Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the book in which George Martin betrays his readers, exploiting for profit the very fan base which helped him achieve money and fame. Since people are usually pretty good about discerning when they are being taken advantage of, the whole slew of caustically negative reviews surrounding this book should come as no surprise. In the immortal words of Randall Patrick McMurphy:"When a man's getting screwed he has a right to holler." Hundreds of reviews point to similar truths. 1)A Dance With Dragons contains little to no real plot advancement. This is especially infuriating when the novel is the size of a phone-book. To write a near thousand page novel where "nothing much happens" takes a certain amount of craftsmanship, I'll grudgingly admit. 2)Martin's stall tactics are enabled through character assassination. Tyrion and Dany are practically unrecognizable, having seemingly lost their strength and resolve. If these characters had retained spunk and a sense of agency, Martin might have been forced to take the story a discernible direction. Hence, Martin mangled them beyond recognition. 3)This long, uneventful book relies on plenty of "world building" filler, in the form of tedious, mind-numbing descriptions. It also relies on maintaining the interest of the reader through plenty of lowest common denominator gutter tactics, in the form of excessive and gratuitous sex and violence. 4)Unlike the first 3 books of the series, Martin did not seem to enjoy writing this book. Hence, the writing is weary, uninspired, and sleep inducing. (I think he tried to make up for this by talking excessively about food, which he obviously does love. Unfortunately, this did not improve the book, it merely contributed to the bloat.) Oddly enough, there is a common point of view expressed by many of this book's defenders, and even by some of its detractors. This point of view is basically that "A Dance With Dragons may not be up to the quality of some of the other books in the series, but a bad George Martin book is still better than almost any other fantasy book out there." I totally disagree. The world of Fantasy Fiction is full of wonderful authors worth reading. Whether one is talking about relatively neglected geniuses of the past like E.R. Eddison or Fritz Leiber, or obvious choices like Tolkien or LeGuin, or contemporary figures like Tim Powers or Robin Hobb, there is no dearth of first rate material. It is mystifying to me why many people tend to assume that George Martin is the standard bearer, the best the genre has to offer. This assumption does not bear scrutiny. Sure, I really enjoyed the first three books of this series and consider them very good, but even Martin at his best seems to suffer from a defective worldview: nihilism masquerading as realism. Even if one puts the first 3 books of this series high in the fantasy pantheon, there is no getting around the fact that A Dance With Dragons fails on many levels. It is much worse then the misstep that was book 4. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of a worse fantasy book. What is particularly galling and pernicious is that the mainstream media has decided to jump on the Martin bandwagon and give A Dance With Dragons laudatory reviews. (I'm sure marketing considerations has nothing to do with it...) Not only is an overrated author getting an excessive amount of attention, but newcomers to the fantasy genre may well give up on the genre entirely if they read Martin's train wreck of a series under the false assumption that this is the epitome of fantasy. I would like to forget about A Song of Ice and Fire entirely. Unfortunately, the HBO series and accompanying marketing blitz ensures that Mr. Martin and his series will be the topic of conversation for some time to come. Well, then here are my two cents: George Martin has become the contemporary Darth Vader of the Fantasy world. His influence is toxic. He is a powerful villain in the Fantasy Fiction Galaxy. He exploits his fan base, he crafts inferior works designed NOT to advance a story, he utilizes a vast marketing machine to sell a series that even in its best moments contains an ugly and erroneous world view and which in its worst moments panders to very vulgar tastes, he insulates himself from criticism, he stigmatizes those who have criticisms, he gives fantasy fiction a bad name. Come to think of it, I don't think Fantasy Fiction even had a Darth Vader prior to GRRM. No other genre author I am aware of merits the negative reaction that Martin so richly deserves. Congratulations, Mr. Martin, on this singular accomplishment!