Noun of Plural Nouns

Above: Guest blogger Henry reviews "The Lost Hero" by Rick Riordan. 

"Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
"Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel

Like most of the world, I discovered George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" through the HBO series of the same name. Like everyone else, I found all the sex and violence to be over the top, but like so many people I was hooked by the plotting, the intrigue and the characters.

That gets at something I think is interesting about the show - and now that I've read the first of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series of novels the show is based upon, I see it's true of the novels as well. "Game of Thrones" hits all the marks of a swords-and-sorcery spectacular - magic, medieval-ish weapons and armor, dragons, the amazingly detailed depiction of a believable fantastic world, T and A - but the reasons it succeeds are the same reason any series succeeds: Good story, good characters.

In fact, soon after I finished watching Season One on DVD, I tried to start watching "Boardwalk Empire," and saw that the two shows are basically the same thing. They're both stories about people who are trying to appear honorable or respectable while they and everyone else engage in kinds of sleazy and dangerous activities in a quest for power.

Around the same time I watched Season One, I read Hilary Mantel's historical novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies," and realized that these novels were telling a version of the same story. Mantel's novel's are based on historical figures and are much more respectable in literary circles, of course, but if they make her novels into a cable TV series, it will be very much like "Game of Thrones." It isn't that hard to imagine Mantel's version of Thomas Cromwell, an adviser to Henry VIII, working with Littlefinger and Lord Varys.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that this kind of unhappy scheming is the underpinning of so much of our cable-TV entertainment these days: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," etc. These are the stories of antiheroes who screw each other over in a quest for power they're not sure they even want. The more they get it, the more miserable they feel.

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"Game of Thrones" may be the most extreme example among these shows. As for the books, the first novel, "Game of Thrones" (the same story as Season One of the TV series) doesn't have a lot of magic, dragons or supernatural beasts - though I understand there is more of that stuff later in the series. As a result, its bleak worldview is easy to see and easy to apply to the world we live in. This isn't just a book full of antiheroes, it's actually anti-hero. It's 800-odd pages of Ned Stark trying to do the right thing and being punished for it. SPOILER ALERT: When he finally does swallow his pride and honor in a sacrifice to saved his loved ones, he ends up being beheaded in front of his daughters anyway. How bleak can you get?


Don't get me wrong: I liked "Game of Thrones," both the book and the show. For Season One, the show adheres very closely to the novel and it was difficult for me to not picture Peter Dinklage when I read about Tyrion Lannister or Sean Bean when I read about Ned Stark. I don't feel that I got a lot out of reading the novel that I didn't already get by watching Season One. By contrast, Mantel's writing style, especially in "Wolf Hall," is so idiosyncratic that I don't think a cable TV version of that novel would feel interchangeable with the novel at all. However, Martin creates a very well-developed fictional world, stocked with believable, compelling characters and intriguing story lines. It's quite an achievement.

Still, it got me wondering why so much of our entertainment is so bleak these days. I'm not saying I want a pack of Mary Sues, but what's so bad about having more likable characters who aren't punished for being good? What's so bad about characters with noble intentions?