I really enjoy A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. As a result, in between and while waiting for new volumes to appear (and since I can't just keep re-reading that series over and over) I've been working my way through some of Mr. Martin's earlier works.
I have enjoyed his short stories (I read Dreamsongs vol. 2 a few months ago, though not reviewed on this blog) but was curious to try out one of his longer works. Mr. Martin seemed to think highly of this book, judging by his comments in Dreamsongs, though he acknowledged it did not perform well. Between that and the Stephen King endorsement on the cover, I had high hopes of discovering a lost treasure.
Unfortunately I'm left looking for positive things I can say. The book starts off fairly slow, and I suspect Mr. Martin felt a little too close to the protagonist, Sandy Blair. A number of the conversations and interactions between characters feel like conversations with straw men to make the point the narrator wants to make. A number of the characters speak in the same voice, and the "bad guys" in the book are for the most part evil for the sake of being evil, without other reasons for it.
The book is good in that it shows how far Mr. Martin has come to reach the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but it takes pretty careful searching to find elements to enjoy in it. I guess I have three particular areas worth comment and which have given me something to think about.
Firstly, I like the relationship between Sandy and his real estate agent partner. Although I think she's being described as almost artificially cold (much like the Butcher is almost artificially violent and cruel), there are aspects of that relationship that ring true. I guess that applies to most of Sandy's interactions. All characters are portrayed wholly as Sandy perceives them, and entirely from the perspective of the effect they have on Sandy, often caricatured for the dominant way they affect him. It's an interesting technique to demonstrate the completely self-absorbed narrator, I'm just not sure at this stage that Mr. Martin had the craft to pull it off without seeming to be a self-absorbed author himself. However it serves as a good precursor to his use of the unreliable narrator in later works. I think of nuanced villainy as one of the hallmarks of Mr. Martin's writing, and it's hard to see here. I think some of his villains (The Butcher in particular) have rationales for what they do and why they do it, but looking only through Sandy's eyes makes it hard to see.
Secondly, I'm reminded somewhat of a comment either made by or about Stephen King, that anything he tries to write turns into horror and suspense sooner or later. I felt that way about this book. The journalistic investigation combined with a rolling stone magazine style history of music and events of the 60's was probably where Mr. Martin set out to go, but (for me) it just wasn't working. Once we get to the idea of the undead, and possession and possibly vampiric spirits, that's when the book starts to be enjoyable reading. But it takes a long time to get there, and it's a bit of a slog until it reaches that point.
Finally, I think Mr. Martin is trying to imbue the passion he has for the music into the book. There's an awful lot of descriptive language about the music played by the Nazgul, the way the drums and guitars sound, the anger and fury to it. I'm not a music critic by any means. The descriptions seemed convincing of someone who enjoys very hard rock, on the verge of death metal. But is that the music that's representative of the 60's? To the extent it is, I'd expect the protagonist to be listening to the Stones, which is probably as close as it comes. Black Sabbath, the Ramones, the extreme heavy metal was all later than the 60s. Guitarists playing loud and shirtless and raging, I don't associate with the 60s. But even if I did, I'm not sure that Sandy, so passionate about the band, would be listening to Simon and Garfunkel in his car and play the Beatles all night long amid these Nazgul tapes.
I think it goes back to the original intent of the plot. Mr. Martin wanted a historical look at the 60s and how the music influenced the movement. But his story wandered into satanic cults and the undead and he needed something harder. The anger of the 60s and protests of war were expressed more by Credence Clearwater Revival and Barry McGuire and folk singers, but that doesn't line up with the driving anger of the music Mr. Martin wanted to represent to channel the vampires and evil forces, so he needed to make the Nazgul into a hard rock, Black Sabbath style band. While justifiable from a literary licence standpoint, it made the book hard to place in time, which made it harder to get into the story completely. It also made the coming of age aspect difficult to place. Sandy was doing lots of pining for his lost youth, and the poor quality of music kids these days listen to... but he's supposed to be in his early thirties, not his early forties, and the music kids would have been listening to in 1981 would have been pretty consistent with the sound described for the Nazgul I think, though far removed from the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel or the Beatles.
In all, I think it's a book that doesn't quite work, but gave me a few things to think about and some things to watch for in Mr. Martin's writing. And even a lesser George R.R. Martin entry is good to read while waiting for the next entry in his opus.
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