What Is The Longest Fantasy Epic?
07.12.11
With today’s release of Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin has dispatched another 1510 pages of his mesmerizing A Song of Ice And Fire series. Who’s counting? Well, we are, with the help of Walk Into Mordor, The Green Dragon group, LibraryThing.com and Amazon. Quality surely beats quantity but some of the greatest fantasy series have managed both at astonishingly long page counts (word count was unavailable).
Although Martin’s Ice and Fire series measures only five books now–compared with Wheel Of Time’s 14 books–it already ranks in the top 25 in the thorough collection we’re using as the basis of this graph. Of course Ice and Fire’s rank will rise further when Martin releases the planned titles The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. And though there’s no chance that Ice and Fire will catch the series with the highest page count, as a consolation Martin will probably get some swag in his trophy case for HBO’s Game of Thrones come the upcoming Emmy Awards. Check out the graph that reveals the series that have destroyed the most trees. (Just play along with us, Kindle snobs.)
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So how many of these series are required for official nerd cred? I’m only at 3.
Not to be a troll, but the name of the series is “A Song of Ice and Fire”. You should probably fix that.
I don’t get the gushing over this series. I saw the show and started reading the books, and am almost done with #2.
He’s not such a great writer. In fact, in some ways he’s not even good. He’s better than Robert Jordan–but then, even Jordan did a better job of developing his characters early on–but that’s not a very generous compliment.
So I guess I’m saying that he’s trendy & overrated. Why? There are some fundamental flaws with the world he’s created (e.g., 10,000 years and everyone is still speaking the same language? By the shape & relative location of places in Westeros, Riverrun should be a desert, etc.); he bombards the reader with names, heraldy, and new plants/animals that either are never mentioned again or never described (example of the plant/animal thing: shadowcats. These play a significant role in much of the wilderness adventures, but they’re never described other than having a striped pelt. Contrast this lack of description with the constant over-describing of trivial characters’ armor, clothing, hair color, etc.); most of the characters are cardboard cut-outs.
To this last point, most of the characters aren’t fleshed out. When he switches point-of-view from one character to another, there’s no difference in the narrative voice. The only characters that seem to live & breathe and develop are Tyrion and Arya. All the rest feel very… bleh. You don’t really care if they live or die.
Which brings me to the point that most people seem to love love love about these books: Martin “defies convention” with surprise twists that result in the deaths of main characters. First, most of these deaths aren’t of protagonists–that is, Ned’s death doesn’t mean anything to the reader: the tone of the book doesn’t change, the possibilities for a happy/sad ending don’t change. He’s killed off and, aside from his family’s temporary upset, it doesn’t affect the narrative. Yes, yes, I know: the pro- argument is that Martin is reflecting real life, which doesn’t stop when someone dies. Well, duh. But an epic like this requires the reader to be invested in the outcome, to like and root for characters because of who they are, what they do, and how they develop. Martin doesn’t give the reader any of that, except with Tyrion and Arya. Oh, and maybe Jon Snow–but he doesn’t change so much as he ends up surviving.
And for all the other “defying convention,” I think that’s hyperbole. Martin clearly stakes out some absolute good and absolute evil, despite people (especially Martin himself) saying that he reflects messy reality, where the “good guys” are flawed and do bad things, and the “bad guys” can be noble and might only really be “bad guys” because they end up on the wrong side.
Oh, and for all the “fuck” and “cock” and other colloquial, quotidian phraseology he uses, his dialog is by and large very stilted, formal, and unrealistic. If I had a nickel for every time a character said (or the narrator referred to) “my lord father,” I’d have a lot of nickels. And he seriously needs to get a grip about the sex in the books. Sure, kudos for talking about it, but most of the time it’s very creepy, and borders on a “Dear Penthouse…” version. It’s un-artfully done.
Which is the fundamental criticism I have: yes, he does veer into some poetic exposition, but by and large, the books read like a history. It’s description, with too much attention paid to silly details. The characters and the events are more told than shown, and the actions and reactions of prominent characters are rote and trite.
Finally, and this is one of the many areas wherein the show improves upon the books, it’s creepy how much he emphasizes the young ages of the main characters–particularly the ones who engage in sex acts. First, he writes the young kids as if they were adults. Second, there is WAY too much ink used describing the physical attributes of these characters–particularly compared to how little is used on the same types of traits in the older characters (e.g., we don’t know how big Catelyn’s tits are, but we certainly know how big Danerys’s are).
All in all, it’s frustrating. The guy has created an interesting world, with complex politics and some supernatural elements that are certainly original. But then he populates this world with cardboard cutouts, makes the politics an exercise of description rather than storytelling, and renders the supernatural elements alternately creepy (e.g., Melisandre and her assassination of the guy in charge of Storm’s End) or boring.
I give the HBO people a lot of credit for improving upon the books. Not that the books are bad, but they’re a long step down from Glen Cook’s Black Company series, or Steven Brust’s stuff.
This shit is way too nerdy for me. I’m going to read A Song of Ice and Fire, but I’ve never even heard of any of these other series. Don’t think I’m missing out, either, LOL.
Huh. I honestly expected Xanth to rank higher in the listing.
@Lothar:
Lighten up, Francis.
What about Dragonlance?
Not counting all the non-main storyline books by other authors, and only Weis & Hickman’s main branch of books, should rank it higher than Ice & Fire.
Going off of Amazon’s info, the main branch of Dragonlance books is a total of 8810 pages in 19 books.
Knyte, isn’t it the longest series? Sure, there are a ton of “Dragonlance” books, but they’re not all written by the same author, concerning the same characters, etc. Just like all those crappy Star Trek novels–there are dozens and dozens of them.
And @0tarin:
Yeah, well I’m reading the series now and getting a little sick of the fellatio people give Martin. It’s decent, but not as stunningly good as people think. His #1 NYT Bestseller cred is worth as much as Jordan’s.
And if you don’t like my over-involved poindexter hyperverbal assault on Song of Ice & Fire, tough.
@Lothar:
I was all set to stand up in defense of Martin and his books but then you pointed out “we don’t know how big Catelyn’s tits are, but we certainly know how big Danerys’s are”
and I was all like, “shit, he’s right.”
And then I got it.
Well said Sir.
Well said.
@Lothar:
I only got through the first two books and then decided to call it quits, for pretty much the exact reasons that you described. Part of the trouble in killing off your main characters is that you begin to prevent yourself from getting attached to any of them. This quickly then turns to just not giving a shit about anything that happens.
And one thing that the HBO series has definitely gotten right is to keep Bran’s sections to a minimum. As I was reading those sections, I was praying for him to get killed so that I wouldn’t have to read any more about his wolf dreams. Making the reader wish for bad things to happen to a crippled child is a good sign that the author is not doing his job in selling the characters.
If you take it as one series, I wonder how Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion works would stack up.
I’m with Lothar. I read the books and like the story for the most part, but the writing really isn’t good. Also, his habit of killing people off when they’re halfway through a story arc, really, really bugs me. I understand that this is supposed to reflect realism but, you know – dragons?
And it always strikes me that he doesn’t kill these people off as a brutal reminder of life’s harsh lessons but it seems like he gets himself in a twist, can’t work out how to get out of it, so… he kills the person off. plot thread ends.
tbh, just seems a bit lazy writing – one character in the last 2 books spends a significant amount of time being read, has a proper destination and goal and then as it’s almost finished – bang, dead. It may be realistic, but it’s sure as hell not enjoyable.
Hmm… Sword of Truth isn’t on this list. Wonder if it is actually shorter than these?
“I’ve never even heard of [Discworld]. Don’t think I’m missing out, either, LOL.”
Sad.
What about “Wizard’s First Rule”? I’m pretty sure there are 10 or 11 books in that series.
I’m a little confused with regard to that graph. How does Valdemar have a larger bar than 3 other series with more pages?
How about the Drizzt books? Or Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books?
And just where do I find the list of 78 books that comprise Conan’s Journeys?
How about Guin Saga? It was written by one person over the course of 30 years and there are around 130 books in that series.
Sure is a lot of Martin-hating in here. You nerdlinger hipsters sure get all ruffled when a book gets attention and film adaptation. Waaah the author doesn’t do what I want him to do with the characters. “Please be more like other authors please.” Go whine on the internet sommore, gents.
@MJB
If forming an opinion about something before it was made into a another form of media makes me a “nerdilinger hipster”, then I guess I’m guilty. Lazy storytelling and creating shallow characters are not qualities that a good author should have.
Obviously, I fell for the troll bait here, but I resisted breaking down obvious self contradictions and faulty arguments
@Lobster
Lazy storytelling and shallow characters? Are we talking about ASOIAF here? Clearly you must have been reading a different series..
the one thing I really couldn’t disagree more with the Martin criticism is the whole “carboard/shallow” characters remarks
Wow. I’ve started 4 of these but apparently I missed a ton of books. I thought I was doing pretty good with Valdemar.