Quote Originally Posted by Baba Ga'on
I'll have to disagree with you here. You see, Jon Snow never started off innocent; he was a bastard at court to begin with, hated by Catelyn and weighed down by the fact that he wasn't as full a child of his father's as, say, a Robb or a Bran (Bran's the kid with the powers of vision btw).
He was the ugly stepdaughter, an old cliche, he's also (at least at first) one the most one dimensional characters around. Probably the only character made to be likeable from the start.
I still feel like GM is combining two stories, one is a rather simplistic 'quest' story, the other is an intricate political story, which is the meat of most of the books i've read. The problem it creates is similar to something LOTR suffers from: in the end the efforts of nations/people/kings/whoever will matter very little and the fate is decided by a few lone heroes. Though GM might have a few surprises up his sleeve yet.

And that's really the key to what sets ASoIaF apart from, say, a Tolkien, a WoT, or even a Sword of Truth,
I hope you're not implying that SoT is the best of those series, because, while I don't really care about any of them much (LOTR is saved by having the grace to end it after three books, and thus saying a little more focused) the first book of SoT might just be the worst book i've ever read. I gave up trying to enjoy the book for what it was halfway through (or earlier) and finished it for a laugh. It's extremely badly paced, is incredibly inconsistent in it's own mythology, has a forced happy ending the makes no sense (the kids...), employs *several* deus ex machinas and has laughable characterisation. I'm still wondering how Goodkind ever got that published...


And then, of course, there's this (about Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister; it spoils some stuff from book 1 and 3 so beware)...
Hah, I've read worse spoilers, but I hadn't gotten to that point in book 3 yet. Ned Stark is one of the least likable characters IMO. Yes, he's a traditional good guy, but he's also stubborn and acts dumb just to save his honour.


I don't hold these 'chilches' against it though. My problem with the series is the slow pacing, and the Catelyn, Sansa (and a few others) chapters, my breaks from the series always tend to happen before those


Another series which I do love, Dune, starts off with a book that closely follows the traditional hero story, the main character is even called a Messiah at some point. But the little details, the way the story is told, and not-everything -turns-out alright attitude elevate it far above most books of the 'genre'. It *is* an old story, but it takes a good writer to turn it into something worth reading.