Game of Thrones: The Genius of Subtlety

On a recent mini-vacation (from hell!), I happened to wander into a Barnes and Noble in Las Cruces, New Mexico--yes, Virginia, brick and mortar bookstores do still exist!--and while perusing the SFF books I found a copy of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, which is actually the first title in the hefty A Song of Fire and Ice series on which the HBO television show is based.

I hesitated about buying it. Briefly. And then I snapped it up. After all, I was in dire need of some good reading material. And Game of Thrones had to be a pretty great read. No brainer.

So while a dozen workman hammered, shouted, stomped about, swore, and rippppppped off the old surface of the roof they were repairing on the Hotel Encanto right outside my window! (I told you it was a vacation from hell) I found some relief from all the aggravating commotion between those pages.

Image property of Bantam Books/
Penguin Random House

I'd never read one of Martin's books before, in spite of the fact he's also a well known -- and local -- SciFi author, and I was immediately taken with his voice and style. His genius of vocabulary isn't the impressive words he uses, it's how he chooses the perfect words and threads those words together like a lush Winterfell tapestry. His descriptions are so smooth, so artistically crafted, so incredibly fluid that the prose melted right off the page and only the images remained.

And what images!

Sweeping, ice-crested mountains, ancient spring-warmed castles, solid, snorting black destriers, and people. Real people, cloaked in mud or finery, swearing, joking, grunting personalities set in a vivid world of history, fortune, legend and hardship, and with personal stories that inter-meshed and braided like an elaborate Celtic knot.

In other words, reader heaven.

In a workshop I once took, an instructor said that when you tell a story you should try to make your words invisible on the page. The words shouldn't be what your reader sees, only the visions they paint in the mind. I've always taken that advice to heart and I found Martin's prose the ultimate example.

Having watched the entire HBO series these books were based on became both a blessing and a curse. It's a curse because I already had sharp, visual pictures of the characters imprinted in my mind and some of the descriptions really didn't fit the portrayal I'd come to know. None of that was insurmountable, but it took some will to mentally edit familiar faces or features to match the characters as they were created.

But the blessings were manyfold. Knowing a good part of the story that lies ahead (even though I realize some of it will deviate from the books), I could see Martin's true genius at work. Such artistic, subtle foreshadowing, so many tiny clues and cues hidden in the text! My mouth literally dropped open at the underlying revelations hidden just beneath the cover of those carefully clever words, and at the exact dialogue the characters would later utter on the screen revealed in its full context in print. Wow! I thought. Did Martin have the entire cast of intricate characters and future story arc all laid out in his head as he was writing his initial chapters? It seems he must have. Or at least a functioning skeleton as fleshed out as any White Walker.

But for me, this was the greatest epiphany of all.

I was surprised to find the copyright date on Game of Thrones as 1996. 1996! Well over 20 years ago! That's about the time I started my career in military support, about the same time our house was built. And over that long course of time, Martin wrote four more volumes as hefty as Game of Thrones. Four more novels from 1996 to 2011. Just four novels in fifteen long years. That's an average of nearly four years per novel. The last, published in 2011, was A Dance With Dragons. It took him six years to write that one. He is still working on the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter. It's been seven years to date.

Images are property of Bantam Books/Penguin Random House

This reinforced what I've always believed. Good writing takes time. Exceptional storytelling takes longer. And this was some of the most amazing storytelling I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Even mundane passages had the power to hold me spellbound.

This slow pace in which he completes his works has long been a matter of contention between Martin and his fans, as illustrated in this online article from Winteriscoming.net: What, if Anything, Does George R.R. Martin Owe His Fans? Fans Sound Off.

In a poll posted with the article, there was a breakdown of those who responded:

18.10% said he should set a realistic release date and stick to it.
12.07% demanded he give updates.
25.17% said he doesn't owe his fans anything, but they're still allowed to be upset with him.
27.24% said he owed fans a great book, no matter how long it took
17.41% said he doesn't owe anyone anything.

You know what? I'm in Martin's corner on this one. I think it should always take as long to finish a novel as the author decides it needs to take. Kicking out novels in rapid succession may satisfy fans, but it probably doesn't allow for the time and attention an author may require to fully construct a great story.

Yet having that time is a reality that may only be available to two groups of writers -- the very famous, successful ones...and the persnickety indies.

I'm glad to count myself in at least one of those groups. :)

Have a great week.