Author notes

#11: Thrones

nekoewen

on Oct. 22, 2011

I got into reading the Wheel of Time series early in my college days, and despite its flaws it does have some neat parts and ideas. The problem was that it was so ridiculously huge, and so full of padding, that you had to dedicate an interminable amount of time getting through it, and there are whole chapters that you can just skip. I finally gave up when I finished a new WoT book and realized that nothing had really happened for over 600 pages. Since then I’ve avoided “fat fantasy” and most of the fantasy stuff I’ve read has been Terry Pratchett, with a tiny bit of old-school sword and sorcery stuff. Still, I decided to listen to the Game of Thrones audiobook just to have some idea what, you know, almost everyone I know is talking about.

Of course, I started I got inspired to work on my Nekomimi Land novella again (more on that tomorrow), which in turn led me to start going through dystopian books again, so I have six of those on my iPhone in audiobook form too. I just finished Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel "We," which was one of the first major dystopia novels and a key inspiration for Orwell's 1984. (Though unsurprisingly a novel about the problems with a carefully regimented, "revolution-free" society under a supreme leader didn't go over well in Russia in the 1920s.) So, yeah, not sure when I'll get back to the remaining 40 or so hours of the Starks being political and angry and cold in GoT.