Epic Fantasy & “The End”

I recently spent my reading summer working through the most recent books in two ongoing fantasy epics and both made me think a lot about what an author must go through to create this type of story.  The series in question are The Song of Ice and Fire (aka A Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin and the Dark Tower series by Steven King.  While King has finished his epic, Martin still has two highly anticipated books to go (I sure hope it’s only two).  Both men kept their readers waiting quite a while between books, and invariably, this anticipation has lead to some disappointed readers.  King admits as much in the last chapter of the Dark Tower.  He practically begs the reader not to go any further because he knows the ending will not satisfy.  But, as he likes to say, he told the story that he needed to tell, not the one that would make the most number of people happy.  Martin has a penchant for defying expectations as well (don’t fall in love with any of his characters, no matter how important they seem).  Reading these series over the years allows the reader to see them change as writers as they work their narratives out of tight spaces, as they speed up or slow it down and as they reach their endgames.  Did Stephen King reach the ending he foresaw when he started Roland’s search for the Dark Tower? Hard to say, but his plan for getting there definitely took some unplanned turns.  Is Martin reaching the ending he planned for?  I suspect he is still on track, but the pace has slowed to a crawl compared to the first three books.  I’m hoping the middle two books allowed him a chance to get his characters in place for the endgame and will allow for a quicker, faster pace for the final books.  Time will tell (hopefully not too much time though).

Needless to say, but SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Dark Tower series has become a meditation on writing.  I’m not sure this is what King had in mind when he started, but as the books went on, more and more of his creations showed up in the series.  This was at times thrilling because it would jog my memory of a book I’d read years ago and it offered the possibility that King had an overarching theme that runs through all of his books.  But when King himself becomes a character later in the series, things when off the rails for me.  Nothing takes me out of a narrative faster than a large dose of the real world.  King as a character added some interesting parts to the story, particularly his faux obituary at the end of book 6 which gives you more insight into King as a writer than just about anything he’s written save his book, On Writing.  But King as a character reveals the overarching theme to be writing and King himself.  The Dark Tower becomes an autobiography of King’s writing life and Writers in general.  Is Roland King’s creation or is he an archetype as old as time that King just borrowed?  Does he have the right to give him a happy ending or must he send him off on another quest as soon as this one is done?  These are the questions King poses and answers.  His other characters get a happy ending of sorts at the end of the story, but only after each one has sacrificed themselves to the narrative so that Roland may continue his quest.

While the meditation on writing is interesting, it’s not the series I started 25 years ago, so I had to lower my expectations.  The turning point for King and the Dark Tower narrative was obviously King’s near fatal accident in the late 90s when he was hit by a van while walking on the road.  He still had three volumes to go in the series at that point and it seems that the only way forward for King was to write about the accident in the books.  Of course, the question has to be asked, how would the series have developed had King never had this accident?  Would he have finished it even?  His brush with death clearly lit some kind of fire in him because he finished it quickly after his recovery.  He nearly admits in the story that he had lost the passion for the narrative before the accident.  Was it writer’s block?  Is there some force (the muse) that all writers tap into from time to time?  Could King only tap into when he was in an altered state of mind?  All interesting question, just maybe not the ones I expected he would be answering.  But maybe some of this was planned from the start.  I’m glad I finished the series, but the last couple of books were very hard to get through.  I wonder how I would feel if I had read all the books together without the weight of my own aging and historical baggage weighing the books down with lofty expectations.  But this is what reading is about right?  An interaction between the author’s mind and the reader’s expectations.  That’s what makes reading fun and interesting.

It’s hard not to wonder if George RR Martin is suffering from a similar writer’s block.  The fifth book of a Song of Ice and Fire series, a Dance with Dragons, came out this summer to much fanfare.  While the first three books in the series came out in quick succession, the last two have taken a combined 11 years to write.  The last two have also added lots of new characters, settings and complications.  While it is always interesting to read these new character perspectives simply because Martin is a fabulous author, the effect on the overall narrative has been to slow everything to a crawl (it has clearly slowed Martin’s writing as well).  Maybe this is necessary after the epic changes in book 3.  The pieces needed to be moved around and reset, which he has done.  My hope is that all the prophecies that he has hinted about can now start happening and we can move towards the epic ending.  There are two big events that still need to occur and I’m not sure which order they will go in.  There needs to be a battle with the wights/ghosts/zombies of the North and there needs to be a final battle over who controls Westeros.  Since the next book is called The Winds of Winter, I suspect the battle for the North will begin there.  Who knows, maybe there won’t be much of Westeros left to rule once that battle is done.  In either case, I’m hopeful that the pace of the novel (and the writing) will go quicker.  Fingers crossed.  With the added pressure of a successful TV show on HBO breathing down his neck, particularly child actors rapidly aging, Martin doesn’t have 11 more years to finish the last two.

Again, SPOILERS: As for the events of A Dance With Dragons, it’s hard not to be frustrated when you see your favorite character “die”.  Of course, I should be used to that with Martin, but after spending this much time inside Jon Snow’s head, I cannot believe Martin will just kill him.  He will be back in some shape or form.  Hopefully, this “death” frees him from the Wall and the Night’s Watch, because that was getting tedious.  Dany’s journey was interesting but she also spent most of the book spinning her wheels dealing with the politics of Mereen and the other cities she’s conquered.  I’m hopeful that now that she is riding a dragon, we will get some action (Martin has stated he wanted to write one more epic battle scene for the book, but decided to wait for the next one in order to get this one published).  I’ll agree that this book could have used a good battle scene to pull things together at the end, but I also am glad I didn’t have to wait another year to get it.  Tyrion didn’t seem to accomplish much during the book, which was disappointing, but it’s always interesting spending time with him regardless.  The events at Winterfell were horrible and disheartening.  I so much wanted Jon to head south and free Winterfell from the Bolton’s.  It’s really time for the Starks to make some sort of comeback.  I also find it a little unbelievable that Cersei managed to get out of her predicament.  If anyone should have perished, it was her.  When characters make bad decisions in these books, they die.  Why didn’t she?  Sometimes it feels like evil is rewarded by Martin and being noble is a curse.  I fear for Jaime because of this.  He is finally becoming a man worth caring about and I think Catelyn/Stoneheart will end him soon.  It’s a sign of Martin’s skill as a writer that an event I would have relished in book 1 or 2 is now something I dread.  In general, I liked it slightly more than the fourth book because of the main characters of Jon, Tyrion and Dany – but it pales in comparison to the first three books.  Here’s hoping he finishes with energy of the early books and not the stolid pace of the last two.