Last Man on Earth: Ygritte too. I guess "major" is subjective, but I'd consider her a fairly important part of Jon's development.

Oh yeah - me too. Of the three discussed at least one of them is major major and the other two are at least sort of major in a supporting role kind of way.

I'm guessing it's because he was a chubby nerd before nerds were cool, and spent a good portion of his life fantasizing about sex...

ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

So he's no different than your typical Republican congress critter?

ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

Oh man, that would blow. The Randianism has been apparant to me since the second book. The whole moral objectivism is there to see if more sublte at first. I don't know that I can make it through all 10 books if it's just going to be pointless.

Cymbal: ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

So he's no different than your typical Republican congress critter?

He's also not much different from Ayn Rand.

BojanglesPaladin: I think it's worth pointing out that it's not just "Oh Noes! He talks about people doing it!"

It's also the abundance of rape and incest, and forced prostitution. It's the frequent sexual violence moreso than just sex that some people understandably find offensive or tasteless.

While I have lost a lot of affection for the books based on needlessly slow, ponderous, and maddening minutea in the storytelling, the sex doesn't bother me that much.

But I do think it is valid to note that he writes an awful lot of mysoginistic sex scenes. And sure, sure, it's a brutal world full of brutal men and all that, and sure, sure, he can write what he wants and all that.

But you don't have to be a bible-thumping prude to notice that he writes some pretty rough stuff, and sometimes seems to wallow in it a bit more than the straight-up violence.

/IMHO
//YMMV

I always wonder if the people who claim stuff in his book is mysoginistic have actually read it. There's no shortage of female characters that are depicted as powerful, both good and evil.

Brienne, Arya, Cersei, the Queen of Thorns (can't remember her first name off the top of my head), Melisandre, Ygritte, Asha, Caetlyn Stark. None of these are exactly weak, powerless, stereotypical characters. Even Sansa's character arc is being set up for her to eventually develop a backbone.

JohnBigBootay: Caeldan: You know for all the claims of GRRM being mysogynistic... when you consider the regularity with which he kills off characters, I can't think of a single major female player he's ever killed off?

Well, you can mistreat the hell out of a woman without killing her of course. But that's a good point. I can't think of one either now that you mention it.

/actually I can think of one - not the majorest character but still, she gets a fair amount of mentions. Hint - she was a hooker.

// wait a minute - think Red Wedding.

SPOILER

He brings back the major female character "killed"at the Red Wedding though.

Also, I guess I don't read a lot of literary critics, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone complain about Martin being misogynistic. I know it never crossed my mind reading the books...now I do remember thinking "damn that's a lot of incest", but I didn't see the systematic mistreatment of women for its own sake.

Heron: Theaetetus: "... Much of what we think of as "chivalry" was invented and promoted by the Church specifically to discourage the rampant raping Medieval and Renaissance aristos undertook. Our word "sport", and all its connotations, first appeared in this era as a term used by the aristocracy for riding around the countryside raping peasant girls.

I think that I would like to ask for a citation on this please. The OED has the first recorded use of 'sport' in 1425 most likely to do with the marking of sheep. Are you thinking of Chaucer and Disport? If not then I wonder if you have any evidence to support your etymology of the word.

An honest question because it impinges (very slightly) on what I am studying at the moment.

MadSkillz:

That being said, trying to read A Game of Thrones was like dragging my eyes through glass. One- I bought an ebook version with links to an appendix (character genealogies mostly) but you could not disable the links meaning most names were underlined, and Two - it read like Tom Clancy's Lord of the Rings.

ASoIaF ushered in the modern era of fantasy. It took what guys like Glen Cook created(gritty, realistic fantasy) and made it sophisticated, forcing the literary community to give some recognition to modern fantasy(which had basically been suffering for decades under the middling weight of Jordan, Weis/Hickman, Goodkind, Feist, KJA, etc). That said, Martin brought it in, but guys like Erikson, Bakker, Sanderson, and (in a different way) Rothfuss have truly established modern fantasy as something with literary weight behind it rather than something purely for teens and nerds.

He's right, but it isn't a particularly original observation. In 1964, poet Claire Horner wrote: "If a child sees a man on television, brandishing a bloody sword, no one thinks anything of it. If that child sees a man on television brandishing an erect penis, somebody's going to jail."

FishyFred: Happy Hours: In high school someone showed one our teachers a passage from a Stephen King book (can't remember which one) where the character committed suicide by shoving their arm into a a garbage disposal. The teacher was somewhat disgusted and said he would have stopped reading the book right there so some people do have a problem with graphic descriptions of violence in literature.

Your teacher is an outlier. This country goes nuts about depictions of sex and barely bats an eye at depictions of violence.

Hmmm...

"In another house in Longmont Hills, Herman Pynchot was pulling a pair of his wife's panties over a gigantic erection. His eyes were dark and trancelike. His wife was at a Tupperware party. One of his two fine children was at a Cub Scout meeting and the other fine child was at an intramural chess tourney at the junior high school. Pynchot carefully hooked one of his wife's bras behind his back. It hung limply on his narrow chest. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he looked... well, very pretty. He walked out into the kitchen, heedless of the unshaded windows. He walked like a man in a dream. He stood by the sink and looked down into the maw of the newly, installed WasteKing disposer. After a long, thoughtful time, he turned it on. And to the sound of its whirling, gnashing steel teeth, he took himself in hand and masturbated. When his orgasm had come and gone, he started and looked around. His eyes were full of blank terror, the eyes of a man waking from a nightmare. He shut off the garbage disposal and ran for the bedroom, crouching low as he passed the windows. His head ached and buzzed. What in the name of God was happening to him?"

Maybe it wasn't the violence she disliked...

ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

I stopped after book 2, which seemed a bit bloated anyway. I think I made the right decision.
/And you said Rand twice.

George R.R. is one of my favorites I just wish he would write the damn things faster. Americans have the strangest relationship with sex and violence. It's one of my least favorite of our cultural quirks. Richard K. Morgan (more sci-fi than fantasy, but amazing if you like your fiction gritty) commented he put the word fark and caught all sorts of flack but no one ever complained about the violence.

js34603: Also, I guess I don't read a lot of literary critics, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone complain about Martin being misogynistic. I know it never crossed my mind reading the books...now I do remember thinking "damn that's a lot of incest", but I didn't see the systematic mistreatment of women for its own sake.

It's a pretty common claim against any male involved in entertainment. The big thing these days is that Steven Moffat (Dr Who etc) is a misogynist. Apparently there are some people who feel that if don't put all of your female characters on a pedestal as perfect and pure beings, you are a misogynist. Any female character no matter how minor that is flawed, mean, stupid, incompetent, biatchy (basically in any way an actual human individual) is evidence of your rampant misogyny.

MadSkillz:it read like Tom Clancy's Lord of the Rings.

HalEmmerich: This. If you cut all the descriptions of food and eating you'd probably lose a couple hundred pages over the course of all 5 books.

So...it really IS like "Lord of the Rings"!

/Do you get to read doggerel poetry and songs that the characters recite while they eat their Special Food?

COMALite J: Fortunato has no comment.

/This had better not be obscure.

Link

if_i_really_have_to: js34603: Also, I guess I don't read a lot of literary critics, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone complain about Martin being misogynistic. I know it never crossed my mind reading the books...now I do remember thinking "damn that's a lot of incest", but I didn't see the systematic mistreatment of women for its own sake.

It's a pretty common claim against any male involved in entertainment. The big thing these days is that Steven Moffat (Dr Who etc) is a misogynist. Apparently there are some people who feel that if don't put all of your female characters on a pedestal as perfect and pure beings, you are a misogynist. Any female character no matter how minor that is flawed, mean, stupid, incompetent, biatchy (basically in any way an actual human individual) is evidence of your rampant misogyny.

Critic complaining about misogyny conveniently forget that the men in the books are just as farked up as the women.

Anyone who writes in the fantasy genre will be assumed to be misogynistic simply out of stale stereotypes about the genre. However, if you want to see a genre in which women are written as truly shallow and depraved, see any fiction written by women for women. If any man wrote Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey he would have been drawn and quartered by these women.

BojanglesPaladin: JohnBigBootay: Frankly I haven't seen anything so far that trumped the atrocities I read about in my sophomore level History of England class in college so I'm gonna give him a pass.

As I said, "And sure, sure, it's a brutal world full of brutal men and all that, and sure, sure, he can write what he wants and all that."

And you can give whatever pass you would like to. As I said, it doesn't bug me much,and I've read far worse.

But he does write in a lot of mysogony and incest and rape (and threats of rape), and force prostitution, and generally unpleasant stuff (along with physical violence and what not.)

No one would argue that he writes in a lot of intrigue and murder, because... well he does. Same with all the sex. Because... well, he does.

So the real question is "Is it offensive to do so?" One counter argument is that he is portraying a very vrutal world unflinchingly and making it's brutality very clear.

However, since this is a creation of his own mind, it is valid to point out that his mind sure is creating some brutal stuff, and a lot of it involves brutalizing women.

Do I personally care that much? No. Do I think it is a valid criticism to point it out? Sure. If you don't like reading about rape and incest and threats of rape and forced prostitution, then you will certainly be offended. And a LOT of people besides bible-thumpers or prudes find these things distasteful or even offensive.

So they should probably change the channel, or read something else.

But it still is what it is, and that is a very brutal work, with frequent depictions of violence against women.

Yeah, but by writing in all that misogyny, rape, brutality and violence, it explains WHY despite being intelligent, motivated, smart and strong, women still struggled to compete against men and were treated as inferiors by men. This is very true to the way the real world actually worked back then. Women were not busy being married off and unable to own property just because they were lazy, women didn't have to work so hard to get the right to vote and go to school because they liked staying at home and wearing skirts. Women have been treated the way they have been for thousands of years because between being smaller, weaker, and bearing children, they were physically unable to do anything to resist in a broader, social sense in societies were physical violence ruled the day. It wasn't until 'strong arms and steel' stopped being what ruled the life of the common person that women began to get rights. You can march and protest all you want in a society where you won't be raped, beaten or beheaded for carrying around your sign. Until society gets to that point, you're facing a different battle and you must play by different rules.

To me, it is far more misogynistic to pretend that women didn't have the rights they historically lacked for insignificant reasons- if only they had been less worried about boys liking them and making their parents happy they could have put on some pants and gone around riding horses and fighting and doing cool stuff! The reality was that women who stepped outside the protection of men afforded to them when they conformed to gender roles were punished by physical and sexual violence, torture and death. And even then, those things still happened with some degree of frequency to women who did. And to men, as well. The world used to be a very brutal, violent place.

I find R.R. Martin's work to be far less misogynistic than most historical fantasy novels because of that, it doesn't condescend to women. It doesn't show them restricted in what they are able to do because of ridiculously low barriers, it shows realistically why their options in life were different than men's, and it shows how women used their intelligence, strength, perseverance and so forth to try to carve out what lives and power for themselves that they could. The women in his book are in no way portrayed as being weaker characters than the men are. It shows them as fighting a different set of battles in a different ways, but ones that are no less challenging.

Happy Hours: In high school someone showed one our teachers a passage from a Stephen King book (can't remember which one) where the character committed suicide by shoving their arm into a a garbage disposal. The teacher was somewhat disgusted and said he would have stopped reading the book right there so some people do have a problem with graphic descriptions of violence in literature.

Wait, what?

In an interview, he said that he's writing about people, and sex is part of people as it is death, pain and sorrow (paraphrasing).

I just ended with the 2nd book a couple of months ago, so I'm not sure how much "worst" the sex gets in the following books, but never thought that the sex was distracting.

The world that Martin created is harsh, brutal and violent, and that's for everyone in there. Sex is one of the things that Martin uses to drive that point home.

As for misogynistic, in my opinion, Martin writes very strong female characters. And by strong I don't mean badasses (thou Brienne is badass), but well rounded.

I cannot wait to get my hands on Storm of Swords (for good or worse, the Red Wedding was spoiled sometime ago...), and so far I've been enjoying the series a lot.

BroVinny: FTFA: Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.

Spoken like a man who has never felt the satisfying thunk! as his axe blade carves into his foe's cranium.

Caim, is that you?

NeedlesslyCanadian: Elia Martell, too. Also "off-screen," and brutal.

Is she the one that gets pulled off her horse and raped by the entire crowd? No wait, Lollys Stokeworth? THAT was pretty rough stuff, and not exactly "off-camera" if I recall.

JRaynor: George R.R. Martin nursery rhymes:

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his leg, making him easy prey for vultures and wolves.

Yeah but what color was his doublet?

Lando Lincoln: Because in George R. R. Martin's world, death is lurking around every goddamn corner, so you'd best get your licks in while you can.

Where life is short, people are even more willing to engage in gratuitous sex.

BroVinny: FTFA: Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.

Spoken like a man who has never felt the satisfying thunk! as his axe blade carves into his foe's cranium.

Yeah there are some really sick people out there who will enjoy every second of killing someone. And when it really is you or him, a moral person might get a brief satisfaction that they can continue to go on living.

DarkPascual: I cannot wait to get my hands on Storm of Swords (for good or worse, the Red Wedding was spoiled sometime ago...), and so far I've been enjoying the series a lot.

I think that Martin is weak in the "mood" area, and makes up for it by burdening the story too much description. Ursula LeGuinn, for example, could have told the story so far in about 300 pages, but would have written it so that your imagination filled in all of the worldly details that Martin couldn't stay away from.

It's not a bad series overall so far, and I'm enjoying it. It's a thoughtful, complex story about interesting, realistic people sort of shoved into a "popcorn" vehicle. I'll definitely read the rest of it once it's written, because the story arc is shaping up to end in pretty spectacular fashion, and I don't think Martin is likely to screw it up.

InmanRoshi: Anyone who writes in the fantasy genre will be assumed to be misogynistic simply out of stale stereotypes about the genre. However, if you want to see a genre in which women are written as truly shallow and depraved, see any fiction written by women for women. If any man wrote Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey he would have been drawn and quartered by these women.

[redeye.trb.com image 600x325]

Imagine the fun if it turned out that the current author of 50 Shades was just a front. That it was written by Tucker Max and his production team...

It would be the holy grail of trolls.

Hey, who doesn't like sexualized violence?



Start of the meal




End of the meal (what a messy bib)

OH, wait that's uh, maybe, NSFW

And when the heck did Fark allow such huge pics? I thought they got rescaled??

:(

Let me keep this simple.

Violence: bad
Sex: good

Got it.

/learn it, live it.

Peppermint Rose: George R.R. is one of my favorites I just wish he would write the damn things faster.

I think it's because of all the wonderful editing that he's getting from his friends/publishers.

DarkPascual: I cannot wait to get my hands on Storm of Swords (for good or worse, the Red Wedding was spoiled sometime ago...), and so far I've been enjoying the series a lot.

Give it time. You've read 2 books of the series. You have many more lamprey pies and such to wade through.

/Where do whores go?

RedPhoenix122: Point well made. Of course, that's not going to stop the army of soccer moms that want to be offended by it, then go home and read 50 Shades of Grey. Hypocrisy has no upper limit.

Or taste for that matter.

Gyrfalcon: Happy Hours: In high school someone showed one our teachers a passage from a Stephen King book (can't remember which one) where the character committed suicide by shoving their arm into a a garbage disposal. The teacher was somewhat disgusted and said he would have stopped reading the book right there so some people do have a problem with graphic descriptions of violence in literature.

Heh...I had a drama teacher in HS who wanted to stage Titus Andronicus for just those people.

Shoulda gone for Hair. With a high school production, it would have gotten them arrested, but that would really just prove the point, now wouldn't it?

browntimmy: I'm near the end of the first book now and never has the thought crossed my mind, "Man, there is so much sex in this." There is some, but the meals characters eat.are usually more descriptive.

I'm about 90% though the first book as well. There's some sex, sometimes a bit kinky, but it's nothing compared to the Sword of Truth series.

the dude is a creeper, no doubt, and i could give a fark. he writes really entertaining stuff. it's not like he's moving next door to you

Baron Harkonnen: ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

I stopped after book 2, which seemed a bit bloated anyway. I think I made the right decision.
/And you said Rand twice.

I think you actually can read all the way up to Temple of the Winds and end the story very nicely there. No need to read the rest of the series, which as everyone has mentioned already, quickly goes downhill in a hot steaming mess of objectivism blather.

As for Martin... I dunno. I don't particularly like his books and to be honest, they rather bore me. He goes into too many details that I don't care about, or that are simply just not interesting to know. People like to contrast him with Tolkien, but I find that a really unfair to Tolkien who might have known as many things as Martin did about his characters (and certainly did write them down in other places) but was far better at just stating enough detail, or hinting enough at some event, to leave an impression of some grander mystery. I never thought I would be praising Tolkien for his economy, but compared to Martin, certainly yes.

Anyway, I actually tried to pick up song of fire and ice again when I had a couple of transcontinental flights to do.... even being stuck on a plane for 14 hours couldn't make me finish the second book. I left it tucked into the back of the seat in front of me. It's annoying, I actually want to like these books - I just can't. They're not John Ringo bad or anything either, they're just mind numbingly boring.

theorellior: LeGuin is an excellent writer, and her early work is hands-down science literature of the highest caliber, but somewhere around 1980 she got a little too polemic. I can still read it, but a good portion of the time I'm eye-rolling at the obvious heavy-handedness of her politics.

This will sound incredibly sexist of me, but I absolutely cannot read any female writers. I think they are all garbage. It's really strange.

ps69: Terry Goodkind's series was a bizarre bait and switch that started out as a fantasy series and quickly devolved into a rewriting of The Fountainhead with a crazy amount of rape. Rape became the raison d'etre for the series, rape as punishment, raped women as unclean or unpure, the protagonist's future wife always one second away from brutal rapery while less important women end up penetrated by angry penises on every other page. I was afraid to turn the page, knowing I would either get a horrible long winded lesson about leaches and individualism or somebody being raped. The first 3 books were ok, book 4 was the beginning of the rapey, randian end. Finishing the series was a bad decision.

He really likes rape and Ayn Rand.

Came for Terry Goodkind rape books.

/rape