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Ecco the Dolphin posted:Why is everyone talking like it's a foregone conclusion that Cersei will go right back to scheming and paranoia? It seemed like GRRM went well out of his way to show that Cersei was truly and deeply broken by her shame-walk. I think it's going to be a relatively permanent character change for her. Sure, she could be faking, but everything in her last POV and the epilogue seemed to suggest it was for real, and that she's done with power-lust. She's faking. She's not done by a long shot. I think she's doomed to fail, but her failure - unless GRRM completely botches it - will be very interesting. Also I think it's pretty obvious that Jamie is going to kill her. How else can it end, really?
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Aug 9, 2011 03:23
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I wish to express my current aggravation through poetry. What the gently caress, Dany? You went through with the marriage. I am pissed, like T-Rex. (Putting the book down again for a day or two. This is taking me an eternity to get through.)
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Aug 9, 2011 03:34
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hhhmmm posted:Because the last two books are poorly edited. The only bad editing in the last two books has been repeated phrases. The writing is his best yet and some of the most evocative fantasy writing in years.
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Aug 9, 2011 03:35
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Azure_Horizon posted:The only bad editing in the last two books has been repeated phrases. This is starting to drive me a little nutty, too. You can tell that the editing was rushed.
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Aug 9, 2011 03:48
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Azure_Horizon posted:The only bad editing in the last two books has been repeated phrases. The writing is his best yet and some of the most evocative fantasy writing in years. I got retard drunk the other night and was asking complete strangers where whores go. I woke up with bruises... hellbastard fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Aug 9, 2011 |
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Aug 9, 2011 04:04
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hellbastard posted:I got retard drunk the other night and was asking complete strangers where whores go. withak posted:Doesn't he have an actual legitimate mental disorder that prevents him from working? Probably not the best idea to choose an occupation where you have to survive off putting out creative energy if you suffer from depression, but hey he wrote two good books so if that's all he ever manages at least the world is a little bit better because of it 
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Aug 9, 2011 04:08
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Quantify! posted:Did you really because this is kind of funny Embarrasingly, yes... reality got away from me, and 1000 pages of "Where do whores go?" really left a mark in my brain.
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Aug 9, 2011 04:11
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hellbastard posted:Embarrasingly, yes... reality got away from me, and 1000 pages of "Where do whores go?" really left a mark in my brain.
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Aug 9, 2011 04:16
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Quantify! posted:hey he wrote two good books so if that's all he ever manages at least the world is a little bit better because of it The idea of someone expressing this sentiment about Gurm is amusing.
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Aug 9, 2011 04:28
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hellbastard posted:I got retard drunk the other night and was asking complete strangers where whores go. I believe that everyone's words are wind.
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Aug 9, 2011 04:43
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Eggnogium posted:The idea of someone expressing this sentiment about Gurm is amusing.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:11
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Azure_Horizon posted:The only bad editing in the last two books has been repeated phrases. The writing is his best yet and some of the most evocative fantasy writing in years. Except there are universal complaints about pacing, here and on amazon. This could have been fixed by a good editor.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:13
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Jewlian posted:Thanks, just got it for my nook. This and "The Republic of Thieves" will suffice for about a week of reading. Looking for moar please.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:15
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All Dance needed was LESS riding pigs MORE riding dragons
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Aug 9, 2011 05:16
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Quantify! posted:I was talking about Scott Lynch I know, I was just saying it's funny that people have the polar opposite reaction to ASOIAF's release pace.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:22
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FMguru posted:Bad editing is endemic to mega-hit series authors. See how the Harry Potter books more than doubled in size after they became international best-sellers, or how Tom Clancy's books after his first two could have a third of their text pruned away without losing anything. This is probably all true, but his editor bragged in an interview about the major plot resolutions she got him to cut. Gurm did not want to cut some chapters at the end but she convinced him to. So apparently he is one author who listens to his editor. And she sucks. Anyone who thinks that Penny added anything to ADWD should be editing, at best, the copy on the back of Barbie boxes.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:26
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Jewlian posted:Could you guys please offer me some recommendations? I just finished ADwD then going based on recommendations on this forums I finished Abercrombie's The First Law, Best Served Cold and Heroes. Now I have nothing to read. I'd like something in a low fantasy setting with a good dose of cynicism and wry humor. Glen Cook - The Black Company (first trilogy is by far the best)
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Aug 9, 2011 05:31
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Amethyst posted:Except there are universal complaints about pacing, here and on amazon. This could have been fixed by a good editor. I don't have nearly the same issues with the pacing as other people do. I enjoyed all the slow worldbuilding and lack of plot movement. I couldn't care less about Amazon reviews.
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Aug 9, 2011 05:40
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regulargonzalez posted:Glen Cook - The Black Company (first trilogy is by far the best) There's terrific stuff later on too; an amazing amount of cool stuff happens in She Is the Darkness. I'll also recommend his Dread Empire series, start with A Fortress In Shadow.
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Aug 9, 2011 06:16
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Every time I read one of these "It's just like ASOIAF!" books I end up getting burned, but I keep going back to the flame...
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Aug 9, 2011 06:20
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Eggnogium posted:Vagina itself also has this root. Vagina is Latin for sword-sheathe. Most Germanic languages have cognates of "oval office" so it goes back a hell of a long way. Latin (notably not a Germanic language) also has the suspiciously similar-sounding word "cunnus" for, well, "oval office". Ninja edit: As for "penis", that actually means "tail" in Latin; its use as a serious name for that bit of male anatomy originated as a euphemism. As did the use of "vagina" for the female bit.
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Aug 9, 2011 07:25
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What's the origin of pussy and cock, thanks in advance.
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Aug 9, 2011 07:50
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Quantify! posted:Every time I read one of these "It's just like ASOIAF!" books I end up getting burned, but I keep going back to the flame... Well, let's look at some differences so you know what you're getting into. Cook relies heavily on unreliable narrators. In the BC series they're the annalists of the Company who record its history, and the book is more or less what the character supposedly wrote down. Croaker especially lies about himself, drops dark hints about why he ran off to join a mercenary company and generally grumbles his way through some seriously outlandish warfare. Dread Empire is told differently, mostly in 3rd person personal narration (if I remember my terms); you get in their heads quite a bit but it's not completely the character's perspective. There's also a lot of narration on the grand scheme of things. In the Dread empire series he summarizes two years of bitter warfare in three pages, with updates on all the main characters and descriptions of half a dozen or more major battles. That's two or three whole novels for GRRM. For a lot of people, the change from multiple first person viewpoints will be jarring and might put them off his style altogether. Others will find the fact that GRRM is as wordy as Cook isn't refreshing. In any of Cook's novels you're going to get as much intrigue, more battles, a hell of a lot more magic and an entirely different writing style. A lot of his books sound like stories the old salts in the Marine battalion Cook was attached to as a corpsman would have told. Even when you're trying to deal with bad rear end crazy sorcerers it still feels gritty and realistic. Vietnam War fiction on peyote is how one reviewer put it,and it is. There's terrible warfare going on, from the viewpoint of a grunt or junior officer One more thing, the Black Company relies on trickery, deceit and con games far more than brute force or even maneuver in the field. It affects the stories, you get far more capers than stand up fights. In the Dread Empire, you get a lot more straight up heavy infantry work. Both are fun.
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Aug 9, 2011 08:16
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The Lies of Locke Lamora was pretty good on its own, I haven't read the second one and I will eventually, but its not like I'm dying to find out what happens next. GRRM on the other hand...
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Aug 9, 2011 08:25
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pimpslap posted:I recall Maester Aemon saying that dragons are genderless in his monologue to Sam of realizing that Dany is the focus of the prophecy. So, I suppose they reproduce like asexual frogs? They change sex based on their rider, who then mates with them.
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Aug 9, 2011 09:08
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Can't wait to see Dany loving a dragon.
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Aug 9, 2011 11:28
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RCarr posted:Can't wait to see Dany loving a dragon. Geez you're so ignorant 
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Aug 9, 2011 11:33
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Doibhilin posted:This is probably all true, but his editor bragged in an interview about the major plot resolutions she got him to cut. Gurm did not want to cut some chapters at the end but she convinced him to. So apparently he is one author who listens to his editor. And she sucks. Anyone who thinks that Penny added anything to ADWD should be editing, at best, the copy on the back of Barbie boxes. "George, your book is already too big. We have to cut something otherwise we won't even be able to physically bind the paperback." "OK." "You can trim about 30% of the endless travelogues or you can drop the chapters at the end." "Cut the ending."
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Aug 9, 2011 13:15
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regulargonzalez posted:Glen Cook - The Black Company (first trilogy is by far the best) Ehhhh, I picked that up earlier this year and couldn't get into it at all.
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Aug 9, 2011 13:15
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Argali posted:Ehhhh, I picked that up earlier this year and couldn't get into it at all. Same here. I enjoyed the writing style, but found the characterisation to be EXTREMELY lacking. At the end of the first book I felt like I only knew a couple of the characters, everyone else was pretty much interchangeable. It wouldn't have been so bad had there been interesting events in the background, but as the book progressed the focus moved from the engaging battles and intrigues of the early chapters to bland high fantasy conflicts. Watching a story of Dark Queens and Chosen Ones through the eyes of a grizzled mercenary was a good novelty, but no more than that. When I checked Wikipedia and saw that the other books continued to develop in that direction, I gave up on acquiring them.
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Aug 9, 2011 14:26
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Finally finished this book and the only thing I really wanted from the ending was a hilarious description of Daario being thrown from a trebuchet. Dance and Feast should've been heavily edited down to one book. They also shouldn't end on such bullshit annoying cliffhangers. The first three books didn't end on cliffhangers 
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Aug 9, 2011 14:59
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Azure_Horizon posted:I don't have nearly the same issues with the pacing as other people do. I enjoyed all the slow worldbuilding and lack of plot movement. I couldn't care less about Amazon reviews. I wouldn't mind the pacing and worldbuilding if this were book 2 or 3 and GRRM were 20 years younger. But he has 2 books left so we are either going to get a drastic shift in tone from slow paced worldbuilding to major plot advances every chapter, or we are going to have a rushed and unsatisfying ending (like they largely hand-wave the war or Dany dies before she gets here or something stupid). Or else GRRM is going to say "well maybe 1 or 2 more books guys" when he is in his mid-70s and finished book 7 then we get no resolution.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:09
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I think that he had to manuever everyone in place first- like get the Wall back in the hands of people who will lose it, get Cersei back into a position of power, etc. I think this book will be like A Storm of Swords. It should just be 1000 pages of wall to wall bloodshed. I'm really looking for that Hodor POV chapter next book though.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:27
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Guy A. Person posted:... and finished book 7... I'm pretty sure that isn't happening.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:28
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Guy A. Person posted:I wouldn't mind the pacing and worldbuilding if this were book 2 or 3 and GRRM were 20 years younger. But he has 2 books left so we are either going to get a drastic shift in tone from slow paced worldbuilding to major plot advances every chapter, or we are going to have a rushed and unsatisfying ending (like they largely hand-wave the war or Dany dies before she gets here or something stupid). Or else GRRM is going to say "well maybe 1 or 2 more books guys" when he is in his mid-70s and finished book 7 then we get no resolution. So, I think he could conceivably get his act together in two books. The next book would include (in 2014):
The last book would be (in 2018):
Knowing Gurm, it won't end happy sunshine unicorns for everyone, or anyone, but in the end Westeros will have a good leader, relative peace, and will have survived a surprisingly short winter. None of the great grand mysteries about magic or religion get answered, because that's life. Each book will be longer and less tight than the previous one, but we'll still eat it up because we're suckers.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:30
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ImJasonH posted:plot predictions A lot of these make sense in the light of just DwD, but I feel like this would leave a lot of plot threads unresolved. Marwyn and how the maesters' plot ties into everything, the connection, if any, between Valyria/dragons and the Others, Euron's connections to Marwyn/Valyria/Bloodraven(?), the nature of the Shadow, Sansa/Littlefinger, Varys' real motives (I still think there's more to him we don't know about), the truth or falsehood of the various religions, etc. Basically what I'm saying is that the rest of the plot seems pretty predictable at this point, but GRRM has left himself a ton of latitude to still throw us a lot of curveballs.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:37
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ImJasonH posted:So, I think he could conceivably get his act together in two books. Definitely, I am just saying if he does manage to resolve all of that in two books, it will be a major shift in pacing from the past 2. Especially the Dany chapters, which have been slow paced world building since book 2 and will have to shift into full gear starting with her first chapter in the next book. Speaking of which, I know the consensus is that the Dany chapters were awful in this book, but at least they were better than her sitting around some rich guys mansion for the entirety of book 2. I wish she had abandoned Mereen but her motivations make sense, and she is learning the difficulties of ruling and doing SOMETHING. I think Clash is where the Dany story got badly messed up. It should have ended with her gaining the Unsullied, and we should have been halfway through the Mereen story by the end of Storm.
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Aug 9, 2011 15:59
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ImJasonH posted:So, I think he could conceivably get his act together in two books. GRRM keeps saying he would prefer not to expand the series, and I do really, really believe him. ...except that he's going to submit a manuscript which needs to be split because it is physically too large to be bound into a single volume, and lo and behold, the series has just expanded.
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Aug 9, 2011 16:10
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Ecco the Dolphin posted:A lot of these make sense in the light of just DwD, but I feel like this would leave a lot of plot threads unresolved. Marwyn and how the maesters' plot ties into everything, the connection, if any, between Valyria/dragons and the Others, Euron's connections to Marwyn/Valyria/Bloodraven(?), the nature of the Shadow, Sansa/Littlefinger, Varys' real motives (I still think there's more to him we don't know about), the truth or falsehood of the various religions, etc. Well, one big wildcard is that you have two dragons on the loose and it's not clear that anyone can control them. I really like idea of Bran warging into one though. That would be pretty badass.
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Aug 9, 2011 16:26
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I forget, where exactly is Howland Reed at this point? Just chillin' in the Neck? Someone has to meet him at some point for R+L=J, and nobody seems to be heading in that direction anytime soon.
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Aug 9, 2011 16:28
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