How good are these books? Are they worth a read?

>>8779284
Not and no.

>>8779284
Shit tier

>>8779284
Yeah, tremendously enjoyable fantasy lit. If you're not a stuck up pretentious person who only reads obscure philosophical essays.

They are trash. Invest your time better elsewhere.

>>8779304
amen, brother

The last two were a struggle to get through. At this point I just want the fat man to die so I can drop the series with a clear heart

>>8779284
I stopped halfway through the second book because it all became very tiring reading through repetitive language that GRR Martin clearly felt wouldn't be noticed by those who would read each book years apart as they came out.

Reading the books back to back would be like marathoning Harry Potter movies or something, just absolutely mind numbing.

I've read them when I was like 13,14 and they were awesome back then. Style is mediocre, interesting plot and characters though. Read Malazan.

Her cunt became the world

In the same amount of pages, you could read: The Bible, War and Peace, Infinite Jest, The Lord of the Rings, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Mrs Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, and Animal Farm.

>>8779474
Fuck, now I could never read these wonderful books! Curse you, GRRM!

>>8779483
Wow! You're so right in your sarcasm. Duh! People could just spend their time and read all those books PLUS ASOIAF. It's not like people have a finite time, so there's plenty to read anything you want in the world. Golly me, mister, you sure showed me.

>>8779506
We spend a third of our life sleeping, and another quarter eating, shitting, driving to work, showering, and many other mindless, repetitive tasks. Your time isn't that valuable and you could do much worse than read 5 mildly entertaining fantasy novels before old age dementia turns you into a drooling retard.

his writing is super flowery and super long winded .
he will endlessly sperg about some piece of jamies leather armour or some shit .
and he uses the weirdest memes . nobody ever eats breakfast its alway " and arya broke her fast with some dried cunt bread hurdur "
also with introducing jews and tv everything sucks even more r

reeeeeeeeee

7/10 would read why not . just read faggot and stop talking about reading . hur dur

>>8779529
So, why not do better then? You say you can do worse, but why not do better?

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>>8779284
They are just porn written by a fat fuck that only got popular because of tits and production value in the tv show.

>>8779565
They were actually really popular before the TV show... which is why it got a TV show in the first place

>>8779483
Joke's on you when you reach for the Bible and suddenly die of the cancer of the duodenum you never knew you had.

>>8779284

If you can get through the Twilight-esque chapters of the books, go for it. I found the first two to be a bit boring, but they do have an interesting story.

>>8779406

I'd have to agree with what this guy says, they're alright but they get tiring because GRR Martin is repetitive.

>>8779304
This to an extent, I enjoyed the first three I think. Writing wasn't amazing, but the world is fairly interesting. I liked it a lot more than the WoT books, which tend to get more praise but are even more cliché

>>8779284
Ditto what other people are saying, read up to like the first third of the fourth book, after that it starts to become fanfiction of itself.

I mean, its peak of lenghty fantasy genre fiction? Lets not mention LOTR, but it doesn't get better than ASoIaF in terms of a modern and fresh take on lenghty fantasy series. And it's what people sometimes want to read, they go looking for 'enormous world of fantasy to invest myself in'. You have this, you have Sanderson, Steven Erikson and perhaps few others, but those are rarely loved by so many like this is.

I never felt 'cringe' or boredom reading these. Writing might be bad in some cases, but storytelling works, worldbuilding works and it doesn't seem terribly lacking in anything, at least not first four books or so. People always say 'first three' while forgetting that 1) Feast for Crows is a fan favorite of many, 2) 5th book is bad, but its probably a transition towards conclusion of the story

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>>8779852
>Implying ASOIAF is peak of lengthy fantasy
>Pic related

>>8779852
> 'cringe' or boredom
Dany chapters in a nutshell

>>8779304
I've read the first, got it as a gift, but I cannot imagine myself reading it knowing that I could be reading Dostoyevsky, Aristotle, Joyce...

>>8779284 (OP)
The first three books are god-tier, epic fantasy. I won't say why, just go read them, you'll be glad you did. There's a bit of a drop in quality in Feast of Crows - the story starts to get a bit convoluted and it feels like there's a few too many pointless scenes and padding. Still not too bad though. But Dance With Dragons? A plodding series of vignettes that go nowhere, tedious set pieces which add nothing to the story, the padding turned up to 11 and of course

>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew,

and let us not forget

>When she woke, gasping, her thighs were slick with blood.
>For a moment she did not realize what it was. The world had just begun to lighten, and the tall grass rustled softly in the wind....
>She sat up, afraid that she had soiled herself as she slept. When she brought her fingers to her face, she could smell the blood on
>them. Am I dying? Then she saw the pale crescent moon, floating high above the grass, and it came to her that this was no
>more than her moon blood.

Yeah, don't even give a fuck about Winds of Winter at this point.

>>8781142
holy fucking hell that is horrendous I'm dying

>>8779506
Holy shit I don't think I've ever seen someone so butt mad

>>8779304
What a faggot.

They are not very good. They're not shit, but they're mediocre. I loved them when I was thirteen (when its decent prose stuck out among a sea of genre shitwater), but when you start reading actual literature ASoIaF suddenly becomes the sea of shitwater itself.

That said, no book is worse than any other. They may as well be the same, massive book. Or maybe that's only how I felt because I read them all one after another. I guess that corroborates >>8779406.
>>8779529
Why the fuck would you read something only "mildly entertaining" when you could read something fully engaging?

Also lol @ all the people complaining about the plot, as if anyone but plebs would ever care about it.

>>8779290
>>8779299
>>8779314
>>8779565

t.random wannabe unique snowflake nobody who never sold nor wrote a single book in his entire life and thinks his opinion is worth anything but shit

>>8782406
Since when did critics need to produce what they critique you faggot

>>8782406
>You can't say Stalin was bad, when was the last time you ran a country
>Being this delusional

>>8780418
Her Storm of Swords chapters were awful because it was mostly just her obsessing about how much she wanted to fuck some mercenary captain.

>>8781547
That entire fucking chapter is her getting the Shits and her period, it's horrible.

>>8779284
First three are worth the read, but Martin's style is really long-winded, 4&5 are a bit of a slog.

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FAT
PINK
MAST

>>8783025
MYRISH
SWAMP

>>8783014
>>8781547
>>8781142

Is that chapter hated because its prose is particularly bad or because of the gross content?

>>8779284
I love them. I also love LotR (though they are very different). It's about the worldbuilding, the plotting and politics, and some of the grey characters are really interesting. Though I wouldn't blame anyone for disliking them.

>>8779762
>>8779812
FFC is mostly world-building and showing the carnage of war, but even knowing that it gets pretty ponderous, especially with Brienne. ADWD has some interesting storylines and some boring ones. The book finally sets up the Battle of Ice and Battle of Fire (fan names) at the end of the book, but neither is resolved, which is why I think a lot of people didn't like it.

>>8784142
Because it's basically scat porn and period porn. GRRM is a disgusting old man. I can't even imagine how many smut passages were cut by his editors.

>>8785305
> It's about the worldbuilding
I found his world building to be lacklustre. He just rips of things from the real world and chucks them into his world. Dorne is Spain, right down to having a Moor ethnic invasion parallel, The Dothraki are Mongols right down to the steppe on which they live and expressions they say like blood of my blood. LotR felt like real worldbulding. GRRM's world feels paper thin and unoriginal.

>which is why I think a lot of people didn't like it.
I didn't like it because the whole book is poorly written. GRRM has no idea what he is doing. He's dug himself into a massive hole that he has to dig himself out of and it really shows. That and the prose is the worst of all five books.

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmKhGqWcJGY

>>8779284
I read the first 4 and I regret it. The plot is completely senseless and it's obvious he has no idea where anything is going.

>worldbuilding

I can't believe /lit/ still falls for this meme. Worldbuilding can be fine for setting up a story, but in the fourth and fifth books after thousands of pages you don't need to take a detour to worldbuild. That's just excusing the complete nothing that happens in the fourth and fifth books.

It's pretty obvious that he's completely off the rails and has no idea how to steer the story to the endpoint he came up with. I think the ending might actually be cool but we will not see it. I think we might not even see a next book. The TV show is going to end but it's just ramming forward. GRRM has a way inflated sense of his own writing and wants his obviously shit story to go down as the greatest fantasy epic of all time, so he's going stupidly slow to try and make that happen

dont even listen to the meme that the third one is the best. it's where all of the problems begin; bloated prose, filler bullshit, repetitive bullshit. It's a nightmare to read.

the first two are seriously great though. I'd read them, then just watch the show. Watching the show is like 10 hour of casual watching and you get 80% of the same story, whereas its a lot more time to invest in these books which are 80% shit just to enjoy Stannis more

>>8779284
They're ok. Tiny nuggets of quality lodged between oceans of empty pulp. If you just want entertainment I would recommend them, if you don't want to waste your time I would avoid them.

>>8779304
How is this particular brand of acceptance of mediocrity not anti-intellectualism

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>>8779284
Its similar to Rowling.

Started pretty good with a nice bit of world building.

Then we got more specific details and learned they weren't that great at finer details. We started getting more characters and learned they can only write specific sorts of characters and are really bad at most (in Martin's case, he's especially bad at women).

Martin is the new Rowling.

>>8785718
it is anti-intellectualism, and I usually only see it on the reddit boards like /tv/

>>8784142
>Is that chapter hated because its prose is particularly bad or because of the gross content?
Yes. And honestly, such vulgarity is plain not necessary. It adds nothing to the story nor moves it forward in any way.