I Might as Well Face It, I'm Addicted to GRRM: A Song of Ice and Fire

I’m a fanboy snob. I was one of the kids who had their minds blown by Star Wars in 1977. My favourite novels as a lad were Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion sagas. After such brainwashing, you’d therefore expect me to lap up any old fantasy or sci-fi crap, perhaps even getting the peroxide out and dressing up as Elric of Melniboné at fan conventions.

I am quite picky about what genre shit I consume, however. This is possibly why I managed to miss out on the gargantuan talents of George RR Martin (or GRRM as his fans call him). The name didn’t inspire confidence, I guess. Anyway, after coming across a discussion of his stuff on Amazon, I decided to buy the first of his ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, ‘A Game of Thrones’. Now I’m completely addicted – I spent yesterday anxious awaiting the arrival of the third novel in the series like a crack whore awaiting a rock.

The book is primarily set in the fictional realm of the Seven Kingdoms. The world is at a medieval level of development, so no surprises there: you have knights, castles and all the usual feudal gubbins. The plot charts the realm’s rapid descent into a great big civil war that makes the War of the Roses look like an episode of Gladiators. On top of this strife, a decade long winter is descending and sinister forces are gathering in the north...

When I began reading it, I wasn’t very hopeful. I’m not a fan of the cod-mediaeval stuff, so the setting seemed a little tired. However, I liked the multiple viewpoint chapter structure, with the potential for irony as different characters address the same events through their own lens. And, as I read more, the writing seemed richer and standard fantasy trappings became subverted and, frankly, brutalised. It starts as Ivanhoe and ends as 120 Days of Sodom.

Primary protagonists die. Moral lines become blurred. The plot shifts in unexpected ways. The mediaeval setting becomes darker, characterised by violence against the poor by those with power (rape, pillage, massacre, torture, all perpetrated by ‘honourable’ knights). I love that stuff in novels – having my expectations messed with. Even fantasy stories become far more immersive when they reflect the random chaos of the real world.

There are also lovely touches of good descriptive writing – all rooted in earthy nature, as is right from a medieval perspective. The other thing that reflects a mediaeval context is 14-year-old girls being married off and having sex, which has caused a certain amount of censure from concerned citizens on Amazon. I strongly doubt GRRM is a paedophile, but he does seem to be obsessed with children surviving the brutality of the world and becoming adults before their time.

Anyway, I’m now a big geeky GRRM fan and it’s great that he is still alive, churning these epic books out. Long may the addiction continue…

Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Review

While working and parenting, I’m normally only able to read about 5 pages of a book at the end of the day (just before my head hits the pillow). However I’m currently working my way through a series of dense, symbolic, almost Proustian books that are keeping me awake a little longer. And they’re – mumble it apologetically – science fiction. The series is called ‘The Book of the Long Sun’ by one of my favourite writers Gene Wolfe.

Having just finished two of the four novels in this series, it could be that I'm being premature by offering a review of them. However, I'm so besotted with Wolfe's prose that I really can't wait.

I bought `Litany of the Long Sun' (the collected volume of the first two books ‘Nightside the Long Sun’ and ‘Lake of the Long Sun’) some time ago and initially found the writing too obtuse and dense to progress beyond the first few pages. Initially things happen very slowly, with a very short period of time covered in great detail. I came back to it l

ast month, however, and found that it's one of those books that deserve persistence and, ultimately, offer incredibly rich rewards.

The books are set on the interior of what I guess you'd call a planet-sized tubular colony ship (known as `the whorl'), with the `long sun' acting like a giant solar fluorescent tube up the middle, providing heat and light. The ship has been on its journey for so long that none of the inhabitants remember that their world is artificial. However, this sci-fi setting belies the feverish imagination and literary intelligence that make this book so compelling.

The plot follows the young a priest – or ‘Patera’ – Silk as he attempts to save the Sun Street Manteion, the neighbourhood church he runs. It’s in the poorest area of the city-state of Viron and is bought by a powerful criminal kingpin named Blood.

Silk worships a pantheon of Gods, whose origin can be guessed by the fact that their Olympus is called ‘Mainframe’. However, Silk’s quest to save the Manteion is driven by a divine vision bestowed by ‘the Outsider’, who may be the ‘real’ God as we understand him. Mind you, another less miraculous explanation of Silk’s epiphany is offered towards the end of ‘Lake of the Long Sun’. As you can tell already, nothing is taken as read in a Wolfe novel. Everything is open to interpretation.

Indeed, Wolfe plays games with the reader– dropping in clues can easily be missed in the plot and intertextual references that connect with other Wolfe novels. For instance, the two-headed god named Pas in the Book of the Long Sun is the tyrant Typhon encountered in the Book of the New Sun. Silk is lame like Severian, the protagonist in the aforementioned tetralogy.

The characterisation is just as slippery: Silk is an earnestly just man, who strives to stay within the moral laws of his religion, but he is still capable of justifying compromises or capitulation with the criminal Blood in self-serving ways.

The writing style reminds me of 19th Century symbolist paintings - slippery of meaning, stoked by classical allusions, vivid imagery and mythological coda. Indeed, when I read it, I feel that I'm in the world depicted in the bejewelled fantastic paintings of Gustave Moreau. I find myself dreaming of the golden baroque images that Wolfe conjures up in his writing.

Of course, only being two books in, I have no idea of how Silk's story will progress or how all the symbolic threads that are being laid out will come together and resolve themselves. However, I'm enjoying the journey immensely...

Jupiter and Semele by Gustave Moreau