Is a Song of Ice and Fire better than Lord of the Rings?

[Aganzir]

ASOIAF is for people who enjoy certain kind of literature, Tolkien for those who appreciate another kind. Still, if people who have read both had a vote, I'm pretty sure Tolkien would come out on top. GRRM is enjoyable, true, but Tolkien is the one you go back to time and again.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

As for me, of Martin's series I've only read A Game of Thrones, and I found it quite disappointing. The prose was rather poor, I thought, and the practically pornographic material was off-putting.

I found A Game of Thrones disappointing too, enough so to put me off the series for a year until the HBO series came out and I picked up the second part. The latter books (with the exception of the last one) are much better.

I tend to enjoy profanity, adultery and porn, but Martin doesn't write sex well. It's sometimes so detailed and naturalistic that he sounds like a teenager who has just discovered there's something between his legs, if you excuse the metaphor, and it lacks style. Mith put it quite well already, though.

When it comes to moral ambiguity, Tolkien does it in fact better. I feel Martin needs to spell everything out, and although his characters may do conflicting things, there's more poise in Tolkien's characters. What allows Martin to have such morally ambiguous characters is that they fight each other so you can see both sides, unlike Tolkien who has an ultimate villain in the story. But there's little of Tolkien's internal struggle in Martin's characters.

Also, while Tolkien has few female characters, Martin's writing is at times plain sexist. Just sayin'.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Martin also wastes countless pages on pointless derping around and travelling in crisscrossing circles. Tolkien does a fair bit of travel-writing, but it's always to a point.

[Snowdog]

Being I only managed 7 chapters into Game of Thrones after several attempts in reading it, I have to say no.

SIF was written to make a decent TV mini-series. No need to read it.

that said, I think that the mini-series treatment of Lord of the Rings would have been better than those PJ abominations.

[Firefoot]

Agree with what everyone else is saying here with an addendum:

All of the characters I liked in the first book (and kept me reading through the parts about characters I didn't) either have since died or their plotlines have faded into unimportance or seeming irrelevance (Arya, Bran). A handful of characters have gotten more enjoyable for me to read about (Jaime) but for the most part I have just stopped caring. I finished reading all of the currently out books maybe a year and a half ago? but have no intention of reading the new ones that come out. Maybe a plot synopsis because there is a part of me that would like to know who ends up winning, if only because I invested so much time into getting to this point.

A lot of people like the series because it's gritty and realistic but I find it really dull to read hundreds of pages about characters I don't like. And after a point, the sorrow of a character I liked dying started to become something more like, "Are you kidding me? He killed off xxx too?" and none of it was ever matched by the utter devastation I felt when I thought Frodo lay dead in the Pass of Cirith Ungol.

So I guess that comes back to what other people have been saying. For me, Game of Thrones completely lacks the beauty of LotR that really made me fall in love with it.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Firefoot

For me, Game of Thrones completely lacks the beauty of LotR

I think that is part of the point - and part of the reason some people really love Martin's epic.

One of the reasons I'm personally still willing to also defend tSoIaF to an extent is exactly the point that the characters you like or whose stories look interesting end up dead and their stories don't continue, while some others you have barely noticed before come to the forefront by time. So you can't take the stance in the beginning that "well, this is Ned Stark, the good guy I'm going to relate to, and who will prevail through all the hardships the author will throw on his way".

One could say it is breaking the obvious traditional narrational rule that you build up those characters you are going to make the heroes (or villains) of the story and leave the statists to their places (look at any old adventure or war-movie and you can tell from the introduction who will die and who will live through the ordeals).

That said, I fully agree that Martin can be boring at times (Arya's wanderings, Brienne's mission to find Sansa!) and that he has lost the grip of the story a long time ago... it was a mission impossible from the very beginning I'd say, but a brave try.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Firefoot

but for the most part I have just stopped caring.

A stinging condemnation of a series if ever there was one.

I think that is the fundamental problem with a lot of these newer, darker series. If everything is continually dismal all the time sooner or later readers will grow apathetic about the outcome of the story, especially if you kill off the beloved characters in the story to the point where there are only characters that people hate left.

One could say it is breaking the obvious traditional narrational rule that you build up those characters you are going to make the heroes (or villains) of the story and leave the statists to their places (look at any old adventure or war-movie and you can tell from the introduction who will die and who will live through the ordeals).

When reading contemporary fantasy I have reached the point of assuming that anybody who is built up to be likable or a hero type figure that A) they will die, B) horrible things will happen to them before they die, C) there is a better than even chance they will renounce all they orginally stood for, and D) they will die horribly. So in my opinion, it’s not so much a matter of you can't tell who is going to die, it’s just that the more likable characters will.

In a slight aside, GRRM gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly that was released after the show last night.

Most of it was stuff that is widely available but the interviewer asked one very interesting question. Robb was never a POV character and Cat was as stupid as a bucket of dead fish. So then why were people so upset when they were killed? I don't think too much of GRRM's non-answer to the question. I think a lot of it has to do with the underlying brilliance of the idea as part of the story. More than the characters I think people were invested in the Stark family's quest for revenge. The typically expected mode for this revenge quest to be accomplished was gone when the Red Wedding happened and everything went pear-shaped. As far as actually wiping out the Lannisters goes, that option is still on the table. So it was really more a matter of GRRM messing with his audience from a story perspective and not a character perspective that made it all too shocking!

[Firefoot]

So you can't take the stance in the beginning that "well, this is Ned Stark, the good guy I'm going to relate to, and who will prevail through all the hardships the author will throw on his way".

And I was okay with that for a while. But I think the red wedding was sort of the turning point for me, retrospectively. I just didn't really know who to root for anymore.

I mean, I love a good interesting villain. They're some of my favorite characters to write. But a lot of the characters left disgusted me in some way and even if they started to become sympathetic they never became likeable for me.

I completely understand why some people like it. It's just not for me. And I guess it's frustrating how popular it is and how so many Top X Fantasy book lists rank it so highly because I don't really see it. I tried, but I guess that's how it goes sometimes.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Firefoot

I completely understand why some people like it. It's just not for me. And I guess it's frustrating how popular it is and how so many Top X Fantasy book lists rank it so highly because I don't really see it. I tried, but I guess that's how it goes sometimes.

Right now it is a bit of a fad and benefiting from a lot of hype from pop culture. Once the series is finished, one way or the other, time will allow some perspective. As Nogrod said, I suspect in the final analysis Martin is going to end up something of a footnote whereas right now he is viewed as a literary titan.