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Books & Comics / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire
« on: August 31, 2011, 05:05:04 pm »
Ah, maybe I should pick up Black Company then!
Warning for anyone who hasn't picked up the series yet: DO NOT go to the wiki. They make no effort to hide major plot points, so even reading the capsule summary at the top of the page can give you major spoilers.
Another flaw: the author names almost every person who appears in the book, even if they're relatively insignificant -- so it's easy to get totally lost in the sea of characters and not have any idea which ones are the important ones. I'm pretty sure the author was just trying to reflect real-life relationships (think of all your family, then all your friends, then all your acquaintances, then maybe the shop clerks or mailmen or neighbors you don't really "know" but are familiar to you -- it's a lot of people), but it can be REALLY confusing at first. Luckily the author (or editor) recognizes this and includes an appendix of all the characters in the back of each book, ridiculous as it is to need an appendix to keep them all straight. The TV show also helps, by giving you faces to put with names.
Now finished the TV series and just finished the second book. It was better than the first (though I wouldn't recommend skipping the first).
Warning for anyone who hasn't picked up the series yet: DO NOT go to the wiki. They make no effort to hide major plot points, so even reading the capsule summary at the top of the page can give you major spoilers.
Another flaw: the author names almost every person who appears in the book, even if they're relatively insignificant -- so it's easy to get totally lost in the sea of characters and not have any idea which ones are the important ones. I'm pretty sure the author was just trying to reflect real-life relationships (think of all your family, then all your friends, then all your acquaintances, then maybe the shop clerks or mailmen or neighbors you don't really "know" but are familiar to you -- it's a lot of people), but it can be REALLY confusing at first. Luckily the author (or editor) recognizes this and includes an appendix of all the characters in the back of each book, ridiculous as it is to need an appendix to keep them all straight. The TV show also helps, by giving you faces to put with names.
Now finished the TV series and just finished the second book. It was better than the first (though I wouldn't recommend skipping the first).