Review - Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin

As the old saying goes: "Show, don't tell...until you're rich and famous and everyone will buy up any old crap you throw out there when you should be writing some other book everyone has been waiting for years to read." 

I was really excited to get a copy of Dangerous Women, the anthology edited by GRRM and the late, great Gardner Dozois, and that excitement was mostly due to GRRM's own contribution, The Princess and the Queen. Being the fanboy I am, I skipped all the other stories and dove right into Martin's novella. Only 26 pages of pure exposition later and I couldn't go further. I was bored out of my mind.

That novella makes up a healthy amount of the latter half of Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (A Targaryen History) (A Song of Ice and Fire). I had a feeling it might, so I threw and Audible credit at this, knowing that there was little likelihood of me getting through this with my eyeballs doing the reading.

I wouldn't have made it through without Audible, that's for sure. It's just so boring.

So I'm a huge fan, I've been around since the Grrrumblers were making a stink about A Dance with Dragons coming out and I even agreed with Neal Gaiman at the time who stated the famous, "George RR Martin is not your bitch" phrase. I'm finding that less my opinion now and it's switched to Brian McClellan's well-argued point that we fans are owed something.

It's not this though.

It's boring. And that's not to say it's not interesting at times. I think a true fan has got to read this. There's great history and I was even entertained from time to time, but if you thought there was a large cast of characters before, this book puts them all to shame....and they're all named something along the line of Aemon, Aegon, Daemon, etc. It's hard to keep track, but then I realized, it doesn't even matter all that much (that could also be from the audio reading, it's much harder to keep straight).

And this gets me to my initial point. It's all tell, no show. It's written from the perspective of a maester so it's literally a history book. We don't get to know characters (maybe that stinker Mushroom a bit), just deeds and events. Then more events and some deeds. No stakes, no beautiful writing we've come to love from GRRM. And then it's just depressing too, which was expected I guess, but let's just say there's lots of death, backstabbing, and incest. None of which is made more entertaining than a history book would.

2.5 out of 5 Stars (recommended for die-hards)

[BLOG UPDATE: Not sure if I'm officially back, just had the passing fancy to post a couple reviews in the next little bit. I've been relatively active on Goodreads with reviews here and there if you want to find me. I stopped taking review copies and, to be honest, it's been the greatest thing. It's very freeing.]

Game of Thrones Season 3 Promo

I think anyone who's read the books, whether before the HBO Game of Thrones series started or since, has been wondering how book three, A Storm of Swords, would look on screen. This is definitely the season to watch. March 31, 2013 is when it all goes down.

It's News To Me - Game of Thrones (Playmobil) and More

First, this is just awesome. I'm an addict to all things legos (like this one) and fully support all the legos trailers, especially in this instance - Game of Thrones. EDIT: Sorry, this is Playmobil not legos, but still awesome.

Cover Art for The Siren Depths: This is the third Raksura book (following The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea). I don't think I've heard a bad thing about this series.  


Interview with Bradley P. Beaulieu: Sarah at Bookworm Blues has been busy with her new site, author interviews, and discussion. I'll be guest-posting there next month and I'm really looking forward to it.

Agency in SFF: Justin at Staffer's Musings has a discussion going about agency, especially of women, in fiction. So far Elizabeth Bear and Michael J. Sullivan have chimed in as Guest Posts.

Embedded with the Enemy?: Jeff Salyards, author of Scourge of the Betrayer, guest posts on A Dribble of Ink discussing how journalists chronicle the action while being right in the middle of it and how he uses it in his own work.

Review of Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke: Mieneke of A Fantastical Librarian reviews this anthology edited by the amazing Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry (of Pornokitsch fame). Looks like a great read.

And one more thing...Will GRRM Keep Up With HBO?

I meant to add this to the last post, but, what the hey. Here's another tidbit:

Will Martin Keep Up with Game of Thrones?: SFFWorld has a nice discussion about whether George RR Martin will be able to keep up with the writing of A Song of Ice and Fire as the HBO TV show unfolds. Survey says - Nope.

From Werthead: "we will see the end of ASoIaF on screen potentially years before GRRM produces the final novel."

Can't say I'm a big fan of that, but I think we can be almost guaranteed of its occurrence. Then again, opportunities like the show don't happen all the time, so you have to take advantage where you can. Maybe the final season or so will just have poor ratings - I don't think I could watch it before knowing the ending through paper.