@CodesInChaos It's really, really good. Probably better than the series my current name comes from, because it has a dark edge to the humour. It's fantasy that is sort of mocking fantasy, yet it tells a story too.
@AviD Yep. It was what I was reading when I signed up to StackOverflow and it just sort of stuck.
@AviD That's a long series (something like 7 books and not yet finished) and is much more complicated than the TV series (probably, not seen it) but it is awesome)
@CodesInChaos Yeah, I fully understand that. I've not read the latest book yet. I'm waiting for the author to finish them all, otherwise I'm sort of afraid he might not get round to it. If he doesn't, I won't bother finishing them.
That and I think I might need to take notes so I can remember everything next time.
sure, it frees the author up to create anything he wants, and sometimes the result is amazing, but usually its more focused on creating yet another make believe world.
fantasy works good for books when it fades into the background, and you dont really need to know too much about the fantasy world, and lets an amazing story play out in front.
@AviD I generally find fantasy can be split into two types: one, where everything is kinda like the lord of the rings except for some slight changes and two, where the author tried to do something radically different/awesome.
...not really followed much fantasy since I was a child. I maybe only have a couple of hundred fantasy novels, compared with a few thousand sci-fi (although a lot of the sci-fi could count as fantasy too, I guess)
@CodesInChaos exactly. I think thats part of what makes GoT so great - the world itself is not important, its just the stage, and its not a whole new laws of physics and etc.
@AviD I think books like that are the better sort. It's ok to do some creating and it helps to be consistent (cause that generally gives you a better story) but you can't sacrifice on telling a tale.
avatar was shit, I enjoyed the technology behind it and all the nice effects and thinking about how massive the server farms had to be to render that stuff
@Sadaluk just seemed to me that many fantasy authors get more caught up in creating a huge, incredibly rich, very arbitrary world, and use the story as an excuse (if that).
@CodesInChaos is also right, @AviD, when the authors are inconsistent i.e. person is dying blah blah blah then all of a sudden this newfangled previously undescribed power appears to them that makes no sense whatsoever enables them to save themselves, that ruins books.
@AviD As far as horror films goes, my top two are still The Shining and Alien - proper scary. None of this modern nonsense which isn't scary, just a bit gory
@AviD nah - no heels on those two. They have decent rock boots for proper climbing - that day was just an accidental visit. We were driving past and it was nice so we went up :-)
