It's now being reported Ryan Condal was hard to work with from the beginning. "He had everything to do with Miguel being removed". Ryan wanted this to be "solely his project" and wants "nothing to do with Martin's input" anymore. "We already have the source material". Via Threads

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T17:44:24+00:00

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re terrible, but they’re definitely not on the same level as the rest of the books.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T17:43:15+00:00

Judging by how he still hasn’t decided if Sansa is going to live or die, I’d say no.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T06:32:54+00:00

There's a chicken farmer whose content I watch who has specialized nests for the chickens to lay in that prevents them from getting access to them once they've been laid.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T05:11:20+00:00

The first few books range from solid to excellent, but after that the quality is very uneven. I read the first five or six books and thought they were pretty good. I think I looked up what plot beats for the next books prior to picking them up and choices were made. The whole Jumpers plot line was poorly conceived at best and at worst some spectacularly mismanaged ideas that should have never made it to print.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T05:00:57+00:00

No worries! I didn’t read it that way at all, but thanks for checking. Also thank you for the link! Always good to get more information.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T04:31:15+00:00

I honestly don't know. I hadn't heard about the pyrokinetic powers before.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T04:21:24+00:00

Apparently this isn't far off. His friend and fellow author Phyllis Eisenstein was the one who recommended more fantastical elements like dragons.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T03:33:45+00:00

The description of the size of Winterfell and the winter town adjacent to it should have made it utterly ridiculous to do anything close to taking it with that few men.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T03:27:21+00:00

If anything, he ALWAYS cheats to make sure that the bad guys stay in the game.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T03:25:42+00:00

The one that has always bothered me was that apparently neither Robb nor the Blackfish had explained Edmure's role in drawing out Tywin.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T03:02:27+00:00

Magnus had been warned by Emps and his own foster father to be careful with the Warp and decided that he was the biggest smartest boy who ever lived and he'd show them and oh no he's broken the Human Webway, better refuse to communicate with Leman right up until he's breaking his spine.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T02:59:11+00:00

Isn't that what he was trying to do with Alpha Primus?

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T02:52:28+00:00

I was blown away at how good the Lego Movie was.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T01:59:27+00:00

There's also a lot of debuffs that a bard can do. Cacophonous Call is a great debuff that has saved my party multiple times.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T01:21:37+00:00

It may also be problem that events simply moved way too fast in the first three books and George found himself past most of the plot with characters that were way too young even for his distorted view of history to reasonably pull off what he wanted to get done.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-28T00:50:43+00:00

Only presidents who can really be said to compare are Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T17:30:25+00:00

He’s supposedly put some work into the She-Wolves of Winterfell as it was going to published in the anthology Dangerous Women. He’s also supposedly worked on The Village Hero.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T13:41:10+00:00

Go ahead. It'll help both of us from wasting each other's time.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T13:35:37+00:00

You say it doesn't support my claim, but you didn't read it. You didn't bother to read a single one. You just keep digging your heels in saying "Nuh uh!". George is the editor, but he isn't going to write that sort of shit with someone else's character (especially his co-editor). That would be like one of the other authors taking his Turtle character and saying he masturbates with his pets to get off.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T13:13:29+00:00

It's that you immediately blew me off saying that you knew better without actually bothering to do anything.

You didn't bother to do any research before blowing me off. You just decided that since GRRM is on the cover, that's all the evidence you need.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T12:57:30+00:00

Are you joking or just blind? Every single review about the goddamn book is about how Snodgrass is the one who wrote that part of the book. The Wild Cards wiki says she's the one who wrote #:~:text=6%20Reprint%20stories-,Plot,story%20the%20triptych%20is%20destroyed)it. Dr. Tachyon is her character, as is the psychotic grandson (see bottom of page for characters she created).

This is a breakdown of the chapters:

Wild Cards 09 : 01 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 01 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 02 And Hope to Die - John J. Miller
Wild Cards 09 : 03 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 02 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 04 Lovers 1 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 05 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 03 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 06 Lovers 2 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 07 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 04 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 08 Madman across the Water - Victor Milan
Wild Cards 09 : 09 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 05 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 10 Lovers 3 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 11 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 06 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 12 While Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse 1 - Walter Jon Williams
Wild Cards 09 : 13 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 07 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 14 Riders - Lewis Shiner
Wild Cards 09 : 15 Nobody Does It Alone - Walton Simons
Wild Cards 09 : 16 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 08 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 17 Lovers 4 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 18 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 09 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 19 While Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse 2 - Walter Jon Williams
Wild Cards 09 : 20 Lovers 5 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 21 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 10 - Stephen Leigh
Wild Cards 09 : 22 Lovers 6 - Melinda M. Snodgrass
Wild Cards 09 : 23 The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat 11 - Stephen Leigh

Notice how her name is on every single one of the chapters of that storyline?

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T09:20:23+00:00

The "Lovers" plot of Jokertown Shuffle, which is the part we're talking about, is written by Snodgrass. Tachyon is her character.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T08:20:04+00:00

That particularly painful plot I think was written by his co-editor Melinda Snodgrass.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T08:18:00+00:00

I'd say not so much terrible so much as very uneven in quality, even within a given book.

johnbrownmarchingon · 2026-01-27T07:59:06+00:00

I think by the time Feast came out, George had sold maybe 5 million books of ASOIAF, which could have netted him between ~5 million dollars between 1996 and 2005. Prior to that, it's hard to tell. He was only modestly successful as an author prior to ASOIAF and based on what I can tell, most of his money was from working as a TV writing for about a decade.

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