About Song of Ice and Fire

Of which, woe is me, I just reread the first three books.

There are supposed to be three more to come. I hope that ends up being true.

It's particularly revelatory for me to read these at the moment because I'm writing an epic fantasy, Stealing the Sun.

There's no way I'll ever be able to approximate the complexity of Martin's plots, and I can only hope to create his level of unbearable tension... someday.

Worldbuilding-wise and sentence-level-wise I feel a bit less outdistanced, but what's on my mind at the moment is characters.

In Stealing the Sun, I'm trying to write about adult, ambitious people, people who do bad things for good reasons and also because they are misled, lied to, seduced and self-deceived. But who are not simply villains, because they love, and also because they have reasons for the things they do. I don't have much interest in innocent plowboys who end up being king, and I don't have much urge to write that kind of character. George Martin is eminently successful at writing characters who are both morally ambiguous and, if not sympathetic at all moments, appealing enough that the reader cares what happens to them.

(Like I'm going to spend the next nine months, at least, worrying about what happens to Jaime Lannister. I want that kind of power over my readers, dammit!)

Based on critiques I've read of STS, I'm still working on it.

Sigh.

"Pull up your overcoat, roll up your sleeves, Jordan am a hard road to travel, I believe..."

--Kyri