https://time.com/archive/6675462/books-the-american-tolkien/
A common discussion in Fantasy online circles seems to be "who's the new Tolkien?", this article by Time magazine dates from 2005 and is responsible for popularizing the idea that George RR Martin is the "American Tolkien".
What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil. Tolkien's work has enormous imaginative force, but you have to go elsewhere for moral complexity. Martin's wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more. A Feast for Crows isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs. It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love.
Now I have to say a like ASOIAF a lot, but I never understood why those two authors get compared to each other. They both write Fantasy and love (loved in Tolkien's case) world-building and lore but that's it, their writing styles are different, their stories are different, their themes are different. Is it just because 
has a "double R" on his name (the second R which he added by the way). Is it because the "what's Aragorn's tax policy" quote? 
The article talks about Robert Jordan too @kaamrev
and what's funny is that it comes as a review for "A Feast for Crows" which is… well, ranked low among ASOIAFcels, most fans feel the series peaked in "A Storm of Swords" and AFFC can be a slog for many.
I think it can be argued GRRM is currently the best Fantasy author alive (I guess this speaks more of the current state of fantasy but many would claim it is 
), there's a lot of his writing which is good but also what is bad tends to be very bad
Like this:
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up, she was pooping brown water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew.
Daenerys last chapter on ADWD lmao
Or this from AFFC which I don't know if it is good, bad, funny or what
Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr. Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons of my face and fingers one by one, al those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs.
Cersei describing licking Robert's c*m instead of finishing inside her, she says that while anally fingering a woman. Maybe we can qualify it as a realistic 
Then there are the thematic differences, Tolkien's Legendarium is mythology, which was Tolkien's life passion, he gets criticized for making "black and white" characters instead of "morally grey" ones but the thing is his main themes are "Good vs Evil" on a cosmic battle, envy (Morgoth) and the will to dominate (Sauron) are the ultimate evil, he's not aiming at historical accuracy as mythology is always anachronistic. ASOIAF is an attempt at European Medieval History but "what if dragons and evil ice elves existed?" Is not good representation of Medieval Western Europe either as medieval peasants were just passive NPCs which lords like the Boltons could skin alive without repercussions, the evil characters of ASOIAF like the Boltons, the Mountain or Tywin get away with too much shit. The high lords of Westeros are also weirdly and modernly atheistic or irreligious, so for all of GRRM's talk about his saga being "historically well grounded" it doesn't seem better than any other fantasy novel, not that it is a problem as it doesn't affect writing quality and storylines just something to point out.
A good way to conclude is that GRRM is not the American Tolkien, in fact no one is and that's ok. An author should be it's own thing, they shouldn't live under the shadow of another author to be compared and I feel like every time the media or fans say stuff like "X IS THE AMERICAN Y" 
or "A IS THE NEW B" 
they're doing X and A a disservice.
Here are some reddit threads on it
https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/hw0ls4/the_american_tolkien_isnt_george_r_r_martin_its/
Here this redditor argues the American Tolkien is not GRRM but Stephen King 
And here's Robert Jordan's thread
https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/61k1v0/robert_jordan_the_american_tolkien/
I never read Jordan so maybe their fans can tell us if that's an apt comparison but I'm certain having Jordan just be Jordan is much better
The Game of Thrones sub (normiest ASOIAF sub ever).
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Feast of crows was one of the best books ivee read, and the culmination of Jamie transforming from a reprehensible frickwit into a responsible commander and politician against his will and the entire known world rightfully hating his guts - and his climax of desperately attempting to avoid a gruesome bloodbath against the blackfish, was the full circle of his character arc - an example of Martin's strength as a character writer
Which is why I'm fricking dumbfounded as to how utterly shot DoD is - literally one of the worst/most unpleasant books ive ever read.
Marting literally R*PES
Tyrion and Danny into horrible people. While it is plausible, undertsandable/realistic that Tyrion would degenerate into a drunken cruel person after the magnitude of his trauma, and Danny would frick up as a teenager, it felt highly unpleasant
Like negative character arc, where they were devolving - and I'm not talking about the hero's journey where usually protags usually have to face opposition/difficulty in life to overcome and grow into better versions of themselves - i mean i felt they devolved into simpler lesser uncomplicated versions of themselves - which i grant is a realistic outcome, but is an especially shit and unpleasant thing to experience,
AFTER they had already had charcacter abyss moments AND subsequent climax moments showing their hidden greatness
Fricking 40k books with weekly planetary genocides aren't as depressing
What a shit book
Also the idea of duel books happening at the same moments in time is pretentious and retraded, and was probably the reason Martin overextended himself behind his own reasonable writing ability, cuz he was huffing the fumes of his own greatness
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The problem with AFFC and ADWD is that unlike the first 3 books they have no "end" proper. AFFC was supposed to be part of ADWD but it got split into two books because it was too long.
Tyrion was never a good person tbh and think about what happened in ASOS. He found out that his father had his wife gangraped and his beloved brother concealed it from him. His evil sister always hated him, the realm thinks he's a monstrous kingslayer and he just killed his former lover and his own father (kinslaying). Now he gets drunk all day and fantasizes about raping and murdering his sister. Even before all that Tyrion had a singer killed for writing a song about him and Shae, he was probably the most whitewashed character on the show.
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ADWD was supposed to end with the three large battles as a huge climax: the battle of Meereen, the battle of Storm's end, and the battle of Winterfell, but because GRRM got carried away, none of them happened. Instead they'll all happen at the start of TWOW, which seems kind of anti-climactic.
I've written out my thoughts about why GRRM has such problems getting the stories out, but I can't search my reddit history to find it, so I can't repost it here. The core problem can very easily be deduced if you read the original letter to his editor, where he outlined his plan for a 3 volume book (lol). His plan was for his story to have three Volumes, or arcs: The Game of Thrones chronicling the fight between Starks and Lannisters, A Dance with dragons, about the Taergaryan invasion of Westeros, and The Winds of winter which was supposed to be about the long night and the fight against the Others.
The volume ended up spanning three books, and the war between the two houses turned into the war of the five kings. AFFC and ADWD were supposed to cover the second volume (hence the name ADWD), but he fricked up even that, so now book titled the Winds of Winter will be the final book of the ADWD arc, which besides the three battles described above still has to do a lot of legwork, just to get us to the finale of the arc - which is the long waited invasion of Westeros. And only then the TWOW arc can start, probably not even in the book titled TWOW.
And the planned TWOW arc is probably his biggest frickup. While the Others are a fun distraction, a looming threat that gives a lot of characters something to do, they're an utterly boring as a resolution to a story about medieval politics. Humans duking it out with ice zombies is not an interesting or a satisfying conclusion to a story filled with interesting characters and character interactions. It's dumb. All the interesting bits of story are elsewhere.
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He needs at least 3 more books to end the saga on a satisfying way, the only way he can wrap it up in just 2 books is killing most of the POVs in TWOW. If Daenerys arrives in Westeros by the end of TWOW then ADOS (which will never be written lmao) will have to be a rushed mediocre novel like Seasons 7 and 8 of the show. It will be super disappointing to have The Others being deal with in just half a book after spending 6 longass books teasing them as the Big Bad Guys.
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Euron and The Ironborn are by far the more interesting villains of the series. Insane lovecraft vikangz that are awakening and disturbing every fricked up myth and magical site in the world in their greed while being complete masters of the seas in ability is way better than ice zombies.
It allows GM to really play around with his left behind skills as a horror writer too while still playing with mystery.
Euron Greyjoy has dozens of enslaved wizards, magi, alchemists and sorcerers in his ship that's he's forcing them to enact a mass ritual upon the Hightower to break into that ancient aliens maze its built atop of.
!bookworms
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I don't know if this is unpopular, but I hate the Ironborn and the Greyjoy chapters. Euron popping as an eleven-hour cartoon villain feels like a distraction from the main series, if he wanted a story about Pirate Wizards he should write another novel on it, they better pay off in TWOW.
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Euron Greyjoy is a peak !edgelords character.
Also, to my memory, he was mentioned well in advance of his first appearance, because we see how his brothers loathe him. I don't know what role he has to play in the "main" story of ASOIAF though
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His role is to unleash the kraken cthulhu monster on the (((maester))) city
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GRRM said there will be no more new POVs on TWOW so we won't get Euron's. Victarion will likely play the role of bringing Daenerys and her armies to Westeros.
Euron theories are wild, some speculate he will steal one of Dany's dragons.
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The introduction of Valyrian artifacts in his possession seems like a very obvious setup for that. The only way it doesn't happen is if it gets scrapped (or, more realistically, if Martin dies before writing it) but it was 100% planned.
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Euron theories are nuts because everyone in universe talks him up and every time he shows up on page he's doing cool shit.
I wouldn't expect him as a POV character, he's too cool and mysterious
and I don't remember where everyone is placed if there would be an appropriate existing POV character, so maybe he won't really do anything in TWOW and we would learn what he did in ADOS (lol)
Also frick you for making me think TWOW will ever release
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I hate the entire Daenerys storyline
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Read "Untangling the Meereenese Knot". (If you don't mind spending an hour reading analysis and speculation about a dead book series.) It gave me a new appreciation of the Dany storyline. While I still think it's subpar, I think it's because we still haven't gotten any payoff for her "pointless" stop in Meereen. The essay tries to make the case that the entire Meereen plot is actually building up to one of Martin's core ideas for the series.
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No.
I hate what she brought to the show/series. I hate the tropey horse men drogo was leading, I hate the entire desert/fantasy middle east arc actually, the series would have been better without dragons in it entirely imo
I was really into season 1 because it was a lot of good character driven drama but everything related to Daenerys is just fantasy slop
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My comment is more of a complaint that the vikangz should have been the main villains and the Others are basically brought back by them fricking around everywhere. I know GM is basically completely spent as a writer now so I'm not holding my breath for any pay-off from TWOW
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Oh, I kind of agree on that, unless he manages to make The Others more interesting (doubtful), they're supposed to be more like malignant Icy Elves than those silent ugly monsters we saw on the show.
I just hope it doesn't end in some final battle against the "Night King" who was the most generic fantasy villain shit D&D cooked.
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I expect it to be like World of Warcraft LMAO. "I dunt wan it but there must always be a Night's King" said Jon Snow :3
You should also get The Children of Hurin audiobook by Christopher Lee.
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Dude should have started writing 15 years and 350lbs sooner
He set the stage for an epic he cannot tell in his lifetime but the effort was initially valiant
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I forgot all that
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Is the little hobbit not a stand in for Martin? I'd heard that somewhere.
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I haven't read those books (back when the first volume came out, I tried reading it because I had liked other books by Martin, but I bounced off it hard because he was so heck-bent on 'I'm subverting the tropes of heroic fantasy, babe!' that I didn't want to spend any time with his shitty people in his shitty world).
But I suspect part of what you describe was down to him going "Ha ha, I am going to subvert expectations here once again, you think I'm gonna follow a simple stupid 'characters grow and develop into non-shitheads' arc? My fans and devoted followers expect more from me!"
His whole thing is "Oh, you believe all that rubbish about honour and morality, huh? Let me rub your nose in what the Shitty Middle Ages was really like" (except it wasn't like that). So if Tyrion and Dany were showing signs of the hero's journey to becoming non-shitty people - uh-oh, can't have that, that's bad old Tolkien simple black-and-white morality! I'm a complex writer dealing with moral ambiguity, shades of grey, and adult themes! So I'm gonna turn them back into shit-heads!
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The middle ages was mostly knights chasing bandits off too protect the farmers who kept them fed. A song of ice and fire is about as realistic as Palestinian lives matter or @911roofer's depiction of turks as subhuman orcish savages.
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Dany was always going to be a shithead and always was. Hated her from the start
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gwateest Bwong wwiter
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GRRM is American
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I knyow his face
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