Ah, the cutesy. I've drop-kicked books that have shown signs of that. It feels like the author's being too clever by half.
I think what I liked about Clancy's work was that even though a lot of it he made up and/or way-extrapolated, it still felt like there was a realness to it, a weight. A lot of fantasy novels are so wrapped up in their sense of 'magic' that they're like bad CGI: nothing has any real weight.
Despite the fact that I did get bored with the Game of Thrones series (too many rapes, too many deaths), there was no doubt that it had the same kind of foundation-feeling to it. A good, solid weight, and I don't mean the book itself. Maybe because it pivots far less on some less-weighted fantastical elements, and instead is pretty strongly rooted in things you'd find in any real-life history: betrayal, murder, warfare, and so on.
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Date: 8 Jan 2014 04:47 am (UTC)I think what I liked about Clancy's work was that even though a lot of it he made up and/or way-extrapolated, it still felt like there was a realness to it, a weight. A lot of fantasy novels are so wrapped up in their sense of 'magic' that they're like bad CGI: nothing has any real weight.
Despite the fact that I did get bored with the Game of Thrones series (too many rapes, too many deaths), there was no doubt that it had the same kind of foundation-feeling to it. A good, solid weight, and I don't mean the book itself. Maybe because it pivots far less on some less-weighted fantastical elements, and instead is pretty strongly rooted in things you'd find in any real-life history: betrayal, murder, warfare, and so on.