The New Shadow - Your thoughts?

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

GRR Martin's ambition to explore 'a more realistic Middle-earth' clearly needs to be taken with not a grain, but a generous pinch of salt. From a writer in a genre where comparisons to Tolkien tend to pop up in jacket blurbs and reviews of every new work of notice, this is nothing but a marketing statement saying that he wants to do something more realistic with the genre, something closer to our own world; to criticise him for neglecting the metaphysical foundations of Middle-earth is to miss the point.

I don't entirely agree with you here. From everything I've ever read on his statements on the matter, Martin does seem to be a genuine admirer of Tolkien's work and is knowledgeable about it. As a motivation, I think that was a real part of Martin's inspiration. What I fault him on is his execution.

In Martin's defense he did not start referring to himself as "the American Tolkien." Others did that. However, it certainly has started appearing on a lot of marketing materials since then.

It could have worked well as a thriller with occult or horror trappings. As a sequel to LotR I don't think it would have been viable, simply because the reduced stakes would make it rather anticlimactic after the cataclysm of Sauron's fall

It almost in a way would have been a bit tedious...or sordid...or some word in between those two.