Next Game of Thrones book The Winds of Winter won't be out until 2016

[kentonio]

Others.

JM
(at least so far)

You just know a semi-sympathetic backstory is somewhere in the offing.

[Jon Miller]

Damn I hate agreeing with you


The biggest difference is that in GOT there are "evil" characters that you can like. That is not really possible in LOTR. And that is very telling.

You don't like Boromir? Or Théoden?

JM

[Jon Miller]

You just know a semi-sympathetic backstory is somewhere in the offing.

Sure, but I am talking about from the human perspective. I am certain that you can write a sympathetic story for the orcs.

JM

[Elok]

You don't like Boromir? Or Théoden?

JM

What's evil about Theoden? Did you mean Denethor?

[rah]

You don't like Boromir? Or Théoden?

Boromir, no I didn't like him.

Theoden I didn't consider him evil at all.

[Jon Miller]

What's evil about Theoden? Did you mean Denethor?

They are focused on actions and Theoden's actions are pretty evil before Gandalf arrives.

JM

[rah]

He was possessed. Jeeze.

[Elok]

Not in Tolkien's original, he wasn't; the possession was PJ's artistic license. Theoden wasn't evil, just controlled by fear and grief.

In general LOTR, like most specfic, is about concepts--big ideas--more than characters. Frodo the character isn't super well-developed--we don't get a feel for his childhood experiences, his quirks, his personal hopes and dreams, whatever--because to Tolkien, those don't matter so much as his story about the corrupting lust for power. Based on what I've heard here, it seems GOT is more character-focused, which makes it somewhat less attractive to me.

[rah]

LOTR no character focus, big concepts
GOT better defined characters, big concepts.
There's no reason you can't have both. And if you think GOT doesn't have big concepts, you either didn't read it or weren't really paying attention.
IF you think there is no corrupting lust for power in GOT and that it's not a primary theme, you're blind.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Isn't that the point? Elok hasn't read GoT at all.

[DinoDoc]

Maybe he's a Sean Bean fan.

[Elok]

Never seen or read it--half this thread has been people telling me it's not like what I've heard, or trying to convince me to try it.

My feeling is that most books are either focused on characters or focused on themes/concepts. Speculative fiction is typically the latter, e.g. Dune, Foundation, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Lewis, Tolkien, Neal Stephenson. The narrator in War of the Worlds doesn't even have a name. But where characters are more fleshed-out, the primary focus is still on the grand clash between the beliefs, ideas or forces they represent (see Lewis's Till We Have Faces for an example; Orual is quite defined, since her personality is reputedly copied from Lewis's late wife, but the story is still all about Ideas). I suppose either one can be a legitimate way of telling a story, but I really don't care for character-centered stuff.

[kentonio]

Never seen or read it--half this thread has been people telling me it's not like what I've heard, or trying to convince me to try it.

Well you sounded like you hadn't read/watched it because of certain pre-conceptions you had. Most of which haven't actually been true.

[rah]

I try not to discuss books I haven't read. It's the easy way to look like an idiot.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So, apparently images of GRRM's pitch letter have shown up now:

http://www.themarysue.com/game-of-thrones-letter/

Could be spoilers. Maybe not. Might be the closest thing we ever get to an ending. Who knows?