Waiting for The Winds of Winter By Miriam R. Kramer Do we currently need “prequels” and “successor series” to the television juggernaut Game of Thrones? HBO and most viewers would say yes. George R.R. Martin, author of the wildly successful fantasy series of books A Song of Ice and Fire and inspiration for the worldwide hit HBO series Game of Thrones, has announced at least four and possibly five pilot scripts set in the world he has created. While not penning them outright, he plans to collaborate with the writers assigned to each. The last book in his series, A Dance With Dragons, was as absorbing as its predecessors. Published to great fanfare in late 2011, it shot to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List. In the meantime, the television series, which has released a season every year since it began in 2013, has chronologically passed the books. Both Martin and the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have carefully stated that parts of the show are now different from those in the books. Fine. Translating books to TV or film can make them separate but equally binge-worthy. All things considered, Weiss and Benioff do an excellent job: they have to adapt the series while dealing with Martin’s time-management issues, so I can’t fault them. The series is a smashing success: the theme music is perfect for the books, the actors are well-cast, the blood and guts satisfy, and many of the computerized visuals, such as the graphic of the Wall, are spectacular. So far the two diverge well. Yet from knowing the books thoroughly and watching the series I’m sure I can accurately guess a number of the developments true for both, in particular one concerning Jon Snow. So the series…
Acclaimed author Hilary Mantel won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for her historical novel Wolf Hall, the first in a trilogy written from the point of view of the cunning Thomas Cromwell, a lowborn lawyer and advisor to King Henry VIII of England. I recently read this book that traces his rise to power from humble origins as a drunk blacksmith’s son to a well-traveled man of the world with access to the levers of power, advisor first to Cardinal Wolsey of York and then advisor to the king himself from 1532 to 1540. Having also recently perused Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, another extraordinarily popular and now classic work of British historical fiction, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, set in an imagined medieval British world, I was inspired to compare them. Wolf Hall is quite obviously a work of literary fiction, as opposed to a standard bestseller. It takes the Machiavellian, often-maligned figure of Thomas Cromwell and recounts his life through a fictive lens. Mantel fills out his loosely drawn historical caricature by showing him with a steady head and a sharp eye for his own interests, but also a steady loyalty to his first important master, Cardinal Wolsey, whom he refused to abandon despite the cardinal’s decreasing popularity at court. She also imagines Cromwell as a man who not only loves his wife and children but also takes a warm interest in his wards and members of his household. This personal warmth does not prevent him from acting as a ruthless pragmatist who cares nothing for religious cant but operates in the midst of a world ordered by religious rules. Cromwell can and will react to changing circumstances by undermining former enemies, such as Sir Thomas More and Queen…