"Bite Off More Than I Can Chew"

Listening to George R R Martin speak in a clean manner got me wondering how much complexity his books contain on an intentional level.

I find it personally delightful that a good king can easily be a bad ruler. The war is not always so clear; rarely it is between good or bad, it’s more complex than that. What tax policies the ruler will have? How will the ruler resolve a dispute of noble lands between old families? How will the ruler merge two complex religion that were fighting from an eternity? How much innovation and management goes into it? These are the questions that usually go unanswered. It’s rarely like Lord of the Rings where if darkness prevails all life will be in trouble.

Most of the times the wars doesn’t make any sense. For smallfolk and petty lords most wars neither gives them nor takes from them too much, but inevitably plays with their lives.

The idea of distorted perspective in a fiction is really intimidating. It raises the level of author’s intellect one step up from the reader. Martin said some of his POV characters might have told or heard incorrection information and that is bound to happen in a world where information travels either through letters or word of mouth. It’s funny how realistic it makes the fiction itself.

Westeros, Essos, Sothoroys and other remaining parts do follow up nicely in a fashion which any world evolved in itself should contain. There are waves of invasion to west-lands in successive periods of human evolution. Stronger is that religious faith which had showed their followers that their God is real. There are diseases, epidemics, destruction, and eventual consequence of blood magic. In a world so complicated there had to be thousands of characters involved as he has already created. It is inevitable if sound.

But as he puts it, “having thrown the balls in the air I feel compelled to keep on juggling them,” I do wonder that if he thinks he made a big mistake creating the world so complex. First three books, then six, then seven, and now it looks like nine to me. There are lots and lots of characters, plots, subplots, and all. I am fine with a bittersweet ending but it has to be complete that’s all.

I do have to wait a lot for it though.