Fantasy: An Uncomparable Comparison

I've read recently (well, I'm finishing it anyway) The Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin first part of an epic fantasy series still in the making (four out of seven books published). I had friends telling me over the last years that it was incredibly good and truth be told, it is. In fact, their descriptions never did the story justice - yes, it is just that good. And now there's a television series coming too, around this month, on HBO. By the look of the trailers and the fifteen-minute preview avaliable, it looks truly outstanding. But there's one thing that kinda bugs me, and it's not quite related to the series or the books themselves, but with the comments I've been reading over the Internet - and we all know how comments are on the Internet - drawing comparisons between Martin and Tolkien.

Let's put it like this: the critic doesn't call Martin "the American Tolkien" for nothing. Yes, he is that good, but as one can easily see, Tolkien's still there. And truth be told, ninety-five percent of the fantasy literature walks down the road paved by Tolkien. Today we get the opportunity to read Martin's wonderful epic fantasy (or many other great fantasy stories, even Pullman's in a way) because an old English teacher of the twentieth century set his mind into creating the greatest literary world ever written. This doesn't mean that everyone else is under his shadow -Martin and his A Song of Ice and Fire surely isn't, just as Pullman's His Dark Materials isn't. They created immensely rich worlds of their own, rather unique and enjoyable. But at the end of the day, we all go back to the Shire, even if to draw silly comparisons. Yes, Tolkien's tales are rather "sexless", if I may put things that way - and if we compare with Martin's plunder-and-rape, the Middle-Earth looks as if locked into a monastery. But truth be told, the story needed no sex whatsoever, not even romance (and everyone who read the books know that the films have much more romance than their source material). It simply wouldn't fit. Whereas in Martin's tale, it fits incredibly well.

Plus the whole idea that The Lord of the Rings is all black-and-white, with "pretty Elves" opposing "ugly Orcs", while A Song of Ice and Fire is all about the shades of gray kind of falls apart when we think about the prime motive of Tolkien's epic: Frodo. Shades of gray? That little hobbit went through all possible shades of gray from the verdant Shire until the ash-riddled Mordor. There and back again, without never really coming back. Yes, Martin's tale is all about intrigue and betrayal, a constant prism with many different facets - and it's extraordinarily good and entertaining at that, while Tolkien, truth be told, focus more on the eternal "Good versus Evil" conflict, with archetypal heroes of the likes of Aragorn and Faramir and Gandalf opposing archetypal villains as Sauron and Saruman - and ultimately winning. Except for Frodo, who falls far and never really gets back on his feet. Of all the fantasy characters I've read about over the years there's only one that strikes me as Frodo did - Urza Planeswalker, a rather obscure protagonist of a rather (unjustly) obscure series of books based on a trading card role play game.

All in all, I for one I'm glad that one can read both authors. Comparisons are rather futile: the books themselves belong to their own time, to their own background, and (perhaps above all) to their own motive. I've read The Lord of the Rings (the three books) three times already, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the fourth just as much as the third. I've just read A Game of Thrones, and I can't way to read the second book, A Clash of Kings. Let the hardcore fans of each compare and struggle at will - read both, and you're in for a treat.