What is music? Music is a distant call of a horn over the hills and far, far away. It’s a tender voice of a flute in slim hands of the skilled minstrel. Songs are the love confessions of birds under the emerald treetops and the silvery ringing of the crystal waters of the mountain stream. Music are the ballads, new and long forgotten, carried on and on by human performers. Based upon the skill of the performer, it depends whether music will make its way to people’s hearts. We want to taste honey and mead and to be closer to what we like. Sometimes, music helps us do it. Sometimes musicians combine their wishes in plot-based lyrics, being authors of wonderful stories themselves. It often happens that whole novels are written, based on one song – as, for example, happened to the novel “Curved Mirrors” by K.Verbitskaya under the influence of the song “Conspiracy” by Jovin. But songs don’t have to be written after novels, and vice versa. And it happens that through the chain of associations and coincidences an amazing connection and similarity between a song and a literary work can be found. Thus it happens with the works of the band “Blackmore’s Night”, such as songs “Now and Then”, “Written in the Stars” and “No Second Chance”, which show strong connection with The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.
George Martin is beyond any doubt one of the greatest writers of the whole genre of fantasy. His masterly usage of deep knowledge on medieval history, lifestyles and people’s minds leaves the readers nothing than to stay in awe in his masterpiece The Song of Ice and Fire.
George Raymond Richard Martin was born September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to the neighborhood children for pennies. When in high school, wrote fiction for comic fanzines. His first professional sale was made in 1970, at age 21: The Hero. From then on, Martin earned a reputation as a creative short-story writer, racking up three Hugos, two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award and a Bram Stocker Award, all for his short fiction. He wrote a handful of novels, starting with 1977’s Dying of the Light, before moving to the West Coast to work in TV and film. He served as a writer on the new Twilight Zone revival, the executive producer of Doorways and the sсript editor of the Beauty and the Beast television series. At the same time, he edited the monumental shared-world series Wild Cards, which ran to 15 linked novels over 8 years. But a few would dispute that his most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking The Song of Ice and Fire historical fantasy series. Now George R.R. Martin is a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (was South-Central Regional Director 1977-79, and Vice President 1996-98), and of Writers’ Guild of America, West.
Martin doesn’t write about ‘white’ or ‘black’ characters. All his characters are gray to a greater or lesser extent. His characters are real and human; they have both good and evil, noble and selfish, all well mixed. And that’s right, as in real life as well, even the darkest of villains had some good things about them; and even our greatest heroes had their flaws and weaknesses. One of Martin’s strongest themes in this novel is the nature of justice.
“…even in fantasy – it comes from the realm of imagination and is based on fanciful words, but there’s still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in”, says George R. R. Martin in his interview with Tasha Robinson (“George R.R. Martin continues to sing a magical tale of ice and fire”, December 11, 2000).
George R. R. Martin’s magnum opus, The Song of Ice and Fire, tells an epic tale of honor and treachery, love and vengeful hatred, intrigue and heroism set in a world where summers and winters can last for years, decades, even lifetimes. These intense novel leaps among many different (and unquestionably interesting!) character perspectives in describing the political clashes between noble families in a proto-medieval world of Westeros. The story fashions itself around the House of Starks of Winterfell, with Eddard (Ned) Stark as a head of the House and the king Robert Baratheon’s Hand, his wife Catelyn and six children with the direwolves bound to them by fate. (F.y.i. – Robert Baratheon is the king of the 7 kingdoms, what is actually one state.) The Houses of the Seven Kingdoms will find their loyalties torn and themselves at war for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms after Robert’s sudden death. King Robert leaves a heir who is not of age, and the intricate intrigue for power is woven by Robert’s wife, Cercei of the rival House of Lannisters, and her kin.
At the same time, in a very different land across a narrow sea, Daenerys, the last of the Targaryens, whose reign Robert and Eddard toppled, gathers her strength to return the House of Dragons to power in the Seven Kingdoms.
A huge yet surprisingly well-developed cast of characters interact in a story intricately told, weaving through plots and counterplots in the deadly quest for power. Martin's prose is gripping, pulling you quickly and fully into this world so vividly described that it almost is real.
In the game of thrones, you win, or you die. – Eddard Stark
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01.08.2008 в 15:05-
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01.08.2008 в 15:19спасибищи *польщена до корней волос*
это было одно из прежних заданий по английскому.) Подобрать песни к художественному произведению и объяснить связь.)
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01.08.2008 в 15:21-
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01.08.2008 в 15:32Да, обожаю этого автора.)