#Doing a WOT re-read and racing towards the end...

[jackoshadows]

GRRM has all the set up for an interesting magic system in A Song of Ice and Fire and as a fan of high fantasy, I find it unfortunate that he finds it so hard to develop this part of his story in more detail.

Yes, I generally get in a groove on a particular character and write  several chapters or chunks of chapters at once, before hitting a wall.  When I do hit a wall, I switch to another character. Some characters are  easier to write and some harder, however. Dany and Bran have always  been toughest, maybe because they are heaviest on the magical  elements... also, Bran is the youngest of POV kids, and very restricted  as well because of his legs. At the other end of the spectrum, the  Tyrion chapters often seem to write themselves. The same was true for  Ned.

GRRM SSM, July 14, 1999

The concept of warging and skin changing for example is fascinating - it’s been used in other fantasy, but I like GRRM’s take on it. Like how Jon and Arya are literally in contact with each other through their wolf dreams and yet they are unaware of it. Arya wargs Nymeria and can see through her, same with Jon, and then Ghost and Nymeria can see what the other is doing. So if Jon and Arya took it one step further, they could probably communicate with each other.

The part where Jon Snow as a direwolf interacts with Bran Stark as a weirwood tree is the type of magic that would be so fascinating to explore in more detail and used to move the plot forward. Same with the much awaited Hodor origin story involving time travel that GRRM is again yet to write. Warging/Skin changing/Greenseers/3ER etc. - lacks details and story, IMO. Of the big 5 characters, Bran has the least amount of POV chapters.

What we have for warging in ASoIaF, for example, is a sharp contrast to Robert Jordan’s Tel'aran'rhiod or world of dreams in Wheel of Time. Jordan hints at this parallel world with Perrin in book one and builds it up and then we see another aspect of it with the Wise Ones and Egwene. Both Egwene and Perrin then use it in different ways with how the wolf dreams connects to the World of Dreams. All the well defined rules of the dream world the author sets up to make it dangerous, where one slip and it’s over. How the characters cleverly use those rules in fights based on expertise.

We have Egwene learning and simply being the best and her and Nynaeve taking down the forsaken and Black Ajah. Entire subplots and fights taking place in this world with Perrin and the slayer. The Dreamspike complicating matters. Perrin and Egwene trying to out-compete each other. Battles and ambushes happening there.

Jordan had so many systems and worlds in his books - the portal stones, stasis boxes etc. for ex. - and I think that his background as a physicist helped him in creating this imaginary world. Like in how Rand explains Traveling and Gateways to Egwene as a bending of space and time with time dilation. Which connects to the Theory of Relativity.

Developing those fantastical aspects is what GRRM now needs to do with Bran Stark and Bloodraven and the mysterious Others advancing on humanity. I think this is where GRRM is headed to with respect to the overarching story, but is struggling to write. I suspect that’s part of the reason why the books are taking longer to write as the fantasy component increases.

I am pretty confident that Amazon’s Wheel of Time series is going to premiere before GRRM completes The Winds of Winter. And Perrin Aybara is going to have wolf dreams and there are going to be comparisons to Bran Stark. However, Perrin is a superior version to any of the wargs in ASoIaF because the author has actually developed the magic and world that Perrin plays in.