George R.R. Martin has never written fantasy in his life and he sure as hell didn’t start with a Song of Ice and Fire.
Martin writes horror.
That’s the simple truth of Game of Thrones and why I could never stand it. Fantasy for me has always been heroic fantasy. Either Lord of the Rings or Conan the Barbarian. The closest I would ever get to horror was Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser getting into battle with some nightmarish, occult abomination …which they would always kill in the end.
It was all about guys facing impossible odds and winning through in the end, set in a world where magic was real but the internal combustion engine usually wasn’t.
That is fantasy.
George R.R. Martin’s “brilliant subversion” of Tolkien’s trope was nothing more than trying to use those tropes but ending up defaulting into what he is. A horror writer. Here is a link to the original letter letter Martin wrote outlining Game of Thrones, if you don’t believe me. There is nothing in this about subverting Tolkien in the name of high SJW art.
I’m sure Martin tried to write that book. I mean come on, look at how much money Jordan was making back then. If you weren’t trying to write epic fantasy, you were in the wrong business.
But heroic fantasy is all about the action. It’s about battle and the being in the now that comes from knowing you are on a three day roller coaster ride and it has no tracks. The feeling of triumph from looking at the body of a guy who was doing every fucking thing in his power to end your life and you made him fail that.
All of that stuff is beyond Martin’s grasp.
Yeah, I get that all the time.
Everyone who sucks up to me says so.
I remember skimming back and forth in the first two books of the series (the only ones I read, I grant you), trying to find a battle scene and there just isn’t one. What you get are people describing the the aftermath of a battle and the key events that happened in it, (IE who died that time), but no real action.
Martin can’t write about battle and adventure. He can not write action.
So he defaulted, to his primary skill set. Horror.
I’m not really into horror but I have read some of his works and they are decent examples of the genre. Sandkings and Nightflyers, both deliver on what that audience wants.
But here is the thing about horror. It’s all about a lopsided power dynamic. Whatever is after you has all the power. It’s all about the build up and your protagonist’s coming dread as she realizes there is nothing she can do to defeat the thing that is coming for them all. It’s all about fear and powerlessness.
Which is why it works in the market place. Seventy percent of readers are women and women understand bonedeep what it’s like to be physically powerless. It’s as primal as it gets for them.
Men on the other hand. Real men. Don’t really get horror. “When on bad-ground, withdraw. When on encircled-ground, devise strategies. When on deathground, fight!” -Sun Tzu.
It says something about me, that my favorite horror movie is Evil Dead II. Yeah, Ash was up against impossible odds but if he died he was going down swinging his chain saw and blasting away with shotgun. Snarling defiance with his last breath. Beaten to be sure but ultimately… Undeafeated.
The closest thing in tone to A Song of Ice and Fire are Stephen King’s “fantasy” novels. There is a reason for that.
The Dark Herald 
Yes! No battles. Steven Erikson gives us some good action especially in Dead House Gates. The Chain Of Dogs has to be one of the best battle sequences I’ve read for awhile. Doomed but they went down like men and managed to get the civilians they were escorting to safety. Later books he got lost in the weeds. Jonathan Moeller in Frostborn and Sevenfold Sword can write both adventure and battle sequences. GRRM should stick to horror and stuffing his face.
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He also really liked to r̶i̶p̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ pay homage to Lovecraft with the Drowned God and the Greyjoys.
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Interesting point. The prologue in Game of Thrones, if taken as a singular short story, reads exactly as horror. And so do multiple chapters in the rest of the series. Not badly written ones, quite good actually, but those chapters coupled with all the intrigue, politics, incest, etc. take center stage while the few “Fantasy” elements are pushed back, or not even present.
Martin is very much like Neil Gaiman, in that they are both great if you are introduced to them in your early years, but if you have instead read the majority of the authors that inspired them beforehand, you realize just how inferior and lame they are.
This is the last time I’ll ever look into a popular series just because my relatives and friends do so. Waste of time.
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It’s all about fear and powerlessness.
that’s quite astute.
otoh, that’s what’s wrong with most Left wing fiction.
for who can exercise power in the face of “the inexorable forces of History”.
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