Excellent Mainstream Fantasy: George R.R. Martin

I generally get the sense that mainstream fantasy and science fiction novels don’t have the greatest reputations with the literati. Call it a hunch. While I certainly understand this perception (there are huge numbers of titles appearing frequently in each genre, and many of them are, to put it politely, derivative), I do find it to be an unfortunate one. Every literary genre produces its fair share of the good, the bad, and the books that are just simply… there. Try perusing the general fiction section at your local bookstore the next time you visit. There you will find countless books that are, for all intents and purposes, clones of one another – cookie-cutter slabs of postmodern fiction that read like the authors all went through the same MFA program, and only learned how to produce one kind of story told in similar styles. Read enough of these novels and you begin to feel like you’ve read the same book twenty times over.

That may sound unduly harsh, especially after I so recently wrote a blog entry praising the postmodern novel. I certainly don’t mean to condemn the whole field – or even most of it. There are many postmodern novels – and I do mean many – that are exceptionally good. I simply mean that, as with any field of writing, some postmodern works are, quite honestly, not very original. Or very good.

All of this is simply to say that I find it rather annoying when I hear somebody dismiss a work of “genre” fiction as lowbrow or derivative, simply because it is a work of “genre” fiction. To repeat: every field of fiction produces its fair share of writing that is bad, boring, or derivative.

So. In the interest of pointing folks in the direction of one of the better commercial fantasy authors, I make the following recommendation.

George R.R. Martin
A couple of years ago, Martin was proclaimed “the American Tolkien” by Time Magazine. This may well be a bit of overenthusiastic hyperbole on Time’s part, but I can fully understand why the magazine would be enthusiastic in the first place. Martin is one of the best (if not the best) commercial fantasists currently working. He’s had a long career in fiction, but it wasn’t until he started publishing his current series of novels back in 1996 that he really gained a degree of mainstream success. Would that all fantasy novels were as well written and original.

In The Song of Ice and Fire (as his continuing series has been labeled), Martin places a refreshing degree of emphasis on making sure that his story and his characters appear realistic. There are no trolls, no elves, and no hobbit-like characters to be seen. There are a couple of dragons, and a few zombie-like creatures, but Martin somehow makes them believable. They don’t reek of fantasy cliché.

Time quite correctly noted that unlike Tolkien, Martin’s books do not possess a black and white moral outlook. In these novels, good people do bad things, bad people do good things, and a few bad folks do bad things for good measure. In short, Martin believes in shades of gray – which helps to make his fiction and his characters genuinely interesting and three-dimensional.

His plots, in addition to being highly detailed, are also rather unpredictable. Many mainstream fantasy novels play it safe – you know that certain characters aren’t going to die, and that others won’t even get hurt. This often takes away any real sense of risk or unpredictability. Not so here. Important characters die at inconvenient times. People get hurt. Indeed, one can almost imagine Martin taking a certain glee in offing particular characters at given moments, chuckling at the unexpected nature of the deaths.

A final bit: Martin may not be exploring the deepest meanings of life here, and he may not be pushing the stylistic boundaries of modern fiction, but one should not underestimate the quality of his writing. He has gotten hold of an excellent story – and for some authors, that would be enough. But Martin also manages to be what many other fantasists aren’t: a good writer.

Books in A Song of Ice and Fire:

A Game of Thrones

A Clash of Kings

A Storm of Swords

A Feast for Crows

A Dance with Dragons