Writing Forum

My Lord Matt,

I think you may be right. The characters in Martin's world of Ice and Fire are adrift in moral relativism that does seem to need an anchor. The various religions do give a standard of morality, though it is interesting that some of the most potent bans are shared, or more likely, preceded the religions. Are these folk ways that extend beyond the beginnings of all the religions? Is it that the other religions have come later and overlaid a foundation of say, the old gods?

I wonder why there are shared prohibitions against kin slaying (amusing that it is a common enough occupation for royalty), and violating hospitality, and that there is a common belief that incest is wrong, though it is flauted by the most powerful.

Ice and Fire aside, there are reasons for these kinds of prohibitions if there is to be society.

One of the more intriguing elements of Card's "Hart's Hope" was that the old time religions of the Hart and the Sisters were divided along the lines of sex, not regionally at all. Men held to the Hart and it was to them that the magic of fresh spilled blood was given. The women did their magics with the used blood. "Hart's Hope" is a very bloody book, and if the worship of the Hart for men and of the Sister's for women are ancient, lost in the before time so that to people they are from the realm of "has always been," still older is the blood sacrifice and it underlies both religions with magical reality.

I wonder if Card wrote this hot on the heals of reading a little Elric of Melnibone. Moorcock portrayed Melnibonean society as decadent and careless of life and exceedingly bloody. Moorcock's debauchery is in service to a very old culture, but in "Hart's Hope" I found an interestingly new world where the world itself was alive and the proveyers of blood magic were the actors themselves, not conjurors of arcane powers and personages demonic and divine.

Certainly Martin is a fine source of conversation, but have you had a look at Card's "Hart's Hope?" I read some reviews. Many loved it, but there was a good contingent that found it disgusting and would not finish it. There were a lot of disappointed "Ender's Game" fans. It was a bit shocking, if you were expecting Ender and Valentine, but I loved the poetry of it myself, even with it all on a basis of blood magic.

I'm currently anticipating Robert Holdstock's "The Broken Kings", third of his Merlin Cycle. I would say the tone of Holdstock's is similar to "Hart's Hope" from a different author. The magic that underlies Holdstock's world in the Merlin cycle was what I felt with "Hart's Hope."

Regards,

LSO