books: November 2005 Archives

Feasting

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There's only one occasional reader of this site (that I know of) who will be as excited about this piece of news as I was: I visited B&N last night, and bought the last copy of this off the shelves:

Feast of Crows

It's been 5 years since the last installment of Martin's series, and if you're a fan of the epic fantasy like me, your patience has just about run thin. Word on the street was that this installment grew so huge that they ended up having to split it into two books (the fact that this one is 700+ pages should give you an idea of why that might have been necessary), necessitating another delay and another layer of editing onto what has been a grueling wait by industry standards.

Martin's one of only a couple of writers in the genre, though, who's probably worth it. Unlike some epic writers who've lost juice as they've gotten successful (e.g. Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks), Martin has been consistently excellent. Over at Amazon, there are already 49 reviews of the book, and the buzz seems to be that this one introduces a lot of new without orienting the reader enough. Having read volumes 1-3 this summer, though, I'm not too worried. And it's hard to imagine Martin not introducing new characters--one of the things that really distinguishes his work from almost anyone else's in fantasy is that he's willing to knock off any character at any time. There's probably only 4 or 5 characters that are "indispensable," and (a) they're not always who you think, and (b) that doesn't mean that they make it through the plot unscathed.

Of course, all of this means that I'm going to have to hold this book at bay while I try and get other things done--rewarding myself with a chapter or two once I've done what I'm supposed to do (instead of what I want to do, which is to hop myself up on caffeine and read Feast of Crows until I pass out, then wake up and finish it. Don't think I can't still do that.)

Sigh. That is all.

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This page is a archive of entries in the books category from November 2005.

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