Crow Chow
I hate to give up on a story before I know the end of it. This causes me some grief, like that I get every time I go to see a new Harry Potter movie - or buy the latest DVD. When Tolkien more or less created the modern epic fantasy, the success of The Lord of the Rings launched a thousand imitators, not all of which are utterly bad - though of course many are. I have indulged in a few of them, and once in, I'm usually caught. Robert Jordan had to write about four lousy books in a row (in the Wheel of Time Series ) before I gave up on him. My latest indulgence is George R R Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series. The first book was pretty good - the guy can write and he created some interesting situations and characters. Book four, A Feast for Crows got quite a lot of hype (from Time , among others), but I'm pretty disappointed. Magic has more or less disappeared from the series, and the cardboard characters are getting a bit old, but the worst feature of the book is the sh...