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arkaic7 t1_j1gnlfn wrote

Reply to comment by wjbc in Understanding Abercrombie's character hype by Aplakka

I think "nihilistic" is a little much. He's not that dark of an author. Reading the first trilogy, I find he does pull some of his punches. There were some places he could have gone, but didn't. In the end, I felt the tone was YAish with R rated violence.

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wjbc t1_j1hhoja wrote

Have you read the second trilogy?

Also, what author is more nihilistic? Maybe that’s not an author I know.

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arkaic7 t1_j1iu8r4 wrote

I was thinking more along the lines of tone. Like brutality of song of ice and fire or Bakker's Second Apocalypse. I find Abercrombie more cynical and darkly humorous

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wjbc t1_j1iui47 wrote

I haven’t read Bakker. But I don’t consider aSoIaF to be nihilistic. There’s a definite sense of good and evil in George R.R. Martin’s work. It’s brutal, but not nihilistic.

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arkaic7 t1_j1v2e27 wrote

In asoiaf, for me, the nihilism comes out of the realism in the events of the story, just like the randomness of real life, which makes me think there isnt anything behind the scenes. Things just play out regardless and you can never expect a happy ending that doesn't get paired with the most evil of things.

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