The other month, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin sat down with fellow fantasy author Joe Abercrombie to talk about Abercombie's latest book The Devils. YouTuber Becca Monet was good enough to post much of the discussion on YouTube; it's worth a watch if you want to hear two masters of the craft talk shop:
Martin and Abercrombie talked about a wide range of topics, including the popular romantasy genre, how to write battle scenes, and how modern fantasy got to where it is. Martin has been in this game for a long time, so I liked hearing his insights about its transformation over the years. He noticed the fantasy expanding around the time authors started injecting their own ideas rather than remixing that J.R.R. Tolkien did with The Lord of the Rings; Martin names The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant books by Stephen R. Donaldson as examples of a shift in which he saw "opportunity."
The elephant in the room during the discussion was The Winds of Winter, the very long-in-coming sixth book in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin didn't address it explicitly — this talk was meant to promote The Devils, after all — but it showed up in spirit a couple of times. At one point Martin mentioned Beyond the Throne: Epic Journeys, Enduring Friendships, and Surprising Tales, an autobiography written by Game of Thrones star Kristian Nairn (Hodor). "He wrote a book recently, which was very annoying because I'm 13 years late on my book and he wrote his in a single summer," Martin quipped.
And although she didn't get it on film, Becca Monet brought up another moment she found very funny: when Martin and Abercrombie were talking about publishing deadlines, Martin looked at Abercrombie and asked, "You actually follow those?"
And by the way, I think "very funny" is the appropriate reaction to this. We all know Martin is taking a long time to write The Winds of Winter; he knows it better than anyone. I also know that a lot of fans are eager to lambast the author whenever Winds comes up, and I know I'm part of the problem by writing an article about it. I think it's possible to just let it pass by with a laugh.
What does George R.R. Martin not like when reading a new fantasy book?
Martin also talked about some of the things he values when writing and reading fantasy fiction. "If there's anything I don't like, it's predictable books, predictable TV shows, predictable movies," he said. "We've all seen them. Some people love them and I'm not trying to put them down. If you like James Bond and you know James Bond is gonna win and he's gonna sleep with several of the women and at the end he's gonna triumph, fine, that's good. But I like the suspense of not knowing what's gonna happen next, and where it's gonna be, and who is gonna survive and who's gonna die."
Martin's own books are famous for killing off characters, including important ones, so he practcies what he preaches. "I don't want to have a Conan character who's so invincible that he's going to win any battle he's in. I like the suspense of, 'Oh, you like this character. Well, will he survive this chapter?'" That's all also true of Abercrombie's books, from The Devils to any of his First Law books.
The Devils is on bookstore shelves now. As for The Winds of Winter, the wait continues.
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