The "WHAT ARE YOU READING?" thread

[coqauvin]

Actually, Martin doesn't write high-fantasy. I think it's called vulgar fantasy or low fantasy or something.

point is, high-fantasy is very black and white - think LotR. The good guys are tragic, but clearly good: Boromir may have tried to steal the Ring, but he did it because he genuinely was trying to save his people. Moral dilemmas are virtually non-existent, so the Boromir case is probably the most morally taxing situation you'll come across throughout the series. Bad guys are clearly evil - they look evil, act evil etc

Martin's series isn't this clear cut, and that's the difference. Jon Snow is a good guy, but he goes out

buttsoup

banging Ygritte and breaking his oath

. Jaime starts out as a legimate bad, by

breasts

kicking Bran out a window, banging his sister unrepentantly, killing Stark's men without remorse, among other things like regicide

but he looks like a good guy: blonde hair, blue eyes, rich, famous. Sandor Clegane is another great example of the mixed-value, really interesting characters, because he

genitals?

will casually run down a child on orders, but will also go out of his way to save Arya

, even though he looks like a bad guy and runs with the bad guys.

While the Song of Ice and Fire is listed as having elements of high fantasy, such as taking place in a parallel world with no primary world and being a multi-volume saga with a large scope, the traditional hallmarks of high-fantasy are missing from it.

Also, Martin's books are nice in that there is a minimum of magic, although he's starting to ramp it up as the books go on. I'm really disappointed with some of his decisions in story-telling in books 4-5, but that might be because I'm an elitist when it comes to fantasy.

In thread related news, I just finished reading (surprise, surprise) the Impotence of Being Earnest and I'm now into Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson. I also just finished reading Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini(sp?), which was a really good read. He managed a fantastic contrast between ignorant victim and knowing victim on the backdrop of Afghanistan as it reaches the point where 9/11 happens. The story got a bit hokey in its final pages, but all in all it was an interesting and worthwhile journey.

[KT.]

Actually, Martin doesn't write high-fantasy. I think it's called vulgar fantasy or low fantasy or something.

point is, high-fantasy is very black and white - think LotR. The good guys are tragic, but clearly good: Boromir may have tried to steal the Ring, but he did it because he genuinely was trying to save his people. Moral dilemmas are virtually non-existent, so the Boromir case is probably the most morally taxing situation you'll come across throughout the series. Bad guys are clearly evil - they look evil, act evil etc

oh well I was using wikipedia's definition of "high fantasy"

High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, entirely fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the real, or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent but its rules differ in some way(s) from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements.

(I understand genres are very subjective)