I saw an ad for the upcoming House of the Dragon and I was thinking how there was a time when I would've been pumped for GOT related content but that was before one of the best shows ever crashed and burned. I also decided not to give them another dime till GRRM finishes the books (if he ever does). Luckily I read them all between seasons 5 and 6 so I feel really bad for people who read the first one back in the 90s. It is funny but to this day I won't start a fantasy series if it isn't complete. I remember when I read Wheel of Time it felt so good to read a completed series.
Do you blame GRRM or D&D more for how the show ended? I know the Night King isn't in the books like the show (but I bet the books will have a better resolution to the dead). I also have to wonder if wokeness had anything to do with the decline of the show. Arya is one of my favorite characters and I know they claim they had planned for her to kill the night king all along but I can't help but think if the show had been made 5 to 10 years prior that Jon Snow would have had a more substantial role. I get GRRM likes to subvert tropes (in a good way unlike hollywood) but I think at the very least he should've fought the Night King, or him and Arya together, although they seem to not like the idea of men and women working together.
I also wonder if the reaction to Sansa getting raped had anything to do with the direction of the show. To this day I don't understand all these screeching feminists who get so worked up over a fictional rape but can't seem to find any sympathy for victims of ACTUAL sex trafficking. The Song of Ice and Fire is a brutal world. Plenty of men get tortured and attacked but I will never understand why men can be killed left and right but if someone says a cross word to a woman then the screeching harpies show up on social media.
I read all the books but at this point I'm done. Read the first 4 in 2008 and Dance in 2011.
After Storm of Swords the books started dragging badly, I barely got through Dance. Too many characters and places that I either actively hated (and not in a good way) or don't give a shit about, on top of prose that is like sucking cement through a straw.
The spinoff show? Not interested.
As for the ending, I blame Martin. He probably had a general plan but once the popularity took off it got ruined, and there was only so much you could do in the show. For example, I don't think Bran is coming back in the book after he gets fully integrated into the tree.
So like Star Wars, GoT is dead to me. The books and show had some good moments but it's turned into suck.
Within a month it will be literally a full decade since A Dance With Dragons came out, and The Winds of Winter is still nowhere in sight. To put how ridiculous this is in perspective, JK Rowling managed to finish the entirety of Harry Potter - seven books - in the same amount of time that it's taken GRRM to (supposedly) write ONE.
Yeah, this series is never going to finish. I doubt Martin's even written more than 50 pages for TWOW in the last 2 years since the show ended (he even said the fans could imprison him in a volcano if he didn't have it done by some convention last year IIRC, and obviously that's come & gone) and that's my most generous estimate.
Dude's done, he's been done since his intended ending got tested by a focus group of tens of millions courtesy of the show and was universally reviled, at this point he's just stringing his devastated and still-declining fanbase along with the occasional 'yeah I'm totally working on it guys!' crumb of false hope on his Not-A-Blog.
I hear the leader of Gamergate has a secret lair on a tropical volcanic island. Just saying.
Even if I wanted to pick up again, it's been so long since I read the last book I wouldn't know what the hell was going on any more. And no way in hell I'm slogging through Dance again to figure it out.
Have you read any Star Wars EU? I liked the mandalorian but after the Sequels I was done. I have bought a ton of EU books and comics. I’ll stick with that.
No, I haven't read any EU books, only watched Clone Wars series. I'm interested in reading some of the best novels, but not sure where to find a list or order to read them in.
There is a website for Star Wars EU. They have a list but I’d start with the Heir to the Empire Trilogy. Takes place like 5 years after ROTJ. Much better version of Luke and Han doesn’t abandon his family.
I'll second the recommendation of the Thrawn trilogy, starting with Heir to the Empire. It's just good Star Wars, with a unique, well-constructed villain.
I'm also a fan of Rebel Dream and Rebel Dawn from the New Jedi Order series. They're not really standalone books - they're about one rearguard in a larger conflict - but I'd read them even if you don't care for the rest of that series.
The trilogy the others are talking about consists of
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
The author is Timothy Zahn.
This is the real sequel trilogy in my mind. Always has been.
That's me, bailing out after book #2, and ignoring everything subsequent to that.