George R.R. Martin

Sunday Night’s Battle of Winterfell Was a Hot, Dark Mess

by

SPOILERS AHEAD

I’ve been watching GOT for years and have enjoyed the battle scenes, but yesterday’s over-long episode was a dud, and stole too much from World War Z and The Lord of the Rings.  It may have cost millions to film, but it looked like crap.

Yes, there were some exciting moments in the long-awaited confrontation, but they didn’t sustain almost ninety minutes of slashing and stabbing and hacking and running and shouting.  Much of it pointless, and some of it ridiculous.

My main problem was with the choices of the director and cinematographer.  Most of the episode was murky and hard to follow, especially the long periods where John and Dany piloted their dragons in the sky and it was hard to know what exactly they were trying to do or where they were.  Would it have spoiled anything to have been able to see the action more clearly or killed the writers to add even one line of dialogue?  Grunting doesn’t count.  And how was John suddenly so adept at flying a dragon when he’d only recently climbed aboard one?  Did he take a seminar?

Scenes inside Winterfell were just as murky as the ones in the air, but worse than that, they felt as repetitive as all the endless zombie attacks in The Walking Dead where the heroes stab and hack at a horde of zombies or loners. And they were very confusing because of the editing.  It would look like someone was dying, then it didn’t, then it did? That’s a cheap way to build suspense or at least try to sustain it.

Why did Arya flee to the library of all places when it wasn’t defensible? Likewise, why did we need to see her run through one hallway after another?  Yes, we got it: she was trying to escape.  Shouldn’t she have been able to find someplace better to hide–it’s her home after all.

More questions proliferated.  How did Dany survive amid the gigantic scrum of the dead attacking her? Why did the Red Lady give up the ghost? Why did we have to see the Night King approach Bran in slow motion? And given his amazing powers, why didn’t Old Blue Eyes head directly to Bran since Bran was so poorly defended?  If Bran was his target, the armies massed against the White Walkers and company could have waited. The entire battle was a frigging waste of time.

Previous battle scenes in the series have been clearer, more exiting, and more coherently filmed.  Most of this episode felt like the endless last half hour of a superhero movie or action thriller.  Instead of explosions we had dragon fire.  Lots and lots and lots of dragon fire.  And dead people tumbling all over each other like lemmings.

The night-time battle at Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings, which was echoed throughout the episode, was much more dramatic and more clearly staged and filmed.  Halfway through last night, I didn’t care who lived or died, just hoped the episode would end soon because it was so tedious and illogical.  Final questions: Did Sansa and Tyrion really need to stare at each other wordlessly for what seemed like minutes before actually doing something?  And how did Arya suddenly appear out of nowhere to become the savior of the Seven Kingdoms?

I’m a fan of the novels, but this battle did not live up to their promise or even match previous seasons of the TV series itself.  It was dreary, dull, and self-defeating.

Lev Raphael teaches creative writing on line at writewithoutborders.com.  He is a big fan of fantasy and science fiction in print and on screen.

Don’t Diss Rihanna When You Blog

by

The Internet is a breeding ground for hatred: look at what’s been happening to Leslie Jones.

But bloggers don’t usually deal with anything that severe.  What they do face is the lackwits. These people can be, but mostly they’re just critical and convinced of their wisdom when what they write to you proves the opposite. They hit the keys whenever a blogger dares to criticize anything or anyone they admire–and they have standard, boring lines of attack.

Say, for instance, that you’re not crazy about Rihanna or you do like her music but don’t think she was ready for a Video Vanguard Award.  You  don’t think her vids are classics and you don’t think she’s in a class with Madonna, Kanye, Brittany, and Beyoncé.  Expect to get accused of being jealous of RiRi’s success.

rihannaNow, unless you’re a pop singer, a charge like that doesn’t really make any sense.  But even if you were a singer, why would any kind of critique necessarily mean you’re jealous?  Can’t you have valid reasons for not admiring her body of work or thinking that maybe it’s too soon for her–at 28–to get the award?  Does that automatically make you a hater?

Lackwits have emailed me when I’ve blogged something remotely negative about a book, movie, or TV show, targeting me because I’m an author.

Back at the beginning of the latest season of Game of Thrones, I blogged that I thought Jon Snow’s resurrection was dull compared to other, more dramatic moments in other episodes. The inevitable response showed up: I was jealous of George R.R. Martin.  Oh, and guess what?  They had never heard of me.

A truly devastating comment.

frank side eyeAnd I just blogged about Michael Connelly’s New York Times review of Caleb Carr’s Surrender, New York, saying that the novel sounded unappealing as Connelly described it.  Of course someone felt she had to charge me with “sour grapes.”  Seriously?  I don’t write like either one of them, never have, never will, never wanted to, and never expected their kind of career.  .

Here’s the thing: Most authors aren’t on best seller lists and aren’t widely known. That’s the case even for writers like me who make a good living from their royalties, get sent on book tours at home and abroad, are paid very well for speaking engagements, win awards, and have successful careers.

Why’s that?  Because the average reader in America only reads or listens to one book a month and there are 80,000 published every year.  When people say that they’ve never heard of an author or charge an author with sour grapes because that person doesn’t like a book, all they do is waste an email and make themselves sound like a doofus.  Of course, they supply bloggers with material, and novelists, too….

hugh laurie

Lev Raphael is the author of the novel The German Money–which a Washington Post rave review compared to Kafka, John le Carré and Philip Roth–as well as 24 other books in many genres.

“The Expanse” Gives “Leviathan Wakes” The Juice it Needed

by

People often complain that a movie or TV series isn’t “as good as the book.”

With SyFy’s The Expanse, the opposite is true: the writers have improved a dull, sometimes amateurish novel. Yes, I know Leviathan Wakes has a great cover blurb from George R.R. Martin. But that’s not surprising: one of the people who wrote it is his assistant (James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). It also got a Hugo Award nomination. Again, anything with that kind of pedigree is sure to get noticed and generate sales.

expanse

But it’s a long-winded novel that never really lives up to the clever premise of fierce rivalry between Earth and its smarter, classier, richer colony Mars. Their mutual pawn is the resource-starved Asteroid Belt, peopled by low-gravity creole-speakers who resent being looked down on.

There are some good action sequences in Leviathan Wakes, which tries to blend a classic PI novel with “space opera,” but the book rarely comes alive. That’s too bad, because the authors have come up with some great details like carpeting that’s more durable than stone and a colorful Belter dialect that blends many languages.

expanse shotThe overall problem might be the co-authorship. Chapters alternate between the third person point of view of an executive officer of a ship bringing ice to the water-starved Belt (Holden) and a detective on the Belt looking for a lost rich girl (Miller). That girl weirdly becomes a major third character even after she dies, haunting Miller’s imagination (and worse). It’s a shame, because she’s a bore and just won’t shut up.

The low-gravity Belters are tall and thin-boned, angry, underprivileged, resentful, and violent–but we don’t see and hear enough of them. Instead, we get lots of shallow characterizations throughout; sketchy settings; a thinly-imagined future where they still have bagels, sushi, and metal coffee pots; and writing that barely serves its purpose or even falls flat. What’s it supposed to mean that Holden walks with “uncommented athleticism”?

Expanse_ShipHolden and Miller don’t meet for a few hundred pages and when they do, the writers retell events from each protagonist’s shallow perspective, which gets tedious. Neither one is very compelling when it comes down to it, and as a team, they’re twice as dull.  Almost as dull as the flat ending.

But none of that matters in The Expanse, which revs the book up with a sexy cast, excellent FX, and a tighter, leaner story line. Scenes that drag in the novel speed by. And you don’t have to deal with bad prose, just commercials which you can fast forward through.

Martin was more than kind to the authors of Leviathan Wakes, but they don’t even approach his mastery of the writing craft.

Lev Raphael’s books — from mystery to memoir — can be found on Amazon.