Lord of the Rings, as told by George RRRR Martin.
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli look for Merry and Pippin in the same boring forest. Instead of taking about three pages, like in Tolkien’s LOTR, this takes five hundred pages. They eventually meet Gandalf, who did not die! A-and, remember the old man, who stole a horse, who we overheard about? It was actually Gan- sorry, you’re saying you don’t remember an annoying and apparently irrelevant conversation overheard by a secondary character two thousand pages ago? Oh, that’s… frustrating. Well, the old man was Gandalf. Honestly can’t believe you missed that whole setup. Never mind, it was in no way an interesting way of explaining where Gandalf got his cool horse from, and it’s also the only explanation you’re ever going to get, so it really is a damn shame you don’t remember it.
Anyway, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf go to Theoden’s place and save him from his grimy adviser. They head, together, to Helm’s Deep. A big battle looms.
But instead of reading about the big battle, we now, for some reason, meet Faramir, Boromir’s brother, who is hanging out near Mordor with various guys. He comes tantalisingly close to meeting Frodo and Sam. Good god, are some major characters going to meet? Yes, yes they are. In another 1,000 pages. While we are waiting for this to happen, there are some quite good bits of character development involving Frodo and Gollum, but they’re all a long, long way apart.
We also spend hundreds of pages slowly following Erkenbrand, and also slowly following Gandalf running after him on Shadowfax, who is a lot slower than you remember. Gandalf eventually catches up with Erkenbrand and the lads, and together they slowly ride across Rohan for two hundred pages. They arrive at Helm’s Deep just in time, but this isn’t surprising at all because you just spent hundreds of pages reading about them riding their horses towards Helm’s Deep. Slowly.
After ten thousand pages, The Two Towers draws painfully to a close.
The Return of the King begins in the time-honoured fashion: we spend 500 hundred horrible pages reading about a character we’ve never heard of in a place we’ve never been to. The place is Gondor. The guy is the guard who wasn’t in the film. You remember Beregond, right? He saves Faramir’s life but Aragorn exiles him anyway, but, you know, justly. That hasn’t happened yet and won’t for another ten thousand pages. You still have to read about Beregond for a long, long time, in case he mentions something that becomes important later, like the old man and the horse, remember? No? Oh. Anyway, he never does mention anything important.
We get back to the main characters. Sort of. For some reason, we’re mainly reading about it from the point of view of Gamling, Theoden’s batman, so the long-put-off reunion between Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf, doesn’t really feel very emotional and is basically a bit of an anticlimax. We also spend two hundred pages reading about how Wormtongue feels about Saruman, a character we know is a bad guy who no one likes. Wormtongue also does not like him.
Frodo, who, you may remember, is theoretically the main character, is still heading towards Mordor. A new character, an orc, is introduced. He’s a lookout at Minas Morgul. He has seen something interesting, and is on his way to tell the Witch King, who briefly played a major role under a different name, as the leader of the Ringwraiths, twenty thousand pages ago. The fact that these two characters are the same character will never be made explicit. Who the fuck is the Witch King? you wonder, Shouldn’t it be King Witch? as the orc very slowly walks towards the throne room or whatever, to tell the King about the thing he’s just seen, which you can just about work out, with the help of an old thread on Reddit full of people asking the same question, is probably Frodo and Sam and Gollum. This chapter ends as the orc is about to tell the Witch King about the thing he’s seen, whatever that is.
Frodo and Sam fight Shelob. Sam gets to be a badass, at last, and it’s quite cool. Frodo gets stung or bitten, though, and taken to a tower. Sam goes off to rescue him.
Instead of it being surprising when we find out Gollum is still alive towards the end at Mount Doom, we also now see Gollum following Sam and Frodo. He hisses the whole time. It’sssss incredibly annoying to read. Nothing actually happens in these chapters, he just sees Frodo and Sam doing what we’ve already seen them do, but from a dissssstance.
Meanwhile, we follow the various characters to Gondor. All of them. Individually. As at Helm’s Deep, it’s not interesting and fun when the riders of Rohan show up, because we’ve been explicitly told they’re going to, in great detail. Denethor, who we’ve also followed in great detail for a very long time, but who I haven’t mentioned because absolutely none of it was relevant to the plot, dies.
We also occasionally spend a lot of time with people we’d previously forgotten about or never heard of: Legolas’ dad, Galadriel again, maybe Arwen. These characters very slowly expound all the information currently included in the appendices and the Silmarillion. At some point, someone in passing mentions an orc who suddenly died of a congenital heart defect. This is meant to be the orc that was about to tell the Witch King something, but it’s never at all clear that this is the case, nor do we ever find out for sure that the thing he saw was Frodo and Sam and Gollum, but it probably was, because that was the consensus of the guys in that six year-old Reddit-thread. Right?
Frodo and Sam arrive at Mount Doom. Frodo fucks up at this point, and gets his finger bit off by Gollum, who falls into the volcano. The heroes have won. The end. Oh Christ, there are still four thousand pages to go. What now? What the fuck now?
Inexplicably, a new character, Sharky, is introduced. He apparently lives in the Shire and is attempting to introduce early modern farming techniques into Hobbiton. Elsewhere, Aragorn is crowned king and dispenses merciful justice. The end. The Hobbits head back to the Shire. This takes just so fucking long, you’re not going to believe it. It’s interspersed with all the other characters also slowly going back home. The end?
At last, the Hobbits get back to the Shire and are upset to learn about the early modern farming techniques that have been introduced into Hobbiton. They kill Sharky, more or less, who it turns out is… Saruman! Anyway, he’s dead, Grima’s dead, the novel’s over, surely? The end.
Bilbo heads to the Grey Havens. The… end. He gets on a boat. (The End?) This takes two hundred pages to happen. Frodo also gets on the boat and everyone cries, including the reader, but with frustration. End? Sam goes back home with Merry and Pippin which also takes one hundred pages. Nothing at all happens because the plot is over, but plebeian ideas like ‘Something should happen in books’ are of no concern to God King GRRRRR Martin. The end.
Sam gets back home. (The…?) He opens the door. He goes inside. He takes his coat off. He sits down. (…End?) He remembers he did not close the door. He goes to close the door. He goes to sit down again. He remembers he did not close the garden gate. He gets up again. He opens the door. He closes the gate. He opens the door. He steps through. He closes the door. Well, he says, I’m back, he says.
THE.
END.
(Except for all the pointless spin-offs!)
What I’ve described here basically is the plot of LotR: I didn’t add much at all, just the bit about the washerwoman, blacksmith and orc later on, to illustrate one of Martin’s annoying tics: hiding important information in irrelevant conversations. ‘Oh-ho, the monk with a limp is actually the Hound!’ Is he? Great. So? If he is, just tell us. Why does it have to be a fucking puzzle?
In LoTR, we know that Boromir went from Gondor to Rivendell, because he tells us in a few words. Martin cannot do this: we have to follow characters journeying for thousands of miles. We know Theodred and Eomer were friends and rode around fighting orcs, and that Theodred died, without having to see any of that at all actually on the page. By contrast, Martin really can’t tell us anything at all without showing it: he’s taken the dreaded ‘show, don’t tell’, maxim to a thoroughly illogical conclusion.
Martin’s supposed justification for his many Theodreds – apparently major characters who abruptly die without doing anything plotworthy – does not stack up. The futility of war, the fact that lots of people die horrible, pointless deaths, is present in LotR, too, and in countless other stories, going as far back as The Iliad and probably beyond. Theoden’s mourning of his son, in LOTR, is thus actually moving, precisely because it doesn’t happen over and over again in the novel. Equally, the ‘no one is safe’ message is present in LotR, too: Gandalf dies (temporarily, but then so does Jon Snow) and so do Boromir, Theodred, Theoden and Denethor, as well as (offscreen) Balin, a major character from The Hobbit. Frodo is maimed and traumatised, and Eowyn, Faramir and Merry all come close to death and are only saved by quasi-divine intervention. By including these deaths and injuries, the fact that adventures aren’t at all fun for the people having them is made clear, too. And this message is reinforced in other, more subtle ways, too, ones that don’t require repeated heavyhanded bloodshed, torture and rape to make their point.
Equally, Middle Earth’s world is famously deep. You don’t have to read the appendices to LotR, The Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales to appreciate it. Again, though, this is done in large part by implication: all the places on the maps they don’t visit; the brief mentions of the other wizards, like Radagast; Gandalf’s dark hint about Morgoth’s eventual return. All this stuff works as worldbuilding because we don’t hear too much about it: our imaginations do the work of building a world on these hints. The bad film trilogy of The Hobbit, which features characters like Radagast and the Necromancer at length, show exactly why these things were best left as hints.
Martin, by contrast, cannot help but tell us just how big his world is, but in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination. We wind up with an endless glut of locations we can’t remember, and characters whose motivations we can’t possibly recall and whose stories are not interesting. In place of worldbuilding detail, we get weird hints that are sometimes followed up on (like the limping monk) and sometimes not. Because there’s so much of this stuff, there’s no way of telling what will end up being relevant and what won’t. Characters endlessly wander back and forth, while violence, especially sexual violence, is used to fill space while the characters do nothing. Because there are too many characters, Martin struggles to remind us of who they are and, reaching again for his limited repertoire of character development techniques, again uses sex, violence and sexual violence so that everyone can be memorably traumatised. Except, it isn’t that memorable, because so much of it is the same.
Martin’s verbal tics are also very annoying and distracting, and the books’ great length forces us to put up with far too many of them. What was he thinking when he decided the typical word for ‘breasts’ in Westeros was ‘teats’? It reads as though all the women have udders on their chests. Absolutely unbearable.
The TV adaptation has borne the brunt of the criticisms, partly because it finished first, partly because having to present all the violence on screen made it more obvious how gratuitous so much of it is, and partly because the producers, presumably out of boredom, made some of the stuff even more gratuitous. But the flaws are all present in the books themselves.
Well, if you enjoyed ASOIAF, I assume you also enjoy people making their points at great and unnecessary length, so this was hopefully fun for you. Here is the point: plots have a structure for a reason. That structure was not divinely ordained, much like the sturctures of language are not divinely ordained. But, to continue the analogy, if I suddenly started writing this in a made-up language, you’d probably stop reading. Equally, if you suddenly decide plots don’t have to have a recognisable structure, you’re going to find it very difficult to get to the end of your book or your TV show with anything like a satisfying conclusion.
Frank Podmore 