Who is two pirates' favorite living fantasy author?

[prog]

I started reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series because I've been meaning to for some time (being under the impression that a lot of y'all like it) and it was right there. I like it so far, but there's been enough mention of dr*g*ns to make me cautious with my judgement yet. I'm hopeful that it won't plop into a soup of slop like Robin Hobb's thing did, for me, about four books in. (Though the first three were so good I kept reading through number eight... sheesh.)

It wastes no time in introducing a backdrop of adversarial nastiness, which I far prefer to the undertone of futile despair and continual collapse that rings through half or more of Hobb. I'm looking forward to it becoming really good.

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I haven't played the board game based on the series , though I am led to believe it's pretty good, and I'll doubtless want to give it a whirl later. I appreciate that they chose to name it after the first book and not the whole series, though it's too bad they couldn't have added the obvious extra level of recursion to the title without sounding too cheeky.

There's also an ad inside the back cover for a similarly themed collectible card game, which I didn't know existed (not being too interested in CCGs as a rule), and right there was jazzfish! Or anyway one of his user icons. That's always funny to run into.

Comments

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

It's very, very complicated. It's like Diplomacy plus LOTR: The Confrontation plus Amun Re plus Cities and Knights of Catan. If you like complicated games, you'll love A Game of Thrones. Personally, I found it a little frustrating because I made errors due to not being able to keep the entire complexity of the game state in my head at one time, but maybe that would have gotten better had I played it a second time.

I lost my copy of the game in a poker game with elphie. (:

[prog.livejournal.com]

Does that mean that that poker game was a game of a game of A Game of Thrones?

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

*long-delayed GROAN*... (:

[jazzfish]

*grin*

I've read all three of the books, and so far they haven't turned into a soap opera. Though the wait for number four has been agonising, and I expect the even-longer wait for #5 and 6 to be worse. Sadly the Nasties from the North haven't really shown their hand in any serious way yet. I'm betting on a big final showdown between the dragons and the ice-things.

The game has a few problems (the 'geek will tell you all about them, as well as some suggested fixes), but the nifty order system makes it cool enough that I can overlook them.

[prog.livejournal.com]

OH NOS DRAGONS

(I'm actually not summarily opposed to the appearance of dragons in contemporary fantasy literature, but they too often tempt writers into majestic flights of cheese. (See Hobb et al) )