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Mike Hale writes in the NYT that after Sunday night's Season 5 finale the wildly popular show seems to have lost its way, and to be losing faith with a growing number of its viewers. After two or three seasons of coherent and satisfying action, the show is spinning in place, stalling for time as it crawls toward an ending that will be more disappointing the longer it's delayed. Sound familiar? As with "Lost," there may be a blueprint, but it's not looking very sound. According to Hale, the escalating series of shocks in the season finale was a prime example of substituting sensation for imagination, busyness for drama. "Not content to kill off a mid-major character, the episode moved on to whipping girls, putting a major female character through an excruciatingly long, nude walk of shame and, in its closing seconds, assassinating a fan favorite who was one of the few wholly sympathetic figures in the show."
Amy Sullivan says that the problem is that it's incredibly hard to craft a epic series without getting necessarily bogged down in the middle installments. "Your protagonists are usually in some long-term predicament or up against an enemy who will keep winning until some resolution is reached in the finale," says Sullivan. "So the need to throw in a few shocking moments for the sake of surprise and to keep readers/audiences off-balance is understandable." According to Hale when you look at the overall framework, nearly all the characters are where they were when the season began. "The usurping Boltons are still in Winterfell; Sansa is still on the run; Arya is still hiding in Braavos; the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen and the sly dwarf, Tyrion, are still marooned in Essos; the Lannisters still occupy the castle in King's Landing," concludes Hale. "This can be blamed on the show's semidependent relationship with Mr. Martin's novels, but viewers (like me) who haven't read the books don't care about that. The question is how much longer we'll care at all."
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:44PM
I've listened to the audiobooks. Book one was a lot of fun, and book two was pretty good as well. At some point however, RRM just started tacking on new stories that were confusing, boring, and ridiculously time consuming. I figure he's just milking it for all the money its worth rather than attempting to write a coherent entertaining story any more. I mean, after 5 books or whatever it is, winter has even arrived yet and the stories about the most interesting characters are mere footnotes in the morass of additional material. The struggle I had to get through the last audiobook was so great, I vowed that the only way I'd pay any more attention to the series, was by reading the Wikipedia summaries after future installments are published (_if_ published). RRM could have written an interesting and lasting story if he could have done it in 3-4000 pages spread over three books, but he's either incompetent or ridiculously greedy. I suspect that GOT won't ever actually be finished.
(Score: 2) by boristhespider on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:04PM
It's very pertinant that originally books 4 and 5 were meant to be flashbacks when the story was actually doing something. He (allegedly) found that there were so many flashbacks that it just made sense to make them a book after all - and then too, since he suffers from an even worse case of literary flatulence than Stephen King cheerily admits to - and it shows.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:35PM
I too sometime resist the introduction of new characters, and the plot did seem to crawl in #3...but it was all to position the players in the right spots and the plot is now mature and ripe.
I really like the audiobooks...the reading is so excellent (and I prefer the scottish sounding Lords and Ladies than the (snore) British Lords and Ladies of the show.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:26AM
There was 11 years between the audio version of book 3 and book 4, and the reader failed to do any homework on how he read the first three apparently because he changed everything. This wouldn't be an issue with an 11 year space, but when listening to them back to back, the changed voices make it really hard to follow what is going on, who is saying what, etc. etc. It was another demerit in the whole series.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:58AM
One book was read by another reader. The last book was read by the original voice actor, and yes several voices changed slightly, but with such a cast, I let it go.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday June 18 2015, @03:21PM
That's what I thought, I even started that post you replied to by saying that -- but then I checked my audible account to be certain of my facts, and was surprised to see that Roy Dotrice read all five. He just sounded like a totally different reader between book 3 and 4.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:07PM
I have had the same reaction as you. The first 3 books were quite good, and entertaining. Unfortunately books 4 and 5 introduce so many characters and additional plot threads that it is tedious to follow all the action. He is a gifted writer, but I think he needs help throttling his imagination. You are correct that this whole story would have been just as epic in under 4000 pages. If he continues on this path, there will likely be another three 1000+ page books in the series, that will take another 10-15 years to write, and he is not a young man. I too wonder if he will ever finish.