Game of Thrones

[melon]

I've found season 2 of the walking dead awesome! I don't get why people didn't think it was as good, kept me on the edge of my seat every episode.

No i liked it a lot too ( more than 1st ) but I always appreciate the subtle things more than the action any way. There is just so much of it in most films these days its become mind numbingly boring and ridiculous - cue Michale bay.

m

[neonplanet40]

Is every episode going to be released a week early on HBO go?

[melon]

Is every episode going to be released a week early on HBO go?

dunno

last one was more like Emmanuelle

m

[pollaxe]

The season start has been a bit.. slow... I'd like a bit more fighting interspersed with the bonking.. if only to remind me more of my own life..

[melon]

The season start has been a bit.. slow... I'd like a bit more fighting interspersed with the bonking.. if only to remind me more of my own life..

not called pollaxe for nothin, eh ?

m

[Whiternoise]

Season 3 has officially been commissioned

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1400121.html

[melon]

Is every episode going to be released a week early on HBO go?

looks like it

[neonplanet40]

looks like it

That looks like last weeks episode repeating all week and then episode 3 not showing until next week?

[merdat]

Enjoyed episode 2 last night (recorded)

[Knoxville]

The season start has been a bit.. slow... I'd like a bit more fighting interspersed with the bonking.. if only to remind me more of my own life..

Compared to the books they're actually flying through the early going this season imo and we're losing some important character development for the supporting cast in favour of creepy psuedo religious bonking. Not that I'm complaining, yet

[pollaxe]

Compared to the books they're actually flying through the early going this season imo and we're losing some important character development for the supporting cast in favour of creepy psuedo religious bonking. Not that I'm complaining, yet

Ah, you see I've never really got on with the books - I'm not really sure why. It could be his writing style, I don't know. I felt the last season had a good balance but it felt like it had more of a dynamic with it - by that, I felt a genuine medieval European vibe with it. (I did the Wars of the Roses for my PhD and the GoT stories seem to have more than a bit of those included.) I'm not feeling it so much, this season. At the moment it's striking me more like generic American fantasy. Joffrey's court doesn't seem quite as convincing as Robert (Edward IV) Baratheon's did...

Mind you, it's a wonder we're getting anywhere with the story with the amount of bloody adverts that are in every episode. It probably speaks well that I'm prepared to sit through them to watch the show!

I really should try the books again...

[Knoxville]

His writing style can be a tad erratic, there are times when I think he does a really good job of not sounding like Tolkein or playing up the same archetypes as him (something I detest in quite a lot of fantasy) but then from time to time he'll refer to someone's rear end as their "butt" or use other pieces of what I associate as more modern slang that pulls me right out of it. The way he writes can be difficult too as chapters and later in the series entire books focus on specific characters for very long periods and if you're not a fan of that characters arc it can make for heavy going.

I'd say the second book carries the same kind of vibe you're talking about more than the second season does, I noticed the same things. It just seems to have been lost in translation to move things quicker along for television. For instance there's a lot more focus on the real Baratheon heirs to the throne in the early going, the politics and dirty deals behind their claims and the role the meisters take in attempting to stop the rise of followers of the one true god instead of the Northerners war and the wall. They've cut a lot of scenes involving Joffreys council, Arya and a few other key players too to the point where certain arcs are now more than a little out of sync with where they should be compared to who we have been seeing a lot of. Hopefully they'll slow things back down a little over the next few episodes and cover some of that lost ground.

It's one of those odd shows where I'm glad I read the book not so much because it's better but because it's filling in some of the blanks along the way

[melon]

His writing style can be a tad erratic, there are times when I think he does a really good job of not sounding like Tolkein or playing up the same archetypes as him (something I detest in quite a lot of fantasy) but then from time to time he'll refer to someone's rear end as their "butt" or use other pieces of whata fan of that characters arc it can

Weird, why would he do that I wonder ?

It sounds more like something Id expect from W bURROUGHs

m

[melon]

That looks like last weeks episode repeating all week and then episode 3 not showing until next week?

hah

You see !

Your not drunk at all !

m

[Whiternoise]

The "butt" bits really irritated me, he's quite good at not introducing Americanisms, but when you've structured an entire book in medieval speech it's jarring. Also the way he writes characters' full names all the time is a bit tiring e.g. if it's a chapter on Jon Snow, you don't need to always write "Jon Snow went to bed"!

I think the TV series has pushed on quickly because they need to quickly set the scene for all the characters at the beginning, even if it's lost some of the politics.

Incidentally, Game of Thrones has nothing on the Wheel of Time saga for concentrating on characters for long periods of time. That's torture when you're not really interested

[pollaxe]

Oh my - some friends of mine are really into the Wheel of Time series. They kept recommending it, so I tried the first book but I couldn't get past trollocs. Each time I read the word, a voice in my head shouted "Trollocs!" I kid you not.

If he'd only called them orcs or goblins, I probably could have persevered with it.

I really do struggle with American fantasy literature. I tried the Dragonlance series when I was a nipper and could tolerate the Americanisms ('the wound had quit bleeding,' etc. as American English can have much more direct parallels with Medieval English) but eventually I found the religious allegorical overtones deeply tedious. Though I remember POSSIBLE DRAGONLANCE SPOILER ALERT being moved by Sturm's death scene /POSSIBLE DRAGONLANCE SPOILER ALERT. I was young when I read them, though. I also seem to remember quite enjoying Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar books, though when I went back to the first one, aged in my mid thirties, I found I didn't like it. Again, I was young when I first read them; the same with David Eddings' Belgariad. Another friend really loved the Sparhawk books (I can't remember the name of the series of them) I think they were by David Eddings too, I really struggled with that and gave up halfway.

Give me Peter Morwood, Mary Gentle and J.R.R. Tolkien any day. (Though with Tolkien, I tend to skip anything with songs and too much of the Hobbit stuff.)

Edit: I really like Sharon Penman's writing - it's not fantasy, it's historical literature and I find she's pretty good at setting out the period and the characters. Reading The Sunne in Splendour really helps simplify (or at least familiarise) the men and women of the Wars of the Roses. She can be a bit romantic for my tastes and isn't quite so good with battles but overall, a cracking writer. C. J. Sansom's Shardlake series are brilliant too (set in Henry VIII's reign, Shardlake is a hunchbacked lawyer and the books absolutely ooze with period detail and feeling.) Elizabeth Chadwick is also good, though she too 'suffers' from the romantic focus that Penman sometimes does, IMVHO.