While reading A Dance with Dragons, the fifth volume in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, I was struck by a particular passage that really encapsulated the difference in Martin’s writing when comparing his earlier work to his later works. Not surprisingly, it’s a descriptive piece:
Deepwood’s mossy walls enclosed a wide, rounded hill with a flattened top, crowned by a cavernous longhall with a watchtower at one end, rising fifty feet above the hill. Beneath the hill was the bailey, with its stables, paddock, smithy, well, and sheepfold, defended by a deep ditch, a sloping earthen dike, and a palisade of logs. The outer defenses made an oval, following the contours of the land. There were two gates, each protected by a pair of square wooden towers, and wallwalks around the perimeter. On the south side of the castle, moss grew thick upon the palisade and crept halfway up the towers. To east and west were empty fields. Oats and barley had been growing there when [spoiler] took the castle, only to be crushed underfoot during her attack. A series of hard frosts had killed the crops they’d planted afterward, leaving only mud and ash and wilted, rotting stalks.
This is an exhaustingly detailed passage about Deepwood Motte, a strategically important castle, but one that has little to offer the series other than it’s place within the politics and military movement of Westeros’ various factions. And, frankly, it’s just not very interesting.
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