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gentlemangeek's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating dive into George RR Martin evolution as a writer
The stories are all quite interesting, even the freshman efforts, they show glimpses of the literary skill Martín has used to construct the far more familiar world of the seven kingdoms.
The stories are all quite interesting, even the freshman efforts, they show glimpses of the literary skill Martín has used to construct the far more familiar world of the seven kingdoms.
nicolaspratt's review
5.0
If you are at all interested in George R. R. Martin, this is the book to read. It's very interesting to learn the back story of one of our time's greatest and most complex authors.
Learning about his history and past in so many different genres and getting a glimpse into his "worlds" is amazing!
Learning about his history and past in so many different genres and getting a glimpse into his "worlds" is amazing!
annie1507's review against another edition
4.0
Оказва се, че Мартин е майстор не само на фентъзи романите и историческите доклади за собствения му измислен свят (които се четат като романи, he's that good), но и на разказите и новелите. Бард осакатяват оригиналните два тома Приказни песни, като премахват половината разкази (поради наличието им в други техни сборници и издания) и така издават само един том, така че ще се наложи още да наваксвам... Но въпреки това бе истинско удоволствие да чета тази книга. Мартин пише в различни жанрове, хибриди от такива, или въобще отказва да поставя етикети на историите си - важното е, че те идват от сърцето му, и че перфектно успява да илюстрира човека (или извънземното), неговата душа и неговите взаимоотношения, без значение дали "обстановката" е фентъзи, хорър или научна фантастика.
Любими разкази:
"Крепост"
"Терапия с маймуни"
"Човекът круша"
"Търговия с кожи" (новела)
"Губещи варианти"
"Портрети на неговите деца"
Любими разкази:
"Крепост"
"Терапия с маймуни"
"Човекът круша"
"Търговия с кожи" (новела)
"Губещи варианти"
"Портрети на неговите деца"
ivymaew's review against another edition
Was for research for my book series and I just haven't had the time to go through and read all the stories
loosealbluth's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
guiltlesspleasures's review
4.0
I didn't actually read all thousand-odd pages of this collection as it was from the library, but what I read opened my eyes further to Martin's undeniable talent. Roll on The Winds of Winter!
kh2912's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
adunten's review against another edition
4.0
Note: This book is also sold as two separate volumes, so don't get Volume I or II confused with the complete collection.
If you never heard of George Martin before the world discovered his magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire (known to the TV world only as A Game of Thrones), you might be surprised to discover he didn't spring into being a fully formed fantasy author, like Athena from Zeus's brow. He actually has a past, in which he wrote and published things in various genres, won some awards, and gained moderate fame and acclaim in certain circles. He likes to point out a bit sardonically that he's a frequent Hugo and Nebula award loser, coming in second to quite a few authors you probably heard of long before you heard of him. Dreamsongs is a collection of that past. I personally was shocked, for no good reason, to learn that he was being nominated for and sometimes winning science fiction and fantasy awards for his short stories and novellas back in the 1970s, and that he was writing for TV in the 1980s.
Dreamsongs is a monster collection, and it's a lot of Martin to take in all at once, but because it's mostly short stories with a few novellas, it's good as something you dip in and out of between other reads. And if you know nothing about him but ASOIAF (which I admit I didn't), it's a revelation.
The collection as a whole is a largely chronological tour of his writing career (and yes, that means the most mature writing and many of the best stories are in the second half), during which he got started as a kid writing superhero stories, wrote mostly science fiction in the 70s, branched into fantasy, horror, and paranormal in the 80s, and the last section brings his various forays into genre writing full circle, where he has realized that a good story doesn't have to be limited by genre, or even limited to a single genre. Some of my favorite stories are the most overtly genre-bending of any of them: a haunted house story set in a spaceship, a gumshoe detective story featuring werewolves, a time-travel story focusing on the Russian siege of Sveaborg in the 1808 Finnish War.
I'm not actually a big fan of the short story as a form – you might say my motto is, “Any story worth telling is worth telling at length.” I love long, dense novels that you can really get deeply invested in, that you can live inside for weeks at a time. I picked up Dreamsongs not because I love reading short stories, but because it was on mad sale and I was curious to know more about where George Martin came from. And sure enough, a lot of the stories in here leave me feeling the way I usually feel when I read short stories... if it's good, I generally wish there was more. And a lot of it was good, and I did want more.
To me, the ideal short story is kind of like a really good, well-told joke – the pacing has to be spot-on, and the punch line hits you in the gut at the end, and there's not one thing more you could say to make it better. There are really just a handful here that I felt were perfectly crafted: The Second Kind of Loneliness and The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr are probably my two favorites, and I also really liked Sand Kings, Nightflyers, The Skin Trade, The Glass Flower, and The Hedge Knight. There were very few that I just flat-out did not like – Martin is an awesome generator of ideas and a master storyteller at every length and in every genre.
Audio Notes: My favorite thing about the audio version of Dreamsongs is that it features Martin himself narrating his personal introductions to the various sections, and it reads a little like an autobiography featuring many exhibits of his work during the different stages of his writing career. Martin doesn't have a technically good narrator's voice, and he's not likely to ever be engaged to professionally narrate any of his own work. But he's curiously charming, and his sense of dramatic storytelling is just as spot-on when he's narrating as it is when he's writing... to the point that he can tell you about his ordinary white-bread childhood growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, and have you eating it up and panting for more. For the various stories, there are an assortment of narrators, and they range from quite good to ho-hum.
The audio version of Dreamsongs is technically incomplete, but unless you are a true completist, don't let that bother you. The only items missing from it are two television scripts from the “Siren Song of Hollywood” section. Yes, he briefly wrote for one of the later incarnations of The Twilight Zone.
Table of Contents
A FOUR-COLOR FANBOY
Only Kids Are Afraid Of The Dark
The Fortress
And Death His Legacy
THE FILTHY PRO
The Hero
The Exit To San Breta
The Second Kind Of Loneliness
With Morning Comes Mistfall
THE LIGHT OF DISTANT STARS
A Song For Lya
This Tower Of Ashes
And Seven Times Never Kill A Man
The Stone City
Bitterblooms
The Way Of Cross And Dragon
THE HEIRS OF TURTLE CASTLE
The Lonely Songs Of Laren Dorr
The Ice Dragon
In The Lost Lands
HYBRIDS & HORRORS
Meathouse Man
Remembering Melody
Sandkings
Nightflyers
The Monkey Treatment
The Pear-Shaped Man
A TASTE OF TUF
A Beast For Norn
Guardians
THE SIREN SONG OF HOLLYWOOD
The Twilight Zone: “The Road Less Traveled” [cut from the audiobook edition]
Doorways [cut from the audiobook edition]
DOING THE WILD CARD SHUFFLE
Shell Games
From The Journal Of Xavier Desmond
THE HEART IN CONFLICT
Under Siege
The Skin Trade
Unsound Variations
The Glass Flower
The Hedge Knight
Portraits Of His Children
If you never heard of George Martin before the world discovered his magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire (known to the TV world only as A Game of Thrones), you might be surprised to discover he didn't spring into being a fully formed fantasy author, like Athena from Zeus's brow. He actually has a past, in which he wrote and published things in various genres, won some awards, and gained moderate fame and acclaim in certain circles. He likes to point out a bit sardonically that he's a frequent Hugo and Nebula award loser, coming in second to quite a few authors you probably heard of long before you heard of him. Dreamsongs is a collection of that past. I personally was shocked, for no good reason, to learn that he was being nominated for and sometimes winning science fiction and fantasy awards for his short stories and novellas back in the 1970s, and that he was writing for TV in the 1980s.
Dreamsongs is a monster collection, and it's a lot of Martin to take in all at once, but because it's mostly short stories with a few novellas, it's good as something you dip in and out of between other reads. And if you know nothing about him but ASOIAF (which I admit I didn't), it's a revelation.
The collection as a whole is a largely chronological tour of his writing career (and yes, that means the most mature writing and many of the best stories are in the second half), during which he got started as a kid writing superhero stories, wrote mostly science fiction in the 70s, branched into fantasy, horror, and paranormal in the 80s, and the last section brings his various forays into genre writing full circle, where he has realized that a good story doesn't have to be limited by genre, or even limited to a single genre. Some of my favorite stories are the most overtly genre-bending of any of them: a haunted house story set in a spaceship, a gumshoe detective story featuring werewolves, a time-travel story focusing on the Russian siege of Sveaborg in the 1808 Finnish War.
I'm not actually a big fan of the short story as a form – you might say my motto is, “Any story worth telling is worth telling at length.” I love long, dense novels that you can really get deeply invested in, that you can live inside for weeks at a time. I picked up Dreamsongs not because I love reading short stories, but because it was on mad sale and I was curious to know more about where George Martin came from. And sure enough, a lot of the stories in here leave me feeling the way I usually feel when I read short stories... if it's good, I generally wish there was more. And a lot of it was good, and I did want more.
To me, the ideal short story is kind of like a really good, well-told joke – the pacing has to be spot-on, and the punch line hits you in the gut at the end, and there's not one thing more you could say to make it better. There are really just a handful here that I felt were perfectly crafted: The Second Kind of Loneliness and The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr are probably my two favorites, and I also really liked Sand Kings, Nightflyers, The Skin Trade, The Glass Flower, and The Hedge Knight. There were very few that I just flat-out did not like – Martin is an awesome generator of ideas and a master storyteller at every length and in every genre.
Audio Notes: My favorite thing about the audio version of Dreamsongs is that it features Martin himself narrating his personal introductions to the various sections, and it reads a little like an autobiography featuring many exhibits of his work during the different stages of his writing career. Martin doesn't have a technically good narrator's voice, and he's not likely to ever be engaged to professionally narrate any of his own work. But he's curiously charming, and his sense of dramatic storytelling is just as spot-on when he's narrating as it is when he's writing... to the point that he can tell you about his ordinary white-bread childhood growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, and have you eating it up and panting for more. For the various stories, there are an assortment of narrators, and they range from quite good to ho-hum.
The audio version of Dreamsongs is technically incomplete, but unless you are a true completist, don't let that bother you. The only items missing from it are two television scripts from the “Siren Song of Hollywood” section. Yes, he briefly wrote for one of the later incarnations of The Twilight Zone.
Table of Contents
A FOUR-COLOR FANBOY
Only Kids Are Afraid Of The Dark
The Fortress
And Death His Legacy
THE FILTHY PRO
The Hero
The Exit To San Breta
The Second Kind Of Loneliness
With Morning Comes Mistfall
THE LIGHT OF DISTANT STARS
A Song For Lya
This Tower Of Ashes
And Seven Times Never Kill A Man
The Stone City
Bitterblooms
The Way Of Cross And Dragon
THE HEIRS OF TURTLE CASTLE
The Lonely Songs Of Laren Dorr
The Ice Dragon
In The Lost Lands
HYBRIDS & HORRORS
Meathouse Man
Remembering Melody
Sandkings
Nightflyers
The Monkey Treatment
The Pear-Shaped Man
A TASTE OF TUF
A Beast For Norn
Guardians
THE SIREN SONG OF HOLLYWOOD
The Twilight Zone: “The Road Less Traveled” [cut from the audiobook edition]
Doorways [cut from the audiobook edition]
DOING THE WILD CARD SHUFFLE
Shell Games
From The Journal Of Xavier Desmond
THE HEART IN CONFLICT
Under Siege
The Skin Trade
Unsound Variations
The Glass Flower
The Hedge Knight
Portraits Of His Children
jthern's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent in many regards - as a biography of an author, as a case study in creative writing, as a tutorial in accepting rejection, and of course as a collection of short stories.
Some of these short stories are wonderful enough to make me think ASoIaF is a hack job.
Some of these short stories are wonderful enough to make me think ASoIaF is a hack job.
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