Why did A Song of Ice and Fire work for me?
Recently, I saw a YouTube short arguing why A Song of Ice and Fire became a breakout series in the early 2000s.
She argued that the young audience back then was disappointed with the era's social and economic situation and related to a grim-dark story.
I can't say I agree with this line of thought, but that's not the topic of this note. Instead, I want to talk about why it worked perfectly for me. This short video and my recent return to the series made me think about the ASOIAF universe recently.
I read "A Game of Thrones" circa 2010 when an amateur translator translated it for free online. Now, mind you, I lived in a country detached from international copyright laws. We didn't have legitimate and censor-free access to entertainment. We were so grateful to this unknown blogger for taking the time and effort to translate this fantastic opus for us SFF fans in a remote part of the world.
The story was like nothing I read before. I was immediately hooked on the characters, especially the Starks, in the beginning. Will I ever experience the same magic it cast on me if I reread it now? I don't know.
I started watching the TV show after a year or two when it started airing. Meanwhile, the online translator stopped publishing new chapters. She had translated until the first third of "A Storm of Swords" by then. I suppose ASOIAF is cursed with abandonment. I wasn't confident in my English reading skills then, and my early twenties were too overbearing to keep up with a tome called "A Song of Ice and Fire." I set aside the book until 2018, when the show killed all my hopes for a satisfying conclusion for the story.
I returned to the books. This time, I read the books in English from the beginning. It was tough for me; I needed to catch up on the meaning behind many descriptions. The dialogues were my favorite part; they were easier to follow.
Last year, I finished reading "A Feast for Crows." After that, I couldn't convince myself to start "A Dance with Dragons. I wasn't ready to join the doomed fandom.
There are some new speculations that the next book in the series, "The Winds of Winter," might be out soon. There aren't any official announcements yet, but for us, the more hopeful fans in the community, even those crumbs of possibility are good news. I finally started reading the fifth book to celebrate this new prospect.
The book started with a Tyrion chapter after the prologue. God, how I missed his viewpoint. The chapter devastated me so much that I decided to go back and read the last Tyrion chapter from "A Storm of Swords" to freshen up some memories. It's unbelievable that his story was paused for over ten years.
What was mesmerizing to me was Tyrion's total breakdown after hearing the truth about Tysha. This was something missing from the TV show. I never knew how heartbroken and lost Tyrion felt after his release and journey to Essos. It was almost like he was not the same witty, carefree, thoughtful Tyrion we got to know. Now, I'm curious how he will get back on his feet and grow from this experience.
With these thoughts after reading the chapter, I finally realized why I love ASOIAF so dearly. Apart from all of these exciting storylines, it's the character growth that draws me to this series. Awful stuff happens to all of the POV characters, but how they react to it, grow with it, or crumble under it with their weaknesses is spectacularly explored in this series. A study of characters that I really see in SFF books these days. The characters suffer significantly in the world of ice and fire, yet the ones who survive somehow grow and thrive despite it. Not all of them, of course; I'm looking at you, Cersei. In a nutshell, the characters and events are gritty and provocative, and I'm all here for that.
The future of the series
Sometimes, I wonder why Martin didn't choose to garden till the end. Why did he decide on seven books so early on? Perhaps we could have book after book all these years, each moving the story forward by a bit. This would have eliminated the complexity of bounding the story into a limited number of pages. And when finally George felt that it was time to harvest, he could wrap up the work at the right time. A dragon of a story it is; not supposed to be chained. For if you do that, it'll wither.