I hate this as well, and it extends to movies and television as well. In the majority of fiction, it's simply impossible to buy into plots wherein main characters' lives are in danger because you know that they can't die or the author would have nowhere to go with the book. Don't get me wrong there are great books that involve unkillable heroes escaping every trap and surviving unsurvivable falls and mysteriously dodging bullets from 20 feet away and somehow pull it all off, but they're few and far between, and in any case we've seen it all before by now. The only true ending is the bittersweet ending. A happy ending is not an ending at all, for if the story were to continue it could only end in death. There's no way around it. To carve out some measure of happiness in this life is our goal, but it isn't who we are. We are death and sorrow and despair and fear and sadness, every one of us in the end. All this makes the moments of triumph in Martin's story more palpable and certainly more genuine. I can buy Arya's little victories coming from Martin because I know that as an author he's not seduced by those moments of light and triumph and happiness and will allow the story to unfold as it will. You're right, though, the man can be terribly long winded at times, and I worry sometimes that some of the details that he's thrown at us through the first 5 books are going to be forgotten and wasted--they were merely fluff or filler. There's the potential for the story to end and retrospectively show there to be a depressingly enormous amount of nonsense in the story. I'm still holding onto the hope that I'm wrong about that, and that he will in fact weave it all together flawlessly in the end.Originally Posted by Yeargdribble
Also, reading The Reavers by George McDonald Fraser. Think Terry Pratchett with the border between England and Scotland as a backdrop instead of Discworld, and less funny.
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