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stridette 's review for:
Fire & Blood
by George R.R. Martin
This was... fine. Like, I know what George was aiming for, here. Tacitus for the Seven Kingdoms. All right. But you know who reads Tacitus? History nerds. You know what everyone else reads? Stories derived from Tacitus. Because Tacitus is boring. So is this, except when Tyrion - I mean Mushroom - gets to have his second-hand input.
Don't get me wrong. There are good stories in here. I'm not shocked to figure out that the latter chunk of this book is apparently what makes up the material for that House of the Dragon show. It probably is a lot of fun to watch. But, you know why that would be? Because the material is probably given some love and care and attention. Characters will have been given room to breathe, and voices with which to speak, and moments of reflection, crisis points, etc etc. None of that is here. It's just monotonous telling, telling, telling. By its very nature, it can show us very little.
It's a shame, because George hasn't lost his capacity for some very imaginative stuff. I'll probably always remember the bit where the girl came back from flying around on her dragon and she was full of... worms? Proper body horror. Love it. But moments like that aren't enough, especially when they're stripped of all their impact. Who even was this kid, really? Who were the people around her, and how did this affect them? We can be told, but we can never feel it for ourselves. It all becomes very lame.
I expect this is the last book we'll get from George, or close to it. It's probably fitting. Low investment from him because he checked out ages ago. Low investment from me because I started reading these books twenty-something years ago and I checked out ages ago, too. The world will move on.
Don't get me wrong. There are good stories in here. I'm not shocked to figure out that the latter chunk of this book is apparently what makes up the material for that House of the Dragon show. It probably is a lot of fun to watch. But, you know why that would be? Because the material is probably given some love and care and attention. Characters will have been given room to breathe, and voices with which to speak, and moments of reflection, crisis points, etc etc. None of that is here. It's just monotonous telling, telling, telling. By its very nature, it can show us very little.
It's a shame, because George hasn't lost his capacity for some very imaginative stuff. I'll probably always remember the bit where the girl came back from flying around on her dragon and she was full of... worms? Proper body horror. Love it. But moments like that aren't enough, especially when they're stripped of all their impact. Who even was this kid, really? Who were the people around her, and how did this affect them? We can be told, but we can never feel it for ourselves. It all becomes very lame.
I expect this is the last book we'll get from George, or close to it. It's probably fitting. Low investment from him because he checked out ages ago. Low investment from me because I started reading these books twenty-something years ago and I checked out ages ago, too. The world will move on.