. . . is not like the others.
I recently read the third book, A Storm of Swords, in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
I also just read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (now a series of two, after 18 years between books).
And I read Sin City: A Dame to Kill For by Frank Miller (2nd in a series of at least 6).
Now obviously, Sin City is completely different because it is a graphic novel, and because it is less than 1/4 of the length of either of the other two. Also, it is set in modern times, while the other two are set either in medieval history or pseudo-medieval times.
But in some ways, A Storm of Swords and Sin City have more in common than either of them do with Pillars. Both are very violent, and neither one of them depends on having a happy ending for the main characters – perhaps a satisfying resolution in the sense of achieving vengeance, but not by any means a happy ending.
With Pillars, I found myself riding a kiddie rollercoaster – it’s all ups and downs at predictable intervals, with no curves or loops, and not even any steep plunges to get your heart started. Every time a problem was resolved, you could count on a new problem cropping up and a quick solution to the problem being found – the only one that lasted through the book as an individual problem (as opposed to a new problem relating to the building of the cathedral) was whether or not Richard would regain his birthright as Earl. And even then, it had a “more than happy” ending – instead of Richard fumbling along as a bad earl, Aliena ends up getting to play earl. I mean, every time something else would go wrong, you could hear Follett expecting the reader to gasp in horror at how the characters found themselves in yet another tragic situation with no – oh wait, Prior Philip has a cunning plan! Collective sigh of relief!
And the dialogue was hard to believe, sometimes – it seemed too often as if the characters were saying something just to explain it to the reader.
I think it just was too much outside action impacting the characters – very little was based on the choices characters made. Not completely – for instance, Aliena definitely made a choice about who she was going to marry, and thus is created one of the conflicts – but there was too much of the deus ex machina both in causing conflicts and in resolving some of them. If such-and-such hadn’t happened at just exactly the right time, well, so much for building Kingsbridge Cathedral, or a character would leave the story, or would not find out the crucial bit of information that saved the day – but guess what – such-and-such happened.
After what seems like a completely negative review, I have to say that although it impacted my enjoyment of the book overall, that it was easy to read and kept my interest. It is a good book, but with a little character development and fewer plot contrivances, it could be a great book.
A Storm of Swords (and indeed the whole series) has a little bit of the same just-as-things-are-looking-up for one the characters, yet-another-bad-thing-happens style. However, the characters are much more believable, they frequently take action rather than just reacting, and they change over time. So far, the plot (the plots, actually) are holding together, and it is interesting to get hints of where this is all going to end up. Also, I like how Martin is not afraid of killing off characters – I was totally blown away when a seemingly necessary character was killed. Don’t get me wrong – if he were just killing off main characters to try to keep interest in the book going, it wouldn’t work. But Martin seems to have a plan for where he’s taking the story (book 7? maybe more? I have to admit that the trend towards fantasy gigantism is wearing on me), and as long as I can see some sensible travel-planning, I’m along for the ride.
I like the content arrangement in Martin’s books, with small chapters from a different character’s perspective. Particularly, I like that you don’t learn everything about a character there is to know right away; and by withholding certain characters from the list of narrators, there is a lot of unknown information that you can only accrue by hearing it from someone else’s experience of that character. For instance, Lord Tywin never graces us with his presence in the narrative, so we only know what he thinks or what his plans are through Tyrion or Jaime.
Without going back and checking, I believe that we don’t get a perspective from characters who die (with the notable exception of Ned (Lord Eddard). Is that intended, or is it just chance? We’ve never had a chapter from the perspective of one of the kings, and at least four of them have died (Robert, Renley, Joffrey, and Robb); but is that because knowing too much from the king’s perspective would mess with the plot, or because they’re doomed? We haven’t heard from Stannis or Balon, but we do hear from Daenerys. If it were true that we don’t hear from people who are doomed to die, then Daenerys should survive. I’m hoping Cersei dies an unnatural and painful death, so I’ll be very sad if she starts becoming a narrative presence.
From totally hating Stannis (remember, I’m only through book 3, so he could succumb to Melisandre again in later books) I ended up rather liking him as of the end of Swords. He was so close to being unforgivable with the intent of murdering the bastard son of King Robert that one would have thought he was irredeemable. The way Martin had Davos speak up to Stannis at the end of a chapter, and then we know nothing more about them until they sweep to the rescue of Castle Black was a trademark of how Martin keeps secret the things that people are not likely to know – so there’s no way Jon would have known about Stannis and his army, and we get to be as surprised as they are.
If Martin can keep the level of writing and plot/characterization going that he has through the first three books, he might actually make it to the end with most of his fan base intact. The fact that he has spin-offs in the form of games and miniatures, t-shirts, etc., implies that there is a core following who will be there no matter what – heck, just look at Wikipedia – there’s a lot more information on the world and characters of A Song of Ice and Fire than there are on some real-life countries/people.
A Dame to Kill For is all about reacting rather than acting, although one might not know it at first. Dwight McCarthy certainly doesn’t know it, at any rate. In the end, though, is he acting on his own choice, or still just reacting to Ava’s manipulations? One of the things about Frank Miller that I like is that one doesn’t always have a neatly packaged ending. It always seems as if one is never sure of the veracity of the narrator in Sin City – Marv was possibly crazy, and Dwight definitely has indications of madness – so if we’re hearing the story from them, how can we be sure that they’re telling the truth? They certainly are able to convince some people that they’re sane – if it weren’t for the scene where we see Ava being herself when Dwight isn’t around (after Damien is dead, but before she calls the police) we might even be sure that Ava’s tale to the police was true; but we know better – it may not be true but it also might be merely a different lie than we think.
So is Dwight crazy? Is he honest? Does one preclude the other? And which of these things is NOT like the other?
