Sunday, June 19, 2011

I am bummed

Tonight is the last episode of the Game of Thrones mini-series on HBO. If you haven't seen this, you're either
1) Not willing to be indebted to your inflation-flaunting cable provider to get HBO. And unless you watch a lot of movies, or really enjoy watching vampire soap operas on your flat-screen, I can't blame you.
2) You find fantasy to be tedious. Ahem... WHY do you read my blog???

It could also be that you have never read the books. I warn anyone who likes fantasy that A Song of Ice and Fire saga by George R R Martin is not your typical fantasy series, at least not any series I've ever read. Most fantasy books have cool creatures like dragons. There are dragons in these books... eventually. But honestly, where are the unicorns?? I mean, even Harry Potter had unicorns! Dead ones, but that's besides the point...

Nothing is left to the imagination in the Game of Thrones, the first book in the series. And you find out pretty quickly that Mr. Martin has a very twisted imagination: lots of rape, incest, murder. The HBO version, while quite graphic, doesn't show nearly as much as it should...

I didn't know what I was getting into when I started reading these books. In my defense, they are very well-written. I even fell in love with a few of the characters. Which brings me to my final and most dire warning: George kills characters cavalierly and without any discernible reason. If you enjoy books mainly for the character development, as I do, this will really piss you off!

The entire saga is supposed to be 7 (I think 8 at this point) books in length. And I was pregnant with ERIC when the next (5th?) book was supposed to be released. That's 3 years later than the original release date for those of you who stumbled here by accident and/or don't keep track of my kids' birthdays. 3 years. To wait. For. A. Sequel.

But I will miss this HBO mini-series. The actors did an amazing job with each and every character. The casting was phenomenal. Even the opening credits were amazing and helpful for newbies to keep track of the different characters and their houses. Most of the lines in the mini-series were taken verbatim from the book, which is very cool to a fan of the series. Lastly, anyone can follow the complex plot even if he/she had never read the book. If you enjoy fantasy, or just like watching a well-done story unfold, I hope you'll find the episodes and treat yourself.

[Sigh] Until the return of Castle in the fall... farewell T.V.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm bummed, too. It was so well done...the first episode literally gave me chills to see one of my favorite book series appear before my eyes exactly as I'd imagined it when I read the books. At least the next season of the show will appear in a shorter time than George takes to write the books.

Jen said...

ROTFL. Too true...

KC said...

Yeah, but at the rate George writes and the TV shows come out, we're eventually going to reach a point where the producers have to make up their own ending...

Jen said...

LOL. I'm about halfway done with "Dance of Dragons." I'm starting to think I could make up a better ending... :-)

Jen said...

Oh, and KC- John pointed out "The clock has started: If they're going to air the last series in 2016, they will need time to finalize the script, cast actors, etc. which is usually done about 2 years out or so. So George, you've got 3 years to finish."