George R R Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire

I'm a relative newcomer to Martin's work but I always try and see a positive to it. At least I have hours of reading ahead with something I haven't actually read yet.I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a massive fan of fantasy but do love a good story. I'm sick of goblins and orcs. After the success of The Lord of the Rings films the literary world took an epileptic fit on goblins. Every book had them. It became a formula for success rather than a story that really needed to be told. It annoyed me that so many writers, rather than try to think of something new, just punched out a story of goblins and orcs. I was waiting on a highschool romance between a beautiful blonde and a goblin who looked like he had his face turned inside out. Thankfully that didn't happen.What is refreshing about Martin's work is that it doesn't have any of that stereotypical nonsense. It's new and creative and realistic. If you thought hard about it you could almost place the events in history. Ye
s, there are small fantastical elements to his writing but nothing about a quest for the ever elusive and all powerful diamond that if it fell into the wrong hands it could spell the end of civilisation as we know it. I hate that nonsense.I won't spoil the Song of Ice and Fire Saga but I will say it is amongst the best I have read in a long time. Martin has an eye for detail and an uncanny ability to develop character and a finely tuned ear for dialogue.Martin has created a world of civilisations, each with it's own culture and politics, and so believable that you'd think such a place might actually exist somewhere. I know some think the books are a little on the long side but in my opinion to cut anything out would mean slashing a carefully crafted atmosphere, so much so that it would take away from the series as a whole and not just the book itself.My only hope is that Martin has an end in sight and doesn't just keep churning them out due to the recent success of the telev
ision adaptation. It's much better to end on a high with fans begging for more than to walk off into the sunset with only a handful of people wondering where you are.

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