Hippoi Athanatoi

I’ve been slacking as a reader for quite a few years now. It used to be that I read a large stack of books each summer, a smaller one for my birthday and another good-sized stack for Christmas, plus quite a few books in-between too. But then something happened and months could pass without me reading a single book. Having more hobbies has certainly played a part, as has resorting to idly browsing social media instead of reading when I’ve had shorter stretches of free time. And, last but not least, I’ve had a harder time finding books that appeal to me. I attribute this both to some change in my tastes and, primarily, a shift in the genre.

There’s a lot of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance out there these days, genres that I am not very keen on. And while I like some romance in my fantasy, today there’s a lot of formulaic stuff that is more romance with a touch of fantasy (aka the cringingly named “Romantasy” genre). I feel like in the last decade or two, fantasy has drifted towards either more romantic or more grimdark, losing the middle ground that I used to enjoy.

Add to that an increasing number of books that appear designed to tick as many woke checkboxes as possible and be so sensitive and scared of possibly causing offense that they become utterly bland.

That said, the rereading spree that I started in 2021 with Robert Jordan and Stephen R. Donaldson did a lot to get me back on track with my reading, if not my reviewing. Maybe 2024 will be the year for that?

Gerald Tarrant, the Hunter, from the Coldfire trilogy.

In All the Seas of the World, Kay returns once more to his most frequently revisited alternate history setting, where the stories often touch upon the tensions between the followers of the three major religions: the Asharites, the Jaddites and the Kindath. I have not consciously reflected on this before, but when reading this book, I started thinking more about the choice of having these three religions be celestial, worshipping the stars, the sun and the two moons, respectively. To me, it heightens the tragedy and futility inherent in religious conflicts that their objects of worship are essentially the same things, seen in the same sky.

My discovery of The Wheel of Time preceded my introduction to the Internet with at most a year. As such, it was the first Fantasy series that I ended up experiencing in part through various on-line communities, something which paved the way for my later involvement in the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom. In fact, and this is something I have written about before, Westeros.org would not have existed if it was not for The Wheel of Time. In part because Elio and I would not have met and in part because we modelled some of our early contributions to the fandom on existing Wheel of Time-resources. And before we lost ourselves in Westeros, we spent countless hours on Wheel of Time roleplaying games, arguing lore minutiae.

As you might guess from this, and from my opinion of the later seasons of Game of Thrones, I am a nitpicky book purist. However, I will make an attempt to discuss the first three episodes of The Wheel of Time both as an adaptation and as “just” a TV show. But it is always an impossible task to completely separate an adaptation from its source material, because the very fact that it is an adaptation is an integral part of its existence.

I’ve had a bit of a pleasant problem of late. I’ve read some books that I have really wanted to write about…if it wasn’t for the fact that I had more things to read that I couldn’t stop myself from starting.

It began with an unintended reread of the first two of Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant chronicles. I was going to look something up in Lord Foul’s Bane and ended up reading it and the rest of the first chronicle in short order. And then I figured I might as well read the second chronicle too, since I had never read them all in close succession. It made for a great reading experience and gave me a much clearer understanding of the development of Covenants dilemma(s) and why he made different choices at the end of each chronicle. I had planned to continue to the last chronicle as well, but I needed a little breather and during that some other books snuck in and said “hey, read us!”. So, we’ll see when I get to it given the lost momentum.

I do want to heartily recommend giving the Covenant books a try. There may be a dark lord and various other well-known fantasy elements, but the writing is nothing like any other fantasy out there. And if you can’t stand Covenant because you think he’s a horrible person, then you have no empathy whatsoever. The mental agony that he is in is crushing. I do very much understand if someone can’t stand being in his head because of that, because you’re basically in the head of a drowning person that is utterly convinced that if he grabs the rope tossed to him things will actually get much, much worse.

But, if Donaldson is a little too dark and dreary for you, I’ve got some more cheerful recommendations too.

Back in the early days of the Internet, I remember following some SF/F newsgroups and being utterly baffled by how so many grown women—authors, no less!—would spend a lot of time discussing a show with a really silly name. Why are these adults fans of what sounds like a cheesy show for, at best, teenagers, I wondered. So did Elio, when I told him.

Then I happened to catch part of an episode of said show, being rerun during the day. Something caught my attention and I felt like maybe we should try watching it, but it took a while before I suggested it to Elio. After all, we’d laughed about how silly it must be. But eventually we swallowed our pride and gave it a go.

That show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ever since then we’ve been huge fans of Joss Whedon. So when we first heard of The Nevers we were thrilled that there’d be a new Whedon show.

A review of Rule of Wolves or of the Shadow and Bone adaptation? Why not both, and a bit more on the side?

I read Shadow and Bone and the rest of the initial Grisha trilogy from Leigh Bardugo fairly soon after it came out. I do have a weakness for entertaining YA fantasy and that’s exactly how I would describe it. It is definitely a bit tropey and formulaic at times, but the writing is solid and the world different enough to feel fresh. I also have a distinct weakness for a first-person narrative and Bardugo delivers that as well, with a heroine who is interesting and has a sense of humour without being the usual “strong” female character who is sassy and kick-ass all the time. My main complaint after finishing the series was that the one formula of the YA fantasy I can do without is the tease of the female character almost hooking up with the villain/bad boy. I think it could have been quite interesting if Alina had not learned of the Darkling’s evil intentions until they were getting ready to deal with the Fold. Or at the very least somewhat later; I realise that the plot still needs her to spare the stag. I liked the overall setup of Alina’s relationship with Mal, with the good friendship and the seemingly unrequited love, but as his own character he didn’t quite come to life for me which meant that the romantic relationship felt a bit flat. What I enjoyed most about the series as a whole was probably Alina’s relationship with her power, going from suppressing it to wanting more of it and ultimately losing it all.

Guess what? The site redo stalled again, go figure. But at least I got a lot further this time. Now I am stuck pondering whether Reviews should just be folded in under this blog or if it makes sense to have proper reviews of single books, single episodes, etc separated out. Or perhaps I should just simplify the structure of the reviews so they work for covering a whole book series, a season of a show, etc.

But for now, I’ve been itching to comment on a few things that I’ve read and watched lately; Mark Lawrence’s The Girl and the Mountain (or more accurately, almost everything by Mark Lawrence), Leigh Bardugo’s Rule of Wolves as well as the adaptation of Shadow and Bone and The Nevers. I had planned on just one post, but its already growing at an alarming rate so lets do it one thing at a time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about worldbuilding lately. A few years ago, I decided that adding a Literature degree to my Classical Archaeology degree might make sense given the way things have shaped up with Westeros.org and myself and Elio co-writing The World of Ice and Fire with GRRM. Once I got to the point of doing my Bachelor paper, the broad strokes of the topic came to me quite easily - I wanted to explore worldbuilding academically since it has always been one of the elements of fantasy that holds the most fascination for me. The end result was a paper on the use of history in A Song of Ice and Fire and how it is such an essential part of the worldbuilding.

During LonCon3, I picked out a number of panels related to worldbuilding and in the end I attended five of them. One, the Worldbuilding Masterclass, was absolutely fabulous from a technical and practical perspective, but the more theoretical panels were quite a mixed bag. There were a lot of Agendas and Issues being aired, and there were near Tumblr-level of concerns about certain -isms. I found that some panelists tended to come across as looking down their noses a bit at fantasy writers who weren’t as “enlightened” as they were, where “enlightened” largely seemed to mean “shares and promotes similar opinions on social and political issues”. I would have liked to see more of a variety of opinions rather than so much mutual back-patting, which seemed particularly common on the all-female panels.

I may attempt some more detailed panel commentary once the concrud has left me entirely, but for now this is more of a long-winded introduction to a brief sigh/rant about one of the common complaints raised against GRRM in particular and fantasy in general since the success of Game of Thrones. Every now and then someone will pipe up and snarkily say “oh, so fantasy writers can conceive of dragons and elves but they can’t imagine black/gay/etc characters in their world?” Yes, I recognize that this is a snarky simplification, but too many people take it at face value and do not consider it any further. And it does need to be considered in more detail, because the fact is that worldbuilding is a lot more complex than that.

Creating a fantasy world is in large parts about finding the right balance between the mimetic and the fantastic and ensuring that the two work together. If you look at what Tolkien does in LotR, for example, he inserts a great amount of mimetic detail to “ground” the story; without this approach, the fantastic elements will not be believable because the author will not have created a sufficiently believable world. I cannot see how anyone, especially not an author, can claim that there’s no difference between inserting mimetic details that aren’t necessarily part of your personal experience of the world and inserting fantastic details. It seems self-evident that it is harder to make up convincing mimetic details than it is to make up convincing fantastic details, in part because the latter piggybacks on the mimetic details and in part because there’s no blueprint for what dragons or elves should be like.

So, yes, I think it makes perfect sense that many authors will write what they know and what they are familiar with when it comes to writing mimetic details such as the ethnic makeup of their cast. That does not mean this is all they can do or all they should do, all I am addressing is that particular, snarky comment that equates mimetic and fantastic detail without considering that they are in fact two different facets of worldbuilding.

It has been a while since I felt a need to write at length about my disappointment with Game of Thrones. By now the show has deviated enough that my expectations have sunk to quite a low level. It still manages to anger me at times—and to thrill me as well; I won’t deny that some scenes still manage to feel wonderfully right (Oberyn’s and Tyrion’s conversation in episode 7 is one such, for example)—but my relation to the show was irrevocably damaged after the House of the Undying travesty. If they could do something like that, I knew nothing was sacred.

But some foolish hopes did still remain for certain iconic scenes to be done right. The duel between Oberyn and Gregor was one such scene. Surely they could not drop the ball on that one?

As you may guess—since I am writing this and all—my answer to that question is “yes, yes they could”. But before I go on to the how’s and why’s of that, let me just dwell for a moment (okay, more than a moment - I ramble!) on my rather…complicated history with that scene.

I thought I was done commenting on the Jaime & Cersei scene in episode 3, but I keep seeing one annoying article after another on the subject.

Now, anyone who knows anything about my feelings regarding Game of Thrones would be aware that I hate unnecessary changes with a fiery passion. So, yes, I am on board with the “why change that scene?” criticism. At least to a point, that is. You see, I found the change to the Dany & Drogo scene in episode 1 of season 1 much, much, much more infuriating from a “purist” point of view. There was absolutely no reason to change the tone of that scene so radically. And yet, at the time there were quite a few fans and reviewers who spoke up in favour of that change, mainly citing that they did not find the scene in the books believable anyway.

In contrast, there are quite a few reasons for why the Jaime & Cersei scene could not play out as it did in the books. GRRM cited the “butterfly effect” on his Livejournal and it is absolutely true that by now, in the fourth season, there are many previous changes that demand further changes (this was not the case in ep 1 of season 1, however!). I very much dislike some of those previous changes—I disagree with the decision to have Jaime back in King’s Landing so early and I most definitely disagree with the decision to make Cersei such a radically different character—but the fact remains that those did limit what they could do with the scene in the sept. It could no longer play out as it did in the books, in part because it was no longer a surprising and very emotional reunion between Jaime & Cersei and in part (or so I would argue, anyway) because the Cersei that Lena Headey plays is a very, very different character from the Cersei of the books. She is much less passionate, much less sexual and, it seems, much more dubious about her relationship with Jaime.

In my mind there’s no doubt that the scene was intended as largely consensual. Yes, Jaime initiates it and does so forcefully. But if we look at the books, we have three examples of this sort of interaction between Jaime and Cersei where he initiates a sexual encounter quite forcefully/insistently and where Cersei initially protests. This is clearly part of the dynamic of their relationship. Keep in mind that they do not exactly have a normal, healthy relationship. Any sex they have carries the risk of discovery and severe punishments, meaning that most of their encounters are carried out with a certain urgency. To imagine that this doesn’t leave a mark on how they interact is impossible. I also believe that Cersei is turned on by Jaime expressing that he has to have her, right now, because it shows her power over him.

Of course, in the books these encounters, although apparently initiated against Cersei’s will, soon turn into clearly consensual activities where Cersei verbally expresses her desire to continue. I have, however, seen plenty of people argue that even this is too much, seeing as Jaime initially pushed on without her consent. I dismiss such complaints as ludicrous - you’re talking about a relationship that has gone one for decades, which has its own rules worked out. But, returning to the scene from episode 3, it differs from the books in that there’s no clear verbal consent from Cersei. There is, however, physical consent. Partway into the scene, she kisses him back, she probably (it is hard to see for sure) helps with his undressing and she wraps her legs around him. Again, in a long-established relationship, physical consent has to be every bit as valid as verbal consent.

A lot of people point to what is said by Cersei as a further problem and further evidence that she does not want this to happen. However, I cannot understand how people can equate her “It isn’t right.” with a “No”. This completely takes it back to her protests in the book, which are all about the risk of the discovery and the time and the place being inappropriate. Cersei keeps repeating this even as she is giving into her desires for Jaime (the hand clenched around the funerary cloth must be meant to indicate this) and I feel that this is where the changed Cersei is shown most clearly: her dubiousness about the incestuous relationship, especially in such a risky situation, is so strong that she feels a need to express her concerns even though (or perhaps because) she actually does desire Jaime and does desire the sex at that moment. It is as if Cersei on the show is ashamed about her own reaction and I strongly feel that her “It isn’t right.” is something she is vocalising to deal with her feelings of shame/guilt rather than a further attempt to discourage Jaime.

Obviously, this was not how many people interpreted scene and I do agree that this was probably not the best way to handle this scene. In particular, even though I feel I understand its purpose, the “It isn’t right.” should not have been there. There should have been something more affirmative to make it plainer that Cersei wanted the sex to continue. But ultimately, this is a problem of intent, execution and interpretation. I do not believe, as some have tried to put forward, that TV (or any other media, like books) have a duty to avoid scenes of ambiguous sexual conduct. They wanted to show a darker, more ambiguous scene between Jaime & Cersei than in the books. This is perfectly acceptable and does not in any way make them rape apologists. The established relationship between the characters (and yes, I do count the background material from the books here as well as I do not view this show as separate from the books) allows for this kind of interaction without it being rape. However, the end result apparently came out too ambigious from the point of view of many watchers. That is a fault of theirs, a fault which could have been avoided even with the changed circumstances and the changed characters, but ultimately it does not change their intent.

Which is why anyone who is expecting this to be “dealt with” in the next episode is fooling themselves. And, in the case of professional reviewers who should know better, fooling their audiences just to be able to act even more outraged next week. The season is in the can. They did not shoot a rape scene, thus there will be no follow-up to a rape scene.

Looking back at this blog, I realise that I switched from posting here to posting to Observations partway into last season of Game of Thrones. I probably had a good reason for it at the time. For this season, I haven’t had time to post anything so far, but there are several reasons for why I do want to write a bit about the Red Wedding, in the books and on the screen. And, since it will be talking more about the books, I guess I am putting it here.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I had not actually read the Red Wedding chapter in A Storm of Swords.  In fact, I had not read most of the latter half of A Storm of Swords. When the book was first published, Elio and I started reading it together, passing it back and forth between us. I read ahead on Daenerys’s storyline, given that it was separate from anything else, and that led to Elio reading ahead of me in all the other storylines. As a result, he got to the Red Wedding a bit ahead of me. He didn’t precisely tell me what happened but I was sitting in the same room as he read the chapter and his reactions were…intense. No thrown books (we do not throw books around here ;P), but plenty of gasps.

It rattled me, a lot. I scare really easily and I have a wonderfully vivid imagination for horrible things. So, when I got the book back from Elio, that feeling that something is terribly wrong that the chapters before the actual wedding build up just got to be too much for me. I knew that a horrible car crash was coming up and I knew that if I got to that point, I wouldn’t be able to look away. And I really, really didn’t want those images in my head; there’s a reason why I don’t generally read or watch horror. It didn’t matter that the character’s being killed weren’t any favourites of mine; I probably mourned Grey Wind the most since Robb was something of non-entity for me and unlike Elio I wasn’t a big Catelyn fan, though my recent re-reads have given me a better understanding of her even if I still don’t really like her as a person.

Why didn’t I just skip that chapter and kept reading the rest of the book? At first, I figured I would be able to get back reading soon enough. I did finish all the Daenerys chapters and, I think, the Jaime chapters. But then there was the other big event of A Storm of Swords—the duel, that is. We had already been spoiled before we started reading about how the duel would end. Elio got to that one ahead of me as well—I think he pretty much finished the whole book in one day, staying up until early in the morning—and I got enough of an impression from him to know that I did not want to read that chapter either. In fact, that one made me a lot angrier than the Red Wedding, because GRRM managed to hype Oberyn in just the right way before the book came out that I was sure I had a new favourite character coming on stage. In fact, once he was introduced, he turned out to be even more interesting than we had thought he would be.

And then GRRM killed him. We knew it was coming, but that didn’t help. In fact, overall that upset me more than the Red Wedding (which didn’t really make me sad or angry, just sick to the stomach with the horror of it) because it actually removed a character that I wanted to read more about, a character that I had an emotional (and, alright, hormonal ;P) attachment to. One reason that I was so relieved that GRRM skipped the planned 5-year-gap after A Storm of Swords was that I was really sad that the gap meant that we would not get any immediate reactions to Oberyn’s death. It made it feel more pointless, somehow. That is probably also why “The Captain of the Guards” is my favourite chapter of A Feast for Crows, closely followed by the other Dornish chapters.

So, the Red Wedding stopped me in my tracks as I was reading, but there was more in the second half of the book that I didn’t want to get too involved with. Now I am past the halfway mark, I am in the middle of the next wedding, but I will probably save the rest of the book for closer to the next season, to have it all fresh in my mind. I am not sure if I am hoping that they do a good or a bad job with casting and writing Oberyn; I might not want to get attached to the character on the show, all considered, so perhaps it is better if they botch it. After all, and that’s a long and roundabout way of connecting back to the Red Wedding episode, watching the Red Wedding on TV was actually a lot easier than reading it because they didn’t manage to adapt it as well as they could have. If they had created the same tension on the show that GRRM did in the book, I might have found it hard to sit through the whole episode. But they didn’t, and I watched it without any stronger reaction at all.

This, my completely different reactions to the book and the show—and bear in mind that I was coming to that chapter fully spoiled, so that isn’t where the difference lies— is why I think that it was such a mistake to go for a shock instead of creating that sick feeling in your stomach throughout the whole episode; the true horror of the Red Wedding is as much about the atmosphere as it is about what actually happens. GRRM shifts from fantasy to horror without telling you and starts creating the sort of dread that a horror story would create, the sort of dread that makes you wish for a release, even though you know that the release will be bloody. Here, you start wishing for that release, without realising that you are in for a true horror story ending. That is masterful storytelling and that is damned effective.

Of course, if it had that effective on the show—because, admittedly, the episode has clearly been very effective for a lot of people as it is—it might have broken the Internet.

A Memory of Light, the last Wheel of Time book, is out. It feels really, really strange, and—unfortunately—not in a good way. There’s nothing wrong with endings being bitter sweet, but in this case, I feel a lack of closure.

Before A Song of Ice and Fire took over mine and Elio’s life, the Wheel of Time had a huge place in it. In fact, we would not have met without it. I didn’t actually pick up the series right away when the first book came out in 1990, but I believe I bought the paperback for myself for Christmas 1992 (I know it coincided with the publication of the first book in Swedish, since I actually ended up getting that as a present at the same time) and I was completely hooked right away. When I got on the Internet in 1995, it did not take long for me to find my way to a WoT MUSH called Tales of Ta’veren. From that MUSH, I discovered Elendor, a Tolkien MUSH, and there I met Elio. I got him to start reading WoT in order to join me on Tales. For a number of years, we poured over every word written by RJ, trying to figure out what various prophecies meant, piecing together esoteric details of the One Power and discussing just who was the best Blademaster around. I even wrote a letter with questions to RJ and received a response.

Yes, our interest did soften a bit as the story meandered, but my love for the world stayed strong. In part because we continued to roleplay in it, but the premise of the Wheel of Time is also completely irresistible to me. Myths, legends, time being circular and everything eventually coming back, it was all rather tailor-made for my interests and it was such a thrill every time I caught a reference or had one pointed out to me. That, more than anything else, is at the core of my love for the series. But I do have a weakness for structured magic systems as well and the One Power fascinated me.

Then RJ died. I remember finding out late one night or early one morning and waking up Elio to tell him. It felt very sad and very strange, but I don’t think the real impact actually hit me until the first collaboration with Sanderson came out. I just couldn’t read it. I didn’t know what came from RJ and what came from Sanderson and I simply could not stand constantly feeling “is this the real version?”. So, I have not read any of the books since RJ died. I’ve even had a hard time reading spoilers, because it just constantly brings back what’s been lost.

I do think I will want to read the epilogue of A Memory of Light, since RJ always said he’d had that one written or at least planned out for years. But the rest? I don’t know. Maybe I will try, since RJ did want to see the series completed. But still, I would have preferred to just have his notes published, similar to how Tolkien’s unfinished materials were treated. No matter how big a fan Sanderson is and no matter how much he may have tried to write what RJ would have wanted, he isn’t RJ. He’s not the Creator and his version of the story will always be a certain amount of guess work.

I don’t want his guesses, I just want the “truth”, and today I am feeling really sad that reality cruelly got in the way of the story and kept RJ from finishing his work the way he intended to. There’s closure to the story, as I do imagine it ended much like RJ intended it to end, but on a purely personal level there’s no real closure to my experience of reading the books. Even so, I am very grateful that I did, because my life would look completely different today if it wasn’t for the Wheel of Time.

Something else that struck me when thinking about this was that since 1992, I’ve been engrossed in epic fantasy. Now the Wheel of Time is over and eventually A Song of Ice and Fire will be over. I am not sure there will be anything to take their place; given the complications that both RJ and GRRM have run into, I am not sure epic of this particular scale will be attempted by anyone else. And if it is, I might not be as lucky in it being so very much to my tastes. There’s more to life than reading fantasy, of course, but it will leave a big hole behind.

After seeing the first two episodes of this season of Game of Thrones, I was almost feeling as if I didn’t really want to watch any more. The end of season one was so good, so true to the books, and now I didn’t see that closeness to the books. But we went on to episode three and four and suddenly I felt hopeful again. There would be enough scenes from the books that would get adapted really well.

Then we watched episode five. I was almost in tears afterwards.

Four ended in such an amazing way, with the birth of the shadow, and I knew we’d get a fabulous death scene for Renly. Not to mention that they would be able to actually show Loras’s reaction, described so evocatively by GRRM with just a few lines.

But no. The death scene was thoroughly underwhelming, with the horror elements of GRRM’s writing pretty much lost and the death completely sanitized. There should have been more fear, more blood, more terror. Brienne should have been even more distressed, with Catelyn the one taking charge to get her out of there.

And when we returned to the tent after their escape, we got a scene between Loras, Margaery and Littlefinger that in no way captured what happened in the books. How could they not show Loras going mad with grief, killing his own companions? How could they have him conclude that it wasn’t Brienne, just like that? How could they waste that scene in such a way when they had the opportunity to show on-screen what was only reported in the books as no PoV-characters were present?

I wanted that death to be harrowing, I wanted the reaction from Loras to be a grief-filled rage that you couldn’t help but to be drawn in by. Those scenes were supposed to make me cry and while it is true that they did make me teary-eyed, it was for all the wrong reasons.

There’s nothing wrong with the acting in these scenes, I do want to stress that, but I can’t say the same for the writing of the scenes. They’re passable, if looked at just as television and not an adaptation. But compared to the books they were immense letdowns. I just cannot believe that such a pivotal scene was done in such a weak fashion and that they changed the aftermath so much.

There were good scenes in the episode, even some very good scenes—Tywin with Arya was brilliant, Tyrion with Hallyne was very good despite some botched history—but the way it started and the way it ended was quite shattering.

I already knew Qarth would be significantly changed, but actually seeing it was still painful. It bears only a superficial resemblance to Dany’s actual storyline. Of course, that is more than can be said for Xaro. They’ve changed his appearance, they’ve changed his sexuality, they’ve changed his background. There is nothing left of the character in the books except his name, so why on earth wasn’t it changed? Jeyne’s name was changed to Talisa, after all.

So far, I am also completely underwhelmed by these invented characters, such as Talisa and “Xaro”. They are just not good creations, so what are they doing there? Yes, Talisa is replacing a character that was not very fleshed out, but still, why replace her with a trite cliché? “Xaro” is replacing an interesting character with a completely new, completely uninteresting one. Why?

Last season, we saw the episodes get stronger and stronger. This one took a dive beneath the two opening episodes of the season and a mile below episode three.

So, there we have episode four, with some real highs and real lows.

Talisa…well, the less said, the better, really. This is of course the scene I wrote about here. I am thrilled they changed the name of the character since they changed her back-story so radically. I am not thrilled with that cliché-filled scene. It just sucked, plain and simple. Not the acting, just the concept of the scene and the words being said.

Qarth…gone is the awe-inspiring, magnificent reception, not to mention the fairy-tale like way that Dany’s meeting with the three wise…well, the two wise men and the wise woman plays out well ahead of her getting to Qarth itself. There’s something very archetypal to Dany’s journey in A Clash of Kings and they have lost those elements entirely. I am also disappointed in Dany’s reaction here. Or rather, it may make sense in this desperate situation, but she just doesn’t get this aggressive in ACoK.  She’s still very much caught between that timid young girl she started out as in the first book and the young woman driven by magic and destiny to follow the red comet. I feel the way they decided to play this out sacrificed the actual storyline for some cheap drama.

Xaro…well, he’s not Xaro, in any way, shape or form. Why didn’t they just change the name of this character as well? He’s every bit as different from book Xaro as Jeyne is from Talisa. His appearance, his background and, most significantly for the rest of the storyline, his personality. He’s a warrior. I am dubious we’ll be seeing him crying at will to persuade Dany. Are they keeping his sexual preferences? I think it would be particularly inappropriate to change that and still keep the character’s name. But even with what we’ve sen so far, they really just should have renamed the character if they absolutely had to cast and write him so completely differently. And they had to go and invent some weird ritual…

The scene, as it is, is well acted. I just wish we got the scenes from the books and the characters from the books. Added scenes from non-PoVs are one thing, completely altered scenes another. I did thoroughly enjoy the performance of the Spice King, however. His correction of Dany’s pronunciation was priceless and I feel he really captured the way the Qartheen see themselves as so superior to everyone else.

This episode also has some wonderful examples of what happens when they really nail adapting scenes from the books. The scene with Tyrion and Lancel is hilarious, with great performances from both actors. You can’t help feeling sorry for Lancel here; he really doesn’t stand a chance, caught between Cersei and Tyrion.  And, of course, the final scene is everything it should be. Yes, they are conflating two events, but I am so relieved they really went for it with the shadow birth.

The Joffrey and Sansa scene is very good, both of them act it really well. I also think the added scene with Joffrey and the prostitutes was a good way of showing what the slightly older Joffrey might get up to; its clear from he way he orders Sansa stripped during the beating that there’s a sexual component to his sadism. I also liked the Harrenhal scenes quite a bit, both the way they handled the torture (even if I couldn’t actually watch that) and the terror and the brief interaction between Tywin and Arya. Again, they are conflating a lot of different scenes, but I think it kept true to the core of those scenes. I guess that is what I ultimately look for: does the adaptation stay true to the spirit of the storyline in the books? For the lows of this episode, I don’t think it does. For the highs, it very much does.

There’s one scene from the first four episodes—it is at the start of the fourth, following on from the amusing (in a good way!) opening scene—that keeps cropping up in my mind. Unfortunately, not because it is such a good scene.

When I first saw it, I was focused on one particular aspect of the scene—a character that appears to not just have been changed but in fact replaced—and I didn’t really think too much about the character interactions and the dialogue.

But since then, I’ve kept coming back to it and I’ve realized that the character (at least based on that scene)  comes across like a horrible fantasy cliché spouting unsubtle social commentary; on the whole, it feels like something that GRRM would not have written in a million years. In fact, all I can think of now is how well the character would fit into the Wheel of Time…

Alas, they’re not from the Two Rivers.

(Actually, the comparison isn’t necessarily fair to the Wheel of Time, because in that setting the character would have had somewhat more reason to act as they do.)