MSU Red Cedar Message Board

It starts April 17th. Nudity is very likely, though I wouldn't say it will be very plentiful. Blood and killing, on the other hand, should pretty much be a staple of the show.

Oh, and for the other poster, I don't think that Martin's books can be shared on the Kindle. They couldn't be as of last week.

Say good-bye to the next 6 months to a year of social calendar as you burn through that series. After the first 100 pages of the first book, it's more or less non-stop action until about halfway through book 8. If you like political games as well, you'll get a healthy dose of that, as well as military tactics.

Started Game of Thrones last night, told myself I'd just read for 15 min. before I went to bed.

I was hooked after the prologue. That scene sounded so darn cool that I can't wait to see what HBO does with it and the rest of the books.

I'm going to get through Game of Thrones by mid-Feb so I can compare it to tWOT. Jordan's books are outstanding and the detail and sheer number of people and personalities he can put in there is amazing.

Only criticism is that by books 8 and 9, there are literally 100+ characters that get "screen time" so sometimes it seems that the author is losing the forest for the trees. I assure you that the final books make wading through that worth it AND there's so much momentum and action from books 1-7 that you can crash though books 8 and 9 knowing that crazy stuff is ahead.

It took me a few weeks to get to page 50 or so of Game of Thrones because of work, etc. It took me 6 days to finish the rest of the book, could not put it down. I finished it on Saturday and am already 150 pages into Clash of Kings.

Just read that review; I'm really excited for the series. No doubt it'll be hard to recreate the castles, etc. ,but as long as they keep the dialogue (especially Tyrion's) I'm ok with just about everything.

I also see that they've moved up the age of Sansa to 13 (from 11) and Arya to 11 (from 9). Don't quite understand why that is, but oh well. There are going to be some very very controversial scenes of course (and that's just from my knowledge of Book 1 and 1/4 of Book 2!) and I'm looking forward to the water cooler discussions on all of them.

That's what I thought too. I wouldn't be surprised if Dany starts at 16 or even 18 instead of 13 at the beginning of the series for obvious reasons. (Edit: I don't know if they've announced her age yet, please correct me if I'm wrong).

From our generation's perspective, it would seem crazy to have kings/queens/lords so young, as many of us aren't even out of college until age 21/22. If the characters were in their mid-to late teens and early 20s instead of pre-teen/young teens, it may translate a little better for TV audiences. Trying not to spoil anything, but the relative youth of some very important figures is kind of nuts to me. I know Martin is keeping this as medieval as possible, where people were married at 12 and mothers by 13/14, became lords/kings as soon as their mother/father died, but by todays standards, where most world leaders are in their 50s, I can see some TV audiences wondering why so many important figures are kids instead of young adults. I love the story as is, but I wonder how a wider audience will feel about it.

FTR, we really need the "spoiler" thing on this board so the people that have read the books can talk about the show without spoiling the plot for everyone else.

Yea, and from what I can tell, making her a few years older won't have any effects on her storylines. There's definitely some weird stuff going on with her though. I do enjoy that there's really no "good" or "evil", just a bunch of power-hungry people duking it out. There are obviously honorable and dishonorable characters and some that do border on evil, but it's not just Starks vs. Lannisters.

I wonder what they'll do about the wolves; in True Blood, HBO used real wolves for the werewolves, so I wonder how the dire wolves will be treated. Also, I'm immensely curious on how they're going to create the Wall, I mean, they're not going to build a giant wall of ice.

I also want to know if they're going to start the show with the prologue of the first book. Pretty solid way to open, if you ask me. Is it April yet?

I mean, how can you NOT? There are multiple scenes where I can't wait to see how they adapt them for the show. As an avid fantasy reader, I appreciate that there's not a ton of magic/sorcery, etc. (which I actually do enjoy reading, but like that Martin doesn't need it to make the action go) and about 90% of it could have taken place in Europe during the middle ages.

I thought I could wait till my b-day in June to get books 3 and 4, but it's looking like I'm going to be going to Borders/Barnes and Noble in the next week or so.

I live in Chicago, so I'd hope I can find it somewhere.

Rocky- Glad to see that you're enjoying the books.

I'm also interested to read of others getting hooked. From what I'm getting from Martin's website, he MAY finish the fifth book this year. That would be good.

Totally not there yet. On page 166 of Book 2.

Re: Your post about the budget.

That was a big concern about the project; most of it's being done with set pieces, but CGI is going to be necessary for the "grand scope" things like the Wall. With they hype it's receiving, I'm sure it'll be re-upped for a 2nd season within the first few episodes of this one. Too big of a following.

Have you seen the extended trailer/look in on youtube? Sets look really good, and they nailed Littlefinger's actor. Dany looks to be between 16 and 21; no way she could pass for 13. Bran looks the right age, Snow has a porn 'stache, which I find hilarious. King Robert looks the bloated buffoon he's supposed to be. Cersei's hot, I thought Catelyn would be a bit younger, she looks to be in her mid to late 40s. Joffrey looks like an arrogant little snot, so that's good to see.

The scenes in the North looks dark and desolate; King's Landing bright and sunny. The Dothraki scenes look appropriately middle-eastern mixed with native american. All in all, it looks pretty darn good.

You're welcome.

About the TV friendliness: Martin wrote for television for about ten years. He was a writer for the Beauty and the Beast series from the '80's with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perleman. No doubt that's a factor.

About the characters: I agree with you. Love them well. Remember anyone can die at any time. ANYONE! So take every life threatening adventure seriously.

I suspect that TV writing is a factor there as well. "Yes yes, everyone knows that Linda Hamilton isn't going to die this episode, but in MY book screw that! Die Linda!"

The other thing that you're going to start loving is that characters change. "Good" guys can become twisted by their experiences and "villains" can change their ways. Martin does a great job of making these changes believable.

Fantastic series.

I really wish I was as excited about the book series and HBO series as all of you guys. I really do. But the sad fact is that I started reading it in high school and I am now almost thirty. I have waited for 13 years for that fat f@ck to finish the series, but still no avail. When a Feast for Crows came out, I thought he was going to start picking up the pace and get the series finished by the end of the decade. I thought he would never make us wait 5 years again between books. I thought we might eventually get closure. None of these things happened, nor are they going to happen. At the rate he is going, he will finish the series in 2022(that is not an exaggeration). Lets face it, the series started out great, but he has lost his way. I imagine that this series is going to have the same fate as tWOT, left for someone else to finish after the long winded author is worm food. My advice is to put it down unless you want to be constantly frustrated by delays, push backs and a never ending cycle of "I'll finish it at MY pace".

I wouldn't say that I have reached this point with the series, but the lack of progress on the series has been frustrating to say the least. I will definitely pick up the new book whenever he decides to finish it, and I will probably have to do a re-read to refresh my memory. Some people say that A Feast for Crows was a low point, but I still thought it was a decent book. I think it suffered a bit because the majority of the interesting character view points were not present in A Feast for Crows... all the more reason to want A Dance with Dragons to hurry the hell up and get published.

I said it earlier in the thread and I have to say it again... I highly recommend Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen. If you like Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire you will be absolutely blown away by Erikson's stuff. I have a number of friends who have read everything available in both series and they all think the Malazan series is better. Also... the 10th and final book of the Malazan series comes out this March