A Viper, With A Blade, In The Water Garden

Game of Thrones 4D Puzzle Box, Pittsburgh, 2015


The puzzle of Westeros...how fitting.  In the event that you have not seen episode 6 of season 5 of "Game of Thrones", be warned, there be spoilers beyond this jumping off point.
While I've seen episode 6.5, titled 'Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken', twice, and did notice a certain slash to a certain character's arm, I must admit that I failed to appreciate its significance until I read this piece in Vanity Fair.   Brilliant!  To sneak something in on us in a blink of an eye, something that clearly means that guy's gonna die a horrible death by poison, an action so fleeting in the bigger picture that's demanding the viewer's attention, that seemingly only one person in the entire blogosphere took note, is quite remarkable.
The show, at this point, had no choice but to deviate from the framework provided by the books.  A written narrative and a visual one are two different animals as it is.  A show or movie based on a novel need not adhere strictly to it, but in the case of "Game of Thrones" the showrunners had no choice.  George R. R. Martin writes at his own pace, and the show has outpaced that pace.  And, I would argue, that it's exciting to see deviations from the books.  It makes for more compelling storytelling for this viewer.  I think that, since I came to the books because of the show, that I am more vested in how the show is telling the story of the seven kingdoms versus how Martin is telling that very same story.  Well, not so very same any longer.

The Whores of Boiled Leather

16th Century German Halberd, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014

I recently finished reading - actually listening to while I drove or puttered around the house - George R.R. (because one 'r' isn't enough!!!!) Martin's 5 book opus (so far, with more books to follow, eventually), "Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice".  While I am a HUGE fan of the HBO show, Game of Thrones, I am less enthralled by its work of origin.  Martin's insistence on repeating himself endlessly, describing each detail over and over again as if it were new, taking up pages and pages with tiresome minutiae that detracts more than it adds to the overall narrative.  When you trim off the fat you have what the show presents, which is lean, fast-paced storytelling at its best.
But what I found most disturbing about the 5 books came about  in the last two: "A Feast For Crows" and "A Dance With Dragons".  In both books the female characters are treated even more violently than in the previous three, and are nearly universally referred to as either 'whores' or 'cunts'.   This was shocking.  I applaud Martin's abilities in world-building, of which he is a master, but he is a wretched writer, or has become a wretched writer.  Despite the conflated verbosity of the first 3 books, the writing isn't so laborious that you want to throw the book across the room with great force, but there were enormous sections of the last 2 books when I left the room while the CDs spun their tales of boiled leather and whores.  I folded laundry, I went to the post office, I took the dog for a walk.  Never once did I lose the thread of the story because precious little was happening.  Whores!  Boiled leather!  Corn!
My only interest at this point in seeing Martin finish the series is for the sake of the show.  Although if he doesn't, at this point, I trust the show runners, D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, to finish the story of Westeros for him, and us.