GRRM defaces new novel.

Myself and a good friend of mine managed to attend a book signing by George R.R. Martin in Portsmouth, his new book A Feast for Crows finally came out.

The signing was quite a well attended affair and GRRM spoke for about half an hour, mainly about why AFfC took 5 years to write. It was quite interesting how he went through various ways of trying to tell the story before totally changing his original plan and essentially splitting the book into two, AFfC and the forthcoming Dance with Dragons. He did talk about finishing Tyrion and Danys story arcs, although quite what that means in relation to the storyline as a whole he didn't elaborate. The other interesting tidbit was the fact that Arya is a POV in both books, so I guess she will survive AFfC! It was good to see how much of an influence Tolkein was on his fantasy writing and, moreso with his Wildcards series, how Roleplaying helped him write. His view that Gandalf should have stayed dead had a direct impact on the longevity of his main characters was cool, I must say though that I think Ned is the only POV that Martin has killed off (yet).

He then answered questions for a further half an hour, although some of the questions were OTT and pretentious in the main they were good. He ran out of time before answering mine which would have been - "Was the Red Wedding part of your original plot for the books or did it, as Tolkien once said, write itself?" As GRRM as a 'penchant' for killing off main characters I wondered if it was his early intention to massacre the Starks or that was just the way the story panned out. He then went onto sign books, or deface them as he puts it. Annoying fanboys brought their whole collections along, idiots, what is the point?

Peter Jackson read my mind....

Well he probably didn't, but when I saw the Fellowship for the first time I was gobsmacked. What an interpretation of the books. He couldn't have done much better if I'd been a consultant, I wish!

The thing that really blew me away was the Balrog, this is possibly my favourite bit of the film and I was concerned that he'd get the beast completely wrong. I have to say it turned out much as I had pictured it in my mind, and when the thing roars and ignites...just awesome. It's a shame Tolkien couldn't have given it a bigger part, still theres always the possibilty (zero unfortunately) that PJ will do The Silmarillion.

Whilst I'm on the topic I felt it was a shame that PJ didn't get Angus McBride as one of the artists on set as his depictions of Middle-Earth are IMO far superior to Lee and Howes. Okay so they aren't as 'arty' as the other two but again he seems to draw straight from my imagination. Here are a couple of pics by him:

Smaug, say no more....

Eowyn vs The Witch King.

"Get away from him, you bastard!" Sorry, wrong movie.

"They have a cave troll"

If you've ever played MERP you might recognise the pictures from the covers of some of the guides. I must admit I think I even bought one or two just for the cover art-work. The picture of Moria isn't the greatest but i've included it because it's possibly the one real bit of LoTR that inspires Role-playing (D&D, MERP etc) since it has the whole 'party' in action all doing different things and for me epitomises what role-playing is about (combat-wise anyway).

After seeing all three films (Extended versions, obviously) I went back and read the books and I have to say the experience was better for having seen the movies. It helped in visualising some bits and made the dialogue seem more convincing.

Well as this is my first post here i'll stop but as this is one of my big interests i'm sure it'll crop up again.