Mutant Sewer Sharks, Killer Robot Servants, and Walt Disney

Sewer, Gas, & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy

by Matt Ruff

p. 1997

Sewer, Gas, and Electric is exactly the kind of frenetic, insane romp that I never knew I was missing in my life, and it has made me an instant devotee of author Matt Ruff. The author was recommended to me by a friend; though I was directed to his earlier book, Fool on a Hill, I happened to find this one in at JKB first, so I tried it out and I can definitely conclude that Fool on a Hill will be bumped up a few places on my list of things to read next.

Written in the early nineties but taking place in 2023, Sewer, Gas, and Electric is... far too complex to explain in a simple review. It can be accused of being ‘convoluted’ but it is convoluted in a good way. The wide array of characters and the intersecting subplots not only move the main story along, but it creates enough distraction to surprise you with the ending. Characters and devices are introduced in the first acts and disappear just long enough to lead you to believe they were red herrings, before establishing their deus ex machina ulterior motives.

The way I understand it, it is Matt Ruff’s characters that decide whether or not you’ll be a fan of this book. For starters, there are a lot of them, so many in fact that a character guide—which I had to consult frequently in the first 50 pages—proves itself as a handy tool. Given the recent popularity of Game of Thrones, however, I would expect this to not be an insurmountable problem. Then again, I am a big fan of quirky ensemble casts and I am fairly used to keeping them straight, but not everyone is. It has been opined that all of Ruff’s characters possess a singular jaded, at times prescient, but mostly resigned sarcasm that cause them to blend together to the point that they are really just one character—surrogates of Matt Ruff himself—and to an extent, I actually agree that they do seem somewhat similar, but it was all so much fun that I hard time complaining. I guess it comes down to whether or not you enjoy and agree with Ruff’s world view. If you despise the man and his outlook, you’re less likely to enjoy the ride than if, like myself, you’re content to sit back and go with the flow.

One of the things I enjoyed most about SG&E, aside from the off the wall characters, was Ruff’s subversion of popular cliches and tropes. One of the first points of view represented to the reader is possessed by a character who is promptly devoured by a mutant sewer shark. The shocking turn serves to keep you on your toes, not so much for the mutant sewer shark part, but for the fact that the narrative is misleading and no one is safe. Near the end of the book, the good old ‘will-I-shoot-the-good-twin-or-the-evil-twin’ trope is quickly and quite literally shot down without hesitation. My favorite subversion of convention is probably that the novel’s female characters are also the strongest, physically and emotionally. Perhaps I’ve been reading too many halcyon days sci fi, but I’m used to seeing strong women underrepresented, so it was a relief, in this modern tale, to see women take the forefront and solve their own problems without needing to be saved.

It’s a bit funny reading this book as it predicts events that, to Ruff, happen in the future when for myself, it is already the distant past. Ruff combines a mess of made up effluvia with real life history and facts, with a few conspiracy theories thrown in. I found myself looking up every historical reference and was surprised to find how many of them were real. At the same time I was amused by Ruff’s predictions that did not come true as he envisioned. The best part of it all is that Ruff clearly states at the beginning of the book, his opinion on science fiction that tries to predict the future then fails... only to do the exact same thing himself. Obviously, Ruff threw caution to the wind, but at least he acknowledges his irreverence. Matt Ruff is someone whose tongue is pretty firmly embedded in his cheek with regards to a lot of issues, not the least of which is political correctness.

The best way to approach this book is not to read up on the plot; any vague description would sound far too silly and the Public Works trilogy is not a short book. It’s probably best to just turn off your critical inclinations, sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Hipsters in Training

Pirates of the Retail Wasteland

by Adam Selzer 
p. 2008

I picked up Pirates of the Retail Wasteland from a discount bin in front of a soon-to-be-shut-down Borders, which seems ironic given the novel’s themes about corporations shutting down the ‘little guys’ and the transience of the retail industry. The cover description was vague, and I hoped it might run parallel to my own ideas for a customer-service-themed story, to see what other people had to say about topic and how mine would differentiate. Evidently I misinterpreted the plot slightly, and I really miscalculated the target audience, which I have a good ten years on. But I’ll try to be fair in my review and keep in mind that this book was written for 11-15-year-olds.

Pirates is the story of a group of middle-schoolers in the so-called ‘gifted pool’, who write poetry ragging on their gym teachers in their exclusive advanced English class, who have a hippie teacher that lets them sit on couches instead of desks, who go to the school’s basketball games with the express purpose of blowing them off because they’re cooler than that, who hang out at the local coffee house and drink mind-blowing amounts of coffee, though most middle-schoolers are more likely to be slamming Mountain Dews and Red Bulls, and who really really hate the corporate makeover their town is receiving. In short, our narrator, Leon, and his ragtag group of ‘wacky’ friends are basically insufferable, young hipsters in training... which means that I probably would have loved this book had I read it in my early teens.

Selzer’s novel, which is very much aimed at the age group it portrays, is everything a rebellious, too-cool young preteen who knows everything could ever want in a book, but innocent enough to still be acceptable to parents of said preteens. I think the fact that I was so annoyed by the pretentiousness and bratty qualities of Leon and his friends is a sign that I am getting old, because all I could think throughout the book was how much I wanted to slap every one of these children upside the head.

The plot is about the most illogical thing you could conceive of. Through a hyperbolic misunderstanding, Leon and pals come to believe their privately-owned coffee joint of choice, Sip, is in danger of going under thanks to their corporate competitor, Wackford’s (Selzer’s approximation of Starbucks, I suppose). For a school assignment directing them to create a ‘monument’ to something, the kids decide to “take over” Wackford’s, and create a short film as a monument to the old downtown area, in hopes of saving Sip from being shut down. Posing as pirates (and with copious amounts of help from two apathetic employees and a good old mid-western snowstorm), the well-intentioned preteens convert Wackfords into an “accounting office” for the day, with the belief that no one will be able to tell the difference. What exactly these ‘pirates’ are getting at with this comparison is beyond me, and even their teacher claims to not understand the point, but for all parties involved, it’s probably best to just go along with it. The kids’ understanding of what an office looks like is very much in keeping not only with someone who has never worked in one, but with someone who is too young to even have a job to begin with.

I thought about this book after I finished it, trying to decide if there really was a deeper meaning to be found or if I’d just wasted an a few hours on trite, indulgent preteen bullshit and settled somewhere in between. The book does a good job at targeting its audience but it does little to address problems that same audience will be facing just a few more years down the road. Leon and his friends can pretend all they want like they’re never going to sell out and they’re going to be hip forever, but they are so close to realizing that they will change, that the ‘old downtown’ they’re striving to protect is really just their childhood naivete quickly slipping away. If this theme were drawn out more, I would commend Selzer for composing a novel celebrating that last bastion of childhood before growing up but unfortunately, nothing Leon and his friends do is painted in a bad light. There are no negative consequences for their behavior and nothing really seems to have been learned. The kids act like holy terrors to unassuming adults and no one calls them out on their shit, especially not the adult employees at Wackfords who enable them.

One character in Pirates is a self-described McHobo, an average guy with a personal philosophy about service industry jobs. He whores himself out at every corporation, never working at any one place for more than six months, and never moving up in his career. Supposedly, McHobos shun things like benefits and raises and just live the life of the nomadically-employed. This is probably the most interesting concept in the book, and one Selzer can relate to being a McHobo himself, but it’s largely avoided, and I still don’t buy that any person in real life wants this life. People working these jobs just want to get by and pay their bills until they move on to something better. I have never met someone who would allow a bunch of preteens to annoy the living hell out of their loyal customers just for kicks, and anyone who would do this shouldn’t be hired anywhere.

But I digress; maybe all this is just a sign that I am getting old and have forgotten what it’s like to have that innocence of youth, that belief that nothing is ever going to change and that adults can never be cool and I have such a vast understanding of the world that it is incredible that I’m the only one who sees things... Yes, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland is a great book for a specific age. I anticipate many a reader going back to relive this book in their later years and revising their opinions about many of these characters, perhaps even switching sides on the kids vs. adults issue. In that case, I suppose, it is a story that is quite true to life.

Space Monkey to the Rescue!

S.O.S. From Three Worlds

by Murray Leinster 
p. 1966 

In much the same way that I sit down with a bowl of homemade popcorn and a friend and watch cheesy disaster movies on SyFy, I anticipate reading old, pulpy science fiction novels from the fifties and sixties. I know they’re going to be corny and melodramatic and, at best, wildly inaccurate, given the limited expanse of knowledge available to writers at the time, but I also enjoy them for these same reasons. Often times, it can be exciting to see what the top minds of the decade were imagining the future to be like. And of course, the cheese factor is also pretty appealing.

It’s the latter that primarily attracted me to Murray Leinster’s S.O.S. From Three Worlds, which I had assumed was a single short novel, but turned out to be a collection of three short stories connected by the same core duo: Calhoun, the human ‘super medic’ from the intergalactic (but evidently short-staffed) Med Service, and his tormal companion, a little monkey-like alien named Murgatroyd—who pilot the Esclipus Twenty, a Med-Ship that tours the galaxy taking distress calls. Despite the fact that only one of the three emergencies Calhoun attends to in this book was an official call (the other two the Esclipus happens upon accidentally), the Med Service seems to be in dire need of employees. And who can blame them? Even paramedics in reality work in pairs and Calhoun’s expected to traverse the galaxy even in emergencies where no one wants his help. I thought that’s what the monkey was for, but then it turns out the tormals are only there because they famously don’t get sick, and are often used to create vaccines for illnesses. In fact, Murgatroyd isn’t even anthropomorphic, as I’d assumed, and can only communicate through a series of multi-toned ‘Chee-chee’s, like an intergalactic Pikachu. At first I thought maybe the monkey was talking in his own language and Calhoun was interpreting for the reader’s sake, but as the story wore on, it became evident that Murgatroyd’s understanding of human interaction was very much affected by whether or not they gave him snacks and coffee, and that he did not, in fact, understand a word they were saying. Knowing that Murgatroyd can understand only body language—and even then in a limited capacity—does not stop Calhoun from conversing with him as if her were an equal conversational contributor, or from interpreting various ‘chee’s as if they were complex analyses, without a hint of irony. For example:

“Chee,” [Murgatroyd] said shrilly.

“To be sure,” agreed Calhoun distastefully. “That is a very sage observation, Murgatroyd. Though I deplore the situation that calls for it. Someone’s bilged on us.”

Murgatroyd liked to think that he was carrying on a conversation. He said zestfully, “Chee-chee! Chee-chee-chee!”

“No doubt,” conceded Calhoun. “But this is a mess! Hop down and let me try to get out of it.”

I kept wondering at what point the book was going to acknowledge that Calhoun’s isolation from society had caused him to personify his animal companion to the point where he essentially began talking to himself... but it never did. In fact, in one of Calhoun and Murgatroyd’s missions, they encounter a planet with three segregated cities that are afraid to interact with one another for fear of contracting some long-ago sickness. Calhoun concludes that their fear is psychological and labels it “Crusoe condition”, brought on by long bouts of isolation and some primitive living situations... The irony is totally lost on him.

I really wish Leinster would have considered this psychological twist, but it would seem that is not the way of these stories. All three follow a pattern: the Esclipus Twenty happens upon a large disaster, Calhoun and Murgatroyd are the only ones who can help, there’s a complication, Calhoun thinks a lot and is kind of cocky in his diagnoses, and subsequently single-handedly solves massive problems of whole planets that no one else could figure out. It strains the bounds of believability, to have such an allegedly under-appreciated hero swoop in with a miracle revelation that any basic medical professional should be able to figure out, but the seventies always were kind of indulgent and exaggerated. I think the appeal in this story lies more in the fact that paramedics were uncommon, and kind of a novel idea back then, much less so today now that they are standard.

Since Leinster isn’t in the medical field himself, none of the emergencies are particularly complex, and since Calhoun is apparently a genius who is always right when everyone else doubts, there are no moral ambiguities for the reader to wade through either. I had [wrongly] assumed that the three emergencies would crop up at the same time, resulting in some tough calls for Calhoun based on immediacy and urgency, but since they were separate stories, that didn’t happen either. The result is that S.O.S. from Three Worlds is largely dull fiction, with very little real conflict or characterization. Calhoun is a dud, Murgatroyd is a chirping tool and the whole story is far more boring than “a man and a monkey-alien zoom around the galaxy solving medical crises!” should conceivably be. For shame! And I had such high hopes...

America's Answer to Battle Royale

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins 
p. 2008

I will admit I never heard of The Hunger Games until I heard they were making it into a movie. I’m going to pin this one on the fact that it was not exactly aimed at my demographic, not to mention I was too preoccupied with slogging through Game of Thrones to notice any other books. Having every intention to read the book before catching the movie, I read this one on a flight in order to prepare myself and I’m glad I did because I found it superior to the movie for a number of reasons.

First, the book: Hunger Games is a very quick read. For most readers it will take a single afternoon. Being a slow reader, I took a bit longer, but at no point did it feel tedious or tiresome to me. The action is well balanced throughout and by the time the story comes to an end, I find myself eager to finish off the series to see where this concept goes. It seems silly to suggest this given the immense sudden popularity of the series, but for those who are not familiar with the storyline, Hunger Games is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic story of North America divided into 12 districts, collectively called Panem and ruled by the Capitol. As punishment for rebelling long ago, the Capitol forces two members of each district (a boy and a girl) to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a brutal, arena-bound fight to the death where only one victor emerges to bring glory back to their district. Children between 12 and 18 are the competitors and their names go in the pot every year, increasing exponentially the older they get, among other factors. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, of District 12, has her name in the running 20 times on her 16^th year, but shockingly it’s her 12-year-old baby sister, Prim, who lucks out when her name is chosen. Katniss selflessly volunteers in her place and enters the competition, despite it being virtually a death sentence, as her district, among the poorest of the twelve, hasn’t produced a victor in decades.

As far as relatable characters go, protagonist Katniss is somewhat cold, but it’s well established that she has to be in order to survive and keep her family alive. People in her situation cannot afford to be nice. I can’t say I relate to her enough, but I understand her at the very least. She is overprotective of her sensitive younger sister and unforgiving to her sensitive mother ever since their father’s death and mother’s subsequent breakdown that almost destroyed the family. Katniss’ best friend (and probably more) Gale is a cool character, but he isn’t given much to do in book one, which centers primarily on the Games, which Gale is not a part of. His character is progressed solely through Katniss’ eyes and even through her delusions it is obvious he cares for her as more than a friend.

Katniss’ partner (as far as he can be called such in a fight to the death) from District 12, Peeta Mellark, is a somewhat sensitive but strong baker’s son with whom Katniss shares a connection from the past, a connection that Katniss regrets because it compels her to feel like she owes Peeta something and Katniss loathes owing anyone anything (quite the charmer, that one). I rather liked Peeta, but I feel sorry for him because his obligatory relationship with Katniss (forced on by circumstances surrounding the Games) felt painfully one-sided and Peeta feels doomed to be friend-zoned. I hope he gets someone who likes him for more reasons than just obligation in the future books.

Guiding the pair through the politics surrounding the game is District 12’s only living victor, Haymitch, a drunk who takes some verbal beating from the kids to finally shape up and become a true mentor, as well as pseudo-publicist, Effie Trinket, and stylists Cinna and Portia. There is a strong dissociation in the buildup to the Games because of the fakeness and politics surrounding them. To Katniss, and the readers, it’s inconceivable that a bunch of children could be sent off to fight for the death, but to some of the districts and especially to the Capitol, fighting in the Games is an honor, so a lot of the public attitude towards them is positive, almost deferential. It doesn’t come across as the death sentence and giant human rights violation it so clearly is. If I had one problem with the plot of these books it is that it just strikes me as highly unlikely that self-respecting parents would ever allow something like this to happen, no matter how many years in the future we travel, how oppressive our government is, or how far our nation has fallen. I understand the Capitol smacked down and obliterated the last district (the fabled District 13 that I do not believe is truly gone) that rose up, but I just can’t quite buy that adults would stand by and allow this to happen. The only reason I let it go is because I know this is a novel targeting young adults, and young adults would rather read about kids their age than adults, even if it is more conceivable that Hunger Games competitors would be 16 and up. A Hunger Games with adult competitors is an entirely different kind of book than Collins wrote, and most definitely darker. 

I won’t go into too much detail about the Games themselves, but they were exciting enough, with some interesting twists and turns leading up to the end. I was actually pretty surprised that all the other kids outside of District 12 died. I figured some sort of uprising was coming and that the rules would be upturned, but I kind of thought more kids would survive the fallout than just Katniss and Peeta. Sort of disappointing, because I liked Rue and Thresh and Foxface, but I suppose without Rue’s death, the emotional impact would have been lessened. They got fairly brutal for a young adult novel, but I still would have enjoyed these as a kid because I generally liked dark tales.

I don’t really want to spend too much time discussing the love triangle either, because that was tedious, but necessary, I guess. The intimacy between Katniss and Peeta was awkward to the point where I almost had to skip over it, but I understand why it was there. Collins wanted to get across the “Big Brother” aspect of the Capitol’s hold over Panem’s citizens. Many of Katniss’ actions are guided by how the public will perceive them, because someone is always watching. Even before the Games, Katniss’ everyday life is influenced by who might be watching and judging her actions. She is a very guarded character all around. Poor Peeta is left in the dark about her true feelings and because I have a soft spot for nice guys, I feel really bad for him as a consequence.

The movie did an okay job at translating the story to screen, but it should have been much better. Their chief problem is that Katniss is a character who internalizes everything. This isn’t a problem in the book because it’s told in first person, but in the movie Katniss comes across a lot colder simply because you can’t know what she’s thinking or what her facial expressions mean unless you’ve read the books and know what you’re looking for. The movie should have done a better job of translating Katniss’ dilemma to screen and it just failed to do so.

One thing that the movie adapted well is the background explanation for the Games and Panem. Since it couldn’t just exposition dump on viewers without coming off as tedious or convenient, the movie gave us a wider view of the Capitol and the gamemaker. Some people resented so much screen time being wasted on characters that essentially had no impact in the book, but that’s just the thing: they did have an impact; we just didn’t see it. Lending screen time to these tertiary characters was a clever way of explaining the world our heroes live in without just telling us. And let’s face it: if they didn’t cut away to scenes outside of the arena every now and then, it would be two hours of Katniss running around looking distressed as she tried to stay out of sight, and that was bound to get old.

Showing us more of Panem was about the only clever thing the Hunger Games movie did, however. Lots of crucial characterization was skimmed over, seemingly important scenes and characters left out, and the whole thing came off rather whitewashed, as if trying to appeal to families and younger audiences. Come on, filmmakers, this is a movie about kids brutally murdering each other for sport while everyone is forced to watch; why bother skipping on the gore? I figured they would pan away to avoid showing some of the deaths, but  they utterly copped out on the brutality of the trackerjacker death/hallucination scene (in exactly the way I predicted, i.e. showing Katniss running around while everything was blurry), cut out the connection between the kids and the muttations entirely, and waved a hand at Peeta’s brutal wounds, which furthered both his and Katniss’ characters in the book. The demographic this series is aimed at can handle heavier stuff. If they can’t, then they shouldn’t be watching. It just lessens the emotional impact of a story when you let Hollywood censor it.

But the worst misstep the movie made is perhaps the most innocuous. In the book, at one of Katniss’ low points, she is sent a simple gift of bread by District 11. At this point in the story, Katniss has learned to find her own sustenance and does not need the bread, but it is a touching gift all the same because it’s an unprecedented token of thanks tacitly understood by both parties. It gives Katniss the motivation to keep going and some closure regarding Rue’s death, not to mention a deep insight into the minds of the rest of Panem outside of the games. It’s perhaps one of the most poignant parts of the book, so it came as a surprise when movie-District 11’s response was to start a riot (made all the more offensive since the movie decided that District 11 was apparently the black district). It’s disheartening that a movie felt compelled to choose the violent and sort of racist reaction over the simple, sincere one. This is about the point in the movie that I lost all hope for it being a decent adaptation, but that hope was on its deathbed already.

The Hunger Games was a decent movie to someone who hasn’t read the book, but not a good start to the summer movie season (that glory should proudly go to The Avengers) much less to the inevitable movie trilogy this will spawn. I still look forward to reading the other two installments of Collins’ book, but I don’t, as yet, look forward to seeing any more of the awkwardness that is this movie. People who have read the entire trilogy can proceed to laugh at me for saying this, but I hope we don’t have to sit through two more installments of the tedious Peeta-Katniss-Gale love triangle. All these damn preteen books these days have them, often at the expense of personal character development. Kids can be invested in a story without projecting themselves into love triangles with beautiful people that everyone pretends are average-looking. It’s not making self-esteem issues any better; it’s just distracting from the better story.

Plot is Coming... Eventually

Game of Thrones

by George R.R. Martin
p. 1996

I have taken a regrettably long hiatus from writing in this blog and I’m rather ashamed to admit that it’s because I got stuck on one book for a rather long time. Because I have a compulsion to finish one story before I engage in another, in that time I wasn’t really reading anything else. This is not a good idea for a writer because it is generally recommended to read as much as possible if you want to help your writing, but that is the way it happened and there’s no changing it so the best I can do is write out my thoughts and move on.

The book in question was George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Adam encouraged me to pick up this series, so I guess you have him in part to blame for my long absence. The idea was to read the book in time to watch the HBO series before anything was spoiled but that didn’t happen. It’s possible that my enjoyment of this first volume was hindered by the fact that I in part knew what was coming and wasn’t surprised by any of the book’s ‘big shockers’ but I don’t think it really mattered all that much. The thing about Game of Thrones is that it is not a story that relies on shock value—with over 800 pages it would be pretty ambitious if it was meant to alarm you with every turn.

I don’t know what it is that didn’t quite grab me about Thrones. I suppose the fact that I have a problem putting it into words makes the fact that I am reviewing it rather silly, but then there is a reason it took me so long to slog through it. It’s not that the writing was bad; I didn’t find it bad by any standards, it just isn’t the type of writing I typically enjoy. It was often dry, overlong, and with the exception of Tyrion Lannister’s chapters, utterly humorless. I’m not saying that every book is meant to be funny and exciting—often the best fiction can be found in entirely dramatic situations—but for 800 pages, a little levity is appreciated every now and then. But if you’re reading Martin’s epic, you’re going to be a little starved for it.

I am the type of writer and viewer who loves ensembles. The stories I craft and the ones that others have crafted that appeal to me are often chock full of varied characters interacting with each other. I have never had a problem keeping track of ensemble casts, like Firefly or Harry Potter or ER. Even on shows I barely watch, I have a firm grasp on character names. I only preface with this so you grasp the full extent of my meaning when I say that Game of Thrones has entirely too many characters. Outside of the Starks and Tyrion, I had a difficult time keeping track of all the names and houses, even with the family tree in the appendix. Maybe it wouldn’t seem like ‘too’ many if I found more of them appealing but I didn’t. Characters that started with a lot of promise were sidelined too early and never found purpose in the entire 800 pages. Others were scarcely visited or didn’t come into their own until the end, and the ones that were intriguing weren’t used enough.

I also had a problem with the way women were represented in Martin’s epic. So far, with one exception, they seem to exist solely to prop up men. Catelyn, the ‘mother’ character, is just a tiresome unforgiving bitch there to support first her husband then her son. Sansa is just a weak little wreck with no brain of her own. The only reason I even felt bad for her by her final chapter is because it took me so long to trudge through the book that I kept forgetting how awful she was. Daenerys was a glorified sex toy—which is extremely uncomfortable to read given that she’s only 13—until her transformation in the final pages of the book. Maybe if she’d found a purpose earlier on I could have forgiven the weak writing for women, but by time she finally showed some promise as a leader, I just didn’t care anymore, and of course, now that she is trying, we’ll have to put up with another 800 pages of misogynistic dialogue as everyone tells her she can’t do it. The only female character with a spirit from the start is Arya but she’s only a child and it wouldn’t be believable if she didn’t have a long way to go before completely owning that fire. How sad is it that the only woman worth admiring in 800 pages is a 9-year-old girl? Meanwhile, the menfolk are fighting and debating and deciding their life’s purposes and Jon and Robb, who aren’t much older than Arya, are battling with inner demons and leading armies.

Yes, it’s very obvious that Thrones was written by a man and for men. What saddens me is that this is an entirely fictional universe. It’s a universe based on historical feudal history, sure, but it’s still fictional. There was no reason not to give women a stronger, more central role besides that fact that Martin wanted it that way. It’s disheartening to see that even in fantasy fiction, women still have to fight to prove their worth.

Misogyny aside, Game of Thrones was by no means unsalvageable; there were a lot of threads I found intriguing enough to one day approach the second book (after a considerable break, of course). I was very interested in Jon Snow’s coming of age story and at one point proclaimed an interest in reading an entire book centered on Snow and his brothers in black. Tyrion is amazing and I will always happily tune in when he’s at the forefront, even if I don’t give one whit about the rest of the Lannisters. Arya is well on her way to being the badass we all know she will be and even Bran had something potentially engaging there with his cryptic/prophetic dreams, to say nothing of the Starks’ connection with their direwolves. But I just don’t care enough about any of these things to run out and pick up book two just yet. It might take some force of will to get me into the story again and I can almost guarantee I will have forgotten every character’s name outside of the main ten or so.

I almost suspect that this is that one exception where I might enjoy the visual representation over the literary one, if only because the show forces them to tighten up the plot and narrow down to the important parts, but as I have yet to partake, the jury is still out on this one. For now, I just need to move on to something less dreary and tedious.