First things first: I’m going to be that person. I first read A Game of Thrones in 1998, and I was primed for the experience. I cut my teeth on Tolkien before devouring all the epic fantasy I could get my teenage hands on. David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Terry Goodkind…..I thought that these series represented what the fantasy genre was. I’d never even heard of Gene Wolfe. I’d never imagined that something like A Game of Thrones could exist. Which seems […]
History is Written By the Literate: The World of Ice & Fire
Like many people today, I’m a big fan of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice & Fire” series. The books are both a delight and a terror as Martin builds a tremendously brutal, violent and uncaring landscape upon which he populates his characters. Like the best of the fantasy genre, a great deal of the work goes into building that landscape – the cities and nations of Westeros and Essos, the history that colors the various points of views and pressures that each of […]