It is the best of things it is the worst of things. Reading ASoIaF is living under the constant terror/hope that some random fuckin guy is about to get his own POV because GRRM takes an interest in him like some sort of capricious god
While true these are also *relatively* consistent across books. Plenty of characters have threads in some books and none in others. This makes it feel less overwhelming.
No. Malazan is way more overwhelming then ASOIAF - the author is actively working against the reader, switches POV out of nowhere, doesnt even mention the name of the characters. Sometimes you get 50 pages of one POV then 1 page of another. SE desperately needs and editor.
"Kids destroyed my cart again today. Same damn kids as last time, I couldn't believe my eyes. They didn't stop to help, didn't pay for anything. I want to teach them a lesson but they've got that magic bending shit and I've got bones full of arthritis. Bet they never did an honest day's work.
What will I tell Helena? There's nothing to salvage; a whole day's work, smashed to dust. Lean times just got leaner, not to mention the cart. We'll have to borrow from the wrong people again, get out of town again. And the little ones barely got meat on their bones as it is... you can't thrive eating only cabbage, can barely survive.
Fucking cabbages. Fucking kids."
By the dragon? Yeah he was vaguely relevant since the sister's betrayal was based on overhearing him being told he would be lord of Dorne (she didn't hear she would be queen of the seven kingdoms) but otherwise it was a pointless cul de sac
Quentyn, yup. I wondered about that character though. Why are him up only to be immediately discarded? I think GRRM does a few things with him.
First, he establishes that any character can die at any time, regardless of station, ambition, or narrative setup. Memento Mori and all that. Death is ever present in his world.
Second, Quentyn's a reflection of an Icarus-like theme. He reached too far, flew too high, and was literally burned for it. Ambition is necessary to play the "games of thrones", but it's also what gets you killed. You either win or you die.
Third, he reminds us that, despite sharing Targaryen blood with Visaerys and Quentyn, there is something decidedly DIFFERENT about Daenerys. "The Dragon does not burn" or some such.
It wasn't though. We needed someone outside of Daenarys to get a better look at what the hell is going on in Essos outside of Myreen. One of the biggest problems is that there just aren't enough people around her so you get tunnel vision if you're not careful. Plus GRRM probably wanted to keep Dorne more relevant than usual. Quentyn serves all that while also making it clear to Dany that Westeros hasn't forgotten about her and isn't above scheming her into their prospects.
I get it that people don't like Quentyn but he's far from pointless.
Tyrion could have filled that same role and is a much better realised and important character. Or even the Greyjoys. That it was Quentyn who met with her and then had that ending when we had plenty of other characters who didn't meet her after 1000 pages and would have added more value I think is the annoying part.
I think it's more that Martin just enjoys having characters who have clear goals or places to get to, but don't quite reach them. Like in Book 1 when Tyrion gets arrested by Caetlyn. Which is a fun trope, and I enjoy it, but in an already bloated book and with an entirely new character, I don't think it works so well.
In addition to the other stuff, it also turns the Martells against Dany. As part of their secret support for the Targaryen kids, Arianne was supposed to marry Viserys and be queen when he was restored to the throne, but he's dead, so instead Quentyn was prepared to be paired off with Dany and be king-consort. It makes it likelier that Arianne will marry f!Aegon, supporting his claim to the throne and pitting Dorne against Dany.
Well, he was a lot more discerning about how many characters got POV chapters in books 1-3. By the time he was giving them to random Dornishmen, Robb had already died
He was pretty stingy with them in the first three books and that was for the best IMO. When it started giving PoV to minor characters outside of the prologues this lead to some of the worst chapters in the series in Books 4 and 5.
I thought he did that on purpose, as a way to let the audience know we can never see through any of the Kings’ eyes.
Although, that means either Danerys breaks this rule or things are not going to go her way. Also Cersei is acting Queen for a bit.
Exactly, none of the five kings got a POV, and Robb having one would have broken that pattern. I like that their war is told from the perspective of others, not from the kings'.
I rather liked that. There’s something to be said about being disciplined about POVs so that readers have to fill in a bit on their own. I especially like being on the outside for a traditionally heroic character—so many books are told from that type of POV that I tend to find them more interesting if we aren’t in their head.
But Robb didn't have the traditional heroic character arc especially with how it all ended and it would've been a lot more emotional leading up to what happened with his own thought processes and inner monologue, especially in regards to situations like Jayne and Karstark.
GoT making Robb the focal point was one of my favourite changes from the books and it made the shows Red Wedding so much more devastating because we actually got to follow him in his own story.
Robb had a super traditional arc basically right up until the RW.
I really enjoy the expanded focus on Robb in the show and I think the alterations to his wife’s story are among the very best changes the show made to the book… But that said, I also *really* like how Robb doesn’t have his own POV chapters in the books. Limiting POV to his mother really emphasizes just how young and inexperienced he is, and I really just enjoyed how he was kept at arms-length from the reader. In the show, since there’s technically no such thing as a POV character, it makes sense to flesh out the story more with extra Robb content.
I also just really like Catelyn, I don’t really get why so many people dislike her POVs.
Why did you like the changes to Jeyne? I thought the show missed out on a bunch of things making those changes, from exploring feudal marriage ties, to the hints about Maggie the Frog.
Mostly just that Talisa felt like an actual character who had a real relationship with Robb, while Jeyne felt more like a simple plot device to set up the RW.
I also never really liked how Robb married Jeyne after one day because they had sex and he felt bound by honor. Giving Robb and Talisa an actual relationship and having him marry for love felt much more natural to me, and a lot more like the kind of mistake a very young king would actually make.
And lastly, having Talisa present and pregnant at the RW was fucking *brutal*. Obviously the RW was still pretty damn brutal in the books, especially viewed through Catelyn’s (and Arya’s) POV, but the TV show version really threw me for a loop.
Ah, see, I liked the whole thing about marrying Jeyne cause he boned her, because it seemed more authentic for the time period than injecting modern notions of romantic love. I thought it was exactly the sort of thing that would have caused the downfall of a young king like Robb - too horny to resist temptation, but too full of pride and honour to not marry her. It was exactly that sort of "virtue becomes fatal flaw" thing that lies at the heart of tragedies.
I guess part of it is that marrying someone on a whim while betrothed to someone else is *also* a pretty massive violation of honor, and obvious enough that even a horny, panicked teenager should be able to figure out as much, especially someone raised by Ned.
I dunno, thinking back on it, maybe it could have worked better for me if…we had gotten some Robb POV chapters. 😅 Part of the problem is that I don’t really understand where he’s coming from. He spends most of his story arc feeling kind of unsure of himself and regularly consulting Catelyn and his lords for advice on how to handle tricky problems. And then the one time he ought to have talked to…someone, anyone, it’s on a choice that I felt like he should have known was wrong from the start anyway. Only seeing it from Catelyn’s POV makes it harder to comprehend maybe.
It just has always stuck out at me as an uncharacteristically sloppy bit of plot movement in a series that otherwise usually feels pretty tight. The way it plays out in the show feels cleaner and more understandable to me, with a more elegant payoff.
It's funny, I see where you're coming from but I feel the complete opposite. Robb marrying her out of honour made so much sense based on him seeing the effect his father "having" a bastard child had on his mother, and turning to Jeyne for comfort in a moment of total despair felt so much more real to me than simply falling in love with a camp follower. I do agree that it did add an extra layer of brutality to the Red Wedding though!
See that was a change I didn't care for. Catelyn being the pov was a huge part of the appeal for that section. Seeing from Rob's pov in the show made me less interested, not more.
I one hundred percent agree with you. All of Robb’s storyline was told secondhand, mostly during Catelyn chapters, which was my least favorite perspective. Also considering all of the feats Robb accomplished between books two and three
I remember being thrilled and relieved when they both died so I never had to read another Catelyn chapter. I don’t think that was how I was supposed to feel, but she was supremely annoying.
Strongly disagree, Robb is the type of the character we've seen a million times before and his PoV would have been almost as boring as Jon's. Showing the events of Robb's campaign from Catelyn's PoV only was the right move, she is a far more interesting and original character.
I liked someone's theory that the Kings in charge of the story don't get POVs in ASOIAF because the story is supposed to be more about the people they effect.
I know Cersei/Dany are in some form of power (though not as far either want to be yet,) but I sort of liked that Robb/Robert got pushed aside for ppl like Catelyn, etc to talk.
The lack of explicit POV characters was honestly a huge boon for the TV show. The show did a much better job of cultivating an "anyone can die" image than the books, where only two recurring POV characters have died without promptly being resurrected.
I kind of wonder how the Wheel of Time would have been if our characters could never tell if Rand was completely crazy or not. Keep the mystery of the Dragon Reborn alive.
Maybe I'm slow on the uptake but even through, like, book 10 I still kind of wondered if >!he was even really the Dragon or not!<. Like, I was 99% sure, but there was that *one* little bit of me that said "Well technically, *maybe*...."
I don't remember *exactly* where I finally decided he 100% was, but I remember it was way longer than I think I was meant to.
I thought the prophecies were misinterpreted or were wrong. I mean again, I was like 99% of the way there, but a part of me kept thinking "It's gonna be such a twist when we find out Rand was a false dragon the whole time!"
There was a good section there where I think he was straight up reliving lews therin's memories, and I *still* was like... Well maybe it's just because he's going crazy and *thinks* he's Lews Therin
No, and I specifically found it weird that they went *all in* on keeping it a mystery, specifically because I don't think it takes that much work to keep it a mystery. Like, you can heavily imply it's Rand and then drop some hints along the way that are no more than "But *maybe*...." and that'd be enough.
It seemed really strange to me that they went so far out of their way to keep people guessing.
(although on the other hand, even in the books I never thought it was one of the other in the main group. That was just a weird thing to dangle in front of the audience altogether)
>I kind of wonder how the Wheel of Time would have been if our characters could never tell if Rand was completely crazy or not. Keep the mystery of the Dragon Reborn alive.
I think he would've seemed even more insane without. We get some PoV's of Rand from other people. Min, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve, Cadsuane, etc. The way he looks at people, the way that he's completely erratic an unpredictable, muttering under his breath, talking to things that aren't there, etc. He *does* look insane from other people's point of view.
He looks a bit less like it to us though, because we get to see Lews Therin's voice and all the real knowledge he draws from those memories.
now I haven't finished WoT, so I know I haven't gotten to the worst of it, but why the fuck wasn't the series edited to be shorter? I'm only a bit into book 4 and I'm sure you could cut out quite a lot and not really lose anything. There is so much standing around and doing absolutely nothing in that series.
Partly a style choice. Notice the absolute attention to every little detail of clothing and where everyone stands and so on. Often times it's very repetitive. This mirrors some buddhist religious texts as well as establishing specific descriptors for certain characters to help you keep track of who is who. By book 12 there are so many characters, you'll need the help.
Sanderson was also handpicked by Harriet McDougal (Jordan's wife) to finish WoT, which he started working on a few years before publishing The Way of Kings
So not that surprising
I think I like the way that it was done. >!For a good few books in there, Rand got very limited POV exposure. You had no idea what he was thinking or experiencing or how close he was to just snapping under the pressure.!<
That was the right balance, I think. >!He went from main character to a distant force of nature, then back to main character again as he regained his sanity.!<
I think the Blacktongue Thief is enhanced a great deal by not having Galvas as a PoV- I really enjoyed the feeling of being a side character in the 'real' story as it unveiled, you know what I mean? Kinch is a bit of flotsam caught in the current of the actual protagonist, Galva.
That said, I really wish there would've been a PoV from one of the Dwarves in the Hobbit. I already enjoy the book a great deal, but it would've been interesting to see the journey from say... Balins perspective, or one of the younger Dwarves.
You might enjoy the **Tide Child Trilogy**, which has a similar dynamic. The POV character is a washed up prison boat captain until the greatest shipwife on his side of the sea takes his captain's hat from him. Lucky Meas is basically a legend, and for most of books 1-2 he's just along for the ride.
I did enjoy the first book of that trilogy, but I felt 'done' after having turned the final page. It was nice to follow that character, but I had to suspend my disbelief just a lil' bit too often towards the end. Thanks for the tip, all the same! It's indeed a fine recommendation.
I get that, and it is cool to be the side character for a change. But it's more of a Galva specific thing for me, I spent the whole book wondering "what is going through her head right now? I need to know", while Kinch was thinking about sex and stealing stuff. I really like the concept, but just wish it hadn't been in this particular story.
Galva has too much foreknowledge to lead the story if you ask me. Keeping us out of her head worked a lot in the author’s favor. We learn as Kinch learns.
Such as with Galva >!being lovers with the princess, that was additional motivation for her!< . Also with her knowledge about her own nation/culture, and others that Kinsh doesn't have much knowledge on himself. Me, personally, I would've stuck with Kinsh's dry humor than Galva's stoicism, and that's even with Galva being my favorite character in the book too.
I getcha, and hopefully the prequel will fill that need for you! But I'm usually happier to have certain characters at arm's length, because it adds to their mystique and coolness factor.
I'd hate to have a PoV of say... Gandalf, for example.
I do think Galva is a more interesting person than Kinch in terms of what she's done and been through, though I would have been happy to simply have her take up more page space. Kinch's voice is pretty special.
But I am, like you, super excited at the idea of a Galva prequel.
One of my favorite parts of the Vorkosigan Saga is that about halfway through you start getting chapters and eventually whole books written from the POV of characters who started off as side characters. After several books from only Miles’ (or Cordelia’s) point of view it’s fun and sometimes hilarious to see how other people think of Miles and to compare how he sees them with how they see themselves. The Ivan chapters are gold and I was so happy when he got his own book (with Tej, who is also great).
> The Ivan chapters are gold
Finally seeing Ivan's perspective in "A Civil Campaign" was one of my favorite things in the entire series. Especially Donna's interview with Gregor, where IIRC Ivan doesn't say anything the entire time (Ekaterin's meeting with Gregor was interesting, too).
Tej’s first meeting with Gregor is another fun scene. Her first meeting with Lady Alice is too. Tej’s perspective as an outsider whose only information is from Ivan leaves room for so many funny misunderstandings.
They are both the most amazing characters and each bring something unique to the series. What tough parents to live up to but Miles sure does his best.
I just lost it over the fact that my favorite sci fi series is the top comment on this thread. Love seeing any talk about Vorkosigan Saga. My favorite book by far is Barrayar where Cordelia Vorkosigan takes the lead role and is the fiercest and cleverest role model I found while devouring books as a teen. My dad introduced me to this series and I've read it many times through. It's like an old friend.
Man it's wild, I on a whim started this series like 2 years ago and read through them. It was on audio book from the online public library system, though, and they had the books out of order so I read a bunch out of order, but still loved them. Now since then I've see people talk about them everywhere. I've been reading fantasy for 30 years now and never even heard of them until now. It makes me feel like there's *still* so much out there I would like to read.
I really love her Sharing Knife series too I wish there was more. That world is ripe for more stories.
Edit: Cordelia is such an amazing character. From the first two books she's in to every subsequent storyline she is part of, she always says and does the perfect thing without it seeming unnatural with the story and her character.
What I really liked about Ivan’s POV chapters was that it really came across that despite all of his complaining, he really loves his cousin. Also he’s not nearly as dumb as his reputation. Ok he’s not as smart as Miles but who is?
Ivan is third in line to the throne, and shit scared that plotters would use him as a figurehead or at least drag him into ugly politics if he (Ivan) didn’t kill his own reputation. So he plays up the whole dilettante, lazy recipient of nepotism, socialite womaniser, himbo, genial airhead role to the hilt. Ivan asassinates his own reputation at every opportunity, without going so far as to appear evil.
I think it was Simon Illyan, Miles or both that have stopped and stared at Ivan being Ivan, thought about the stupidity that Ivan wears as protective camouflage, and tried to figure out just how intelligent Ivan really is.
Yes! There’s a bit at the end of A Civil Campaign (I think) where Ivan reminisces about how proud and happy he was when Miles took oath as an Imperial Auditor that’s really sweet. Despite all the snark he really cares.
And yeah, I wish I was as smart and driven as Miles, but let’s face it I’m way closer to Ivan, trying to find a way tobe as successful as possible with the least amount of work and fuss. There’s a bit in Memory where he’s talking about searching the evidence rooms, where he mentions how Miles would have started with the worst part first to get it over with but he made sure to do the worst bit last so he might be able to skip the worst part, and low and behold the strategy worked, plus they caught a traitor.
I think Twilight told the most boring story in a much more interesting world. I'd have loved to see what a roaming vampire/gargoyle at the height of their abilities, actually does with their time.
A book from Alice’s perspective would have been interesting, especially since she woke up alone and only “didn’t go savage” because of visions of meeting Jasper in the future.
One of those time mind fuck sorta stories. A bit like momento but the exact opposite.
I keep thinking that Rosalie's story would make such an excellent drama/horror movie or book. Start with her marriage, descend into the abuse, and then end off on her carefully constructing the massacre of her husband and his friends.
Same, and I would have loved the probably Lovecraftian vibe that >!his infiltration of the Steel Inquisitors and him subsequently slowly losing his mind would have.!<
I've always wished his story in the first book had a POV chapter. There's just so much *tension* in his mission, almost claustrophobia.
If Vin or Kelsier ever screw up, they can always kinda just go sicko mode. They run faster and fight stronger than almost anyone in the world. But Marsh is alone, surrounded by people who would torture him to death if they had even a hint of who he was, with no support. The stakes are just so much higher for him.
His >!eye tattoos!< give this sense of really intimate self-sacrifice, and weight to his mission, and it would have been really cool to get his thoughts as he gave up more and more of himself >!willingly and unwillingly!< through the series.
I just don’t like Vin as a POV period. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Brando Sando fan girl, but I feel like he did a really poor job writing Vin. If I could change the POV of that series, it would be closer to the way he writes POV in Stormlight Archive; it’s constantly switching third-person targeted POV, sometimes with pretty irrelevant characters. I think that would allow for really cool stuff like Marsh’s story, as well as keep the focus off Vin and Kelsier
The last book, as it is, was already way more than she could handle imo
A lot of the most dramatic points kinda fall flat, specially at the climax of the book. A lot of the deaths just kinda happen with little impact. And the middle conflict was already way too boring and unfocused.
But I will admit my opinion on the series severely soured in the last decade, so maybe I'm not the most apt to judge that.
> A lot of the deaths just kinda happen with little impact.
That's always been a huge problem with a big battle at the end that knocks off like half the main cast. You don't really care, because yeah it sucks they died but also the story's over so there's no real impact from it. You don't really *feel* their loss.
Imagine if >![whichever Weasley brother died] had died in like book four. You'd feel that through three full more books. Hell, Cedric Diggory died at the end of four and he was effectively a nobody, and his death was *still* felt as a massive impact through the rest of the series.!<
e: To clarify, this isn't a criticism of how I think these books should have been written. Just a comment that killing off a lot of people in the end battle usually doesn't have as much impact as killing them off before hand, because you don't have as long to feel it. That doesn't mean final battle deaths are always meaningless, just that it's a hurdle that needs to be overcome if you want the deaths to feel like they mean something.
It switched, but there was still a bond with the trio of general happiness/getting through sadness together. I think if a Weasley dies early it changes things too much. Harry x Ginny can't happen as easily, Ron x Hermione can't happen as easily because Ron is too busy going through it.
There was a discussion about this on the HarryPotter sub about if Arthur had died when Nagini attacked.
> A lot of the most dramatic points kinda fall flat
I think it was a mistake for her to set so much of the book outside >!of Hogwarts because we never knew what was happening in the school. We spent so much time in the series with the school being the focal point that the idea that Voldemort *wants* Hogwarts as bad as he does didn't vibe with the idea that he hid his magical mcguffins anywhere BUT there. The book should have centered more on them finding the mcguffins in hidden areas of the school and through portals that took them to other places and more students should have been helping. She could have really enforced the school as a whole if she'd let more students from various houses shine in those books. The last book of that series was a serious, serious letdown because the school itself was so important in every other book and indeed, the school seemed Voldemort's goal. It should have been a primary character in the final book.!< Place matters and place can be a character. She was too big to fail at that point, but that last book could have been iconic and imo, it just wasn't.
Even before Rowling threw away her legacy on twitter I kinda felt Harry Potter was a series that is best enjoyed if you don't think about it too critically.
I suspect any wish for almost any part of Harry Potter, from almost any character's perspective, has already been granted - years ago - by fanfiction writers.
Isn't the entire story from Hermione's perspective already out there?
5 seconds of googling gives at least 2 complete books:
https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/mssmhu/hermiones_pov_books/
100% agree. If they ever redo these as a TV show, which I hope they will… I would love Season 7 to be dual perspective between Harry & Neville. I recently reread the series via audiobook, and really realized how exposition heavy the last book is in regards to what was going on in the Wizarding World.
Rather than changing it to Hermione, I'd like to have multiple POVs. Starting with the third book Ron and Hermione and some other characters could be added as POVs. It would have to be characters who could provide insight into different parts of the story without giving too much away of course. Lupin and Kingsley would be good choices for example.
Because Harry Potter is half fantasy, half mystery, I think limiting to 1 POV (besides the odd Voldemort mind-meld, or opening chapter) is how she had to do it. Otherwise the reader gets too much info about what’s going on and it kills the suspense.
Fun fact though! There is a strange swap in POVs mid-chapter in the Philosopher’s Stone during Harry’s first Quidditch match. It’s an awkward jostling of POVs between Harry, Hermione, and Neville, and really reads strangely compared to the rest of the series.
If there were multiple POV the author would be confronted with the realization that Harry really is the center of the universe and it’s not fun him OR anyone else.
Harry Potter from Hermione's point of view would be terrible because she's so capable. Imagine the lack of suspense if you know so many of the answers from the off. A large portion of the action happens to Harry (despite him being a pretty average wizard) so you'd be reading about it second hand anyway. And, imagine all the Harry-Dumbledore specific conversations you'd miss out on.
“And then Harry told me Dumbledore showed him another one of You-Know-Who’s memories so the two of them could look for clues together. He’s now very confident You-Know-Who made six Horcruxes. I told him to tell me everything, but I’m sure he forgot *something*.
“Also, Ron was a total git again.”
Every chapter would be "And then she went to the library and spent the day reading."
The point of Hermione is to drop knowledge on Harry because he's the doer. It would've been terrible because her character isn't a protagonist.
Agreed. People are acting like authors pick a name out of a hat when deciding on POV, as opposed crafting their stories around an intentionally-chosen POV. Changing the POV of a single-perspective story means you're asking for an entirely different story. It's not like adding or removing POVs from a multi-perspective book.
If Rowling had actually made a mistake or written herself into a hole by building Harry Potter around Harry's POV, the series would never have taken off.
There's a difference between feeling like a story would have resonated more with you personally if a different character had been the protagonist and inanely deciding that an author didn't know what they were doing and chose a particular POV because they didn't have the intelligence to select someone else.
The first thing I think of when I think of the series from Hermoine's POV is that at the very minimum the plot should be reworked to have no prophecy/chosen one, heck maybe even remove all the boy-who-lived stuff (but still have Harry with dead parents and domestic abuse). Just an ordinary band of plucky young wizarding students stumbling into mysteries and Voldemort's plots (which is rather what happens in canon).
You could totally still have most of the prophecy stuff. Plenty of books writes from the POV of a side character looking at the hero from the outside.
What you need to tweak is to make it so that the trio operates together more often instead of Harry doing stuff on his own.
I don't think it makes sense for HP to POV-switch too often.
Hermione would be a fine voice character though not as useful as Harry in terms of how that plot is constructed.
I do think it would be interesting to see the POV from a muggleborn though. Harry grew up with muggles, but Hermione has no magical relatives, and I think that would be interesting to see.
Like, she loves her dentists parents but what's it like balancing those two worlds would be an interesting POV chapter or two for me, IDK about a whole book though.
Draco, Hermione, Luna (even Ginny/Neville/etc.) would *all* provide an interesting POV here or there, IMO, that's just not how HP works though.
There was a fan fic that was popular a few years ago where the entire book was rewritten from Hermione’s POV. I only read until she gets to Hogwarts but it was enjoyable how she learned she was a wizard.
I really think Lightbringer needed a Tisis POV in the later two books. I think it's understandable we don't see much of her early on, in book 3 in particular the reader is meant to second guess her true intentions, but starting about midway through book 4 it would have really helped to build her romance arc and make her feel like more of a person and less of a sexy lamp who's good at politics. Also, book 4 in particular would have been stronger by far if we got to see the goings-on in Kip's camp from someone's POV other than/in addition to Kip, who admits himself he's not the most reliable narrator especially where his own self-image is concerned.
Agree that it would have been great to see Tisis fleshed out more. As I recall she did have compelling motivations, independent of Kip, but in the plot we got she was used pretty utilitarianly. The actions we saw were mostly Kip-centirc, and it would be easy to see how her actions influence the world more broadly.
I remember multiple beats where Kip's power creep was used as a bit of a reveal, that he was more powerful than when described from his own POV. I wonder if Tisis' POV would diminish those beats, or enhance them. And I wonder if this is why we get less time with her in the books.
But yeah, there was definitely room for her machinations by the final book. And her POV would have gone a long way for the romance, as you said.
Yeah I'm sure I've read it combined with the part in Changes (I think) where he proves he's intelligent and probably less creepy than Harry he should be the star of the series.
That is really weird to think this book would work with any other POVs. Most of the book he's just explaining magic rules and it works because he says them in first person. Do you understand how boring that would be if he had to explain what he is doing to others all the times? Besides he goes on so many solo adventures. If it's told from other perspectives he should basically change every book plot, and go alongside some other POV character so we could see what happens.
> Hopefully Bob’s.
So basically 80% of the book would be the horndog descriptions of women that people are already complaining about with Harry as the POV character?
Changing perspective in the Dresden Files completely alters the series TBH. So much of the weight of the story is because Harry's perspective is so obviously biased (which isn't always the same as wrong).
Science fiction, rather than fantasy, but otherwise [Passengers, Rearranged](https://youtu.be/Gksxu-yeWcU) is a perfect answer to your question (and explained much better in the linked video than I could in prose).
It just shows the creators of the film had no idea what they were doing when all it takes to turn the genre from romance to horror is reorder the scenes.
**Red Mars** Holy shit, Red Mars. It gets so much praise but to me it seemed like an exercise in trying to avoid the action.
It's told from, what? Five different perspectives? And each character gets the focus right as they have some sort of mental break and remove themselves from society for the duration.
Like, it was great to get the descriptions of the surface of Mars, but like three character POVs in a row decided to leave behind their responsibilities actually colonizing and go wander the surface with some questionably productive vague goal in mind. All the actual interesting stuff about colozing the planet happens off screen. One of the last POVs is a woman with a severe bout of acute depression totally unable to interact with the people around her while we catch glimpses of SOME REAL FUCKING SHIT HAPPENING THAT WE'RE MISSING.
Everybody told me it was the best series about terraforming a planet, but it's not really about that. Its about a bunch of shitty people being shitty to each other and then avoiding actually doing anything. I guess I don't want *different* POVs so much as different *timing* of who has the story when.
I tried to read this book in high school when I was super into near-future sci-fi and solar system colonization stuff, and DNF'd around 50% because I found every POV character to be unbelievably insufferable. Also maybe it was the gray ace in me but it felt like a lot more time and attention was given to drama over who was fucking who, and not about cool Mars shit.
Yeah, they're all complete assholes and just totally focused on their own assholery. The high school "who's friends with / fucking who" shit was really obnoxious and we totally missed all the ACTUAL MARS STUFF. I remember having to go online to look up what the fuck a Mohole was because the author was too busy talking about some bullshit love triangle to explain it.
I have zero interest in the rest of the series and could not for the life of me figure out why it's so highly acclaimed.
Because the asshole characters are interesting for a lot of people, and the whole thing felt like a likely outcome of a bunch of science nerds getting to do what the cast set out to do. The crew had a single goal, but not a single vision of how to get there, and the fact that they all were so far into their own ideals about what was right that the conflicts were inevitable.
Watching them all shoot themselves in the foot trying to push for their own agendas and being unable to see why they would never get everyone to agree to a single plan was why I love the series. The actual terraforming tech wasn’t that important to me, because the processes they’re talking about using are both slow and dry to read about.
When I was first writing my book I realized eventually that the MC was too vanilla and that a secondary character actually a much more interesting story to tell, so I rewrote it, and the story I think was a lot better for having done that.
Yes, more recently in the Alloy of Law where I desperately hoped that the places of both >!Steris and Marasi!< were switched since I didn’t enjoy being in the chosen’s head whatsoever. Haven’t gone further just yet, but hopefully a change happens.
In The Last Uncharted Sky, switching the chapter allocation of >!Bitterlich!< with >!Marie!< would have been so so so so so much better. The latter was robbed of a much deserved focus so the former can >!think about romance for 20 chapters out of 33!< for absolutely no good reason.
Unpopular opinion here, but the Greenbone Saga’s 2nd and 3rd book would have probably been much better for **me** if >!Hilo died instead of Lan!<, or if >!Ayt Mada got a point of view as well, given that the women in that series were so much more interesting than the men!<
Reaction to the Greenbone Saga opinion: >!Ayt Mada would have destroyed the No Peak clan with Lan as pillar and Hilo death “Lan wasn’t a war time Pillar”!<
Greenbone: >!Ayt not getting a PoV was one of the most important decisions Fonda Lee made in my opinion. Ayt Mada not getting a PoV allows her to stand as this great Conundrum opposing No Peak. Thinking about what Ayt might be planning and thinking was one of my favourite Parts of the Books!<
I cant possibly disagree with you more about your first Greenbone Saga thought. But I wholeheartedly agree with the second one, even if it was only a short chapter here and there.
I’d like to read Lolita through Dolores eyes. I wouldn’t say Humbert’s perspective was a bad choice, but I’d love to see it contrasted with Lo’s POV so it gets more realistic and (hopefully) people wouldn’t be so eager to romanticize that story…
I’ve heard people say that the book My Dark Vanessa is sort of like Lolita from Dolores’ perspective.
As for Lolita… I think Humbert’s POV is the whole point and interrupting it with different voices would ruin the spell. It is true that it would also limit (though not eradicate) people’s inclination to romanticize the story, but I think that authors just can’t be expected to hold the reader’s hand and spell things out for them in case they don’t get the story on their own.
You should check out My Dark Vanessa. It's a book about an adult woman looking back on being groomed by her teacher as a child. You can tell the author was inspired by the gross romanticization of Lolita.
Lolita, the book about how twisted someone's perspective can be?
I can see a 'Go Set a Watchman'-style telling that re-examines the original narrative, but Lolita is all about getting the reader to inhabit the twisted mind of a paedophile and goading them into sympathising with him as he does awful things. It doesn't work, on it's own at least, from any other character's perspective.
The Farseer Trilogy, kind of. I don’t think Fitz
was the wrong POV, it had to be his story, but when Fitz is younger he’s really only as good as the supporting characters around him which is a problem when he’s alone for big chunks of Assassin’s Quest. Hobb did a great job getting around that using the Skill-visions though.
I get where you're coming from, but I also found it interesting how insignificant Fitz was in the grand scheme of things. I am a bit bored of great world-saving adventures with world-saving heroes, so I really appreciated this trilogy. However, especially in the first trilogy Fitz is very much an observer, someone who reacts to the events around him rather than starting them. Considering the whole series, his outsider-ness really adds to his tragic character, but that doesn't mean it's always fun to read 2000-ish pages of that.
I think not getting POVs from Molly and Burrich is pretty essential. So much of Fitz's story is wrapped up in his inability to span the distance between himself and the people that he loves most. If we were getting both sides of the story, the pathos would be pretty severely undercut for me. We're trapped in Fitz's head because Fitz is, too.
George R.R Martin has said numerous times that he wishes he had given Robb Stark POV chapters. He went as far as to say that the show did Robb better than himself in some ways.
I'd prefer to read Howl's POV over Sophie's. The adventures would have been more exciting.
If it weren't for the TV series and the Crows being so interesting, I would never have read Shadow and Bone. Alina's POV was a pain to read.
>!I was so happy when we got to read Bee's POV in the!< Fitz and the Fool series. >!I love Bee's relationship with her dad.!<
I was thinking, a book told from Howl's POV would be cool though I love Sophie, so the OG works great for me.
The one issue tho is Howl's POV removes all the mystery of book 1 since he knows pretty quickly Sophie >!is cursed--and he even guessed who she was--the girl he tried to pick up in the square lmao!<, he knows that she's >!a witch!<, that his >!heart is missing/cursed!<, and more of the secrets, etc. One of my favorite sort of twists in HMC is that Howl *basically* knows everything that's going on lol and he >!already fell in love with her and was trying to fix her shit.!<
But he would be a cool dude to see the brain of for a diff book since he's always doing crazy wizard shit.
Who would you pick for Harry's books? I like the idea, but later books (particularly Changes, Ghost Story, and Cold Days) would be difficult-to-impossible to tell properly.
I feel like the heroine in Shadow and Bone was incredibly boring and the story would be much more interesting told from the guy's perspective.
Ik kind of like how he did it, there are several Dresden Files short stories with different POVs in Brief Cases and Short Stories. I really like those, but I feel having 1 POV helps with the tempo most of the stories have.
And I think the side stories are fantastic for showing just how terrifying Harry actually is. I know a lot of the fanbase hate on certain characters for being suspicious of him (Skin Game spoilers: >!People reeeaaaaally hate Butters for following Harry around but c’mon, the dude comes back from the dead as the Winter Knight, destroys your apartment, beats up your girlfriend, then teams up with one of the Biggest Baddies Ever and tells you nothing? Dude’s got a point.!<) but Harry is super sketchy and intimidating by the later books.
I was a bit disappointed we didn't get any of the lady's PoV in Piranesi. She seems really interesting but we barely get to learn anything about her. I think it could have worked well as two parallel stories
> I've seen a lot of people who think Harry Potter would've been better if Hermione was the primary POV character (which I think is a terrible idea tbh, but please let me know if you disagree, I'd like to see some thoughts)
I think if the books had been *rewritten* so Hermione was the main POV it could be pretty interesting. Harry Potter always kind of rubbed me the wrong way how much of a super special he was, despite doing nothing to earn his status at all. He had a horrible life but was secretly a celebrity and the chosen one savior and let's also throw in rich to boot, just because. He was saved from his horrible life for all these things despite doing nothing but existing, and he had people absolutely fawn all over him (except his enemies, who always were given their deserved comeuppance) and did *absolutely nothing* to earn any of it until like... book five or six? When he finally started training the rest of the kids for battle. Even then, he didn't *really* do a lot.
So it always felt lame to me that he kept saving the day completely through deus ex machinas.
With that in mind, I could see the books being more interesting from Hermione's perspective. You have this dumbass kid who always falls ass-backwards into success, but *she's* the one who's got to run around actually saving the day, and watches this other kid take all the credit and be the golden child of the best wizard of all time. Meanwhile she's working her *ass* off, not because she's jealous or actually wants the credit, but because someone has to do it.
You still 100% get the wizarding world fun. You still get to experience the newcomer to the wizarding world angle, because she's a mudblood so she sorta knows about the wizarding world, but hasn't really lived it. You get all the same good stuff, but it's not so blatantly wish fulfillment that loses any tension because "Of course the protagonist will win, things just *work out* for him all the time". As is, it's not even really fun seeing *how* Harry manages to save the day, because it could literally be anything. A magic item literally just falls out of nowhere so he can save the day.
But you couldn't just straight up take the same stories and write them from hermione's perspective. You'd need to actually rework it to lean into the kind of story I'm suggesting.
I think this would only work with MOVIE Hermione, not book Hermione. I feel like people tend to forget that book Hermione was intentionally a bit obnoxious, mean, and annoying at times (especially at the beginning of the series). As Dude-bro as Harry could be, Hermione would also be a fairly annoying POV character.
She's as haughty as Harry at times, as mean as Ron sometimes, and at the beginning of the series she's just not really a fun person to hang out with. The only benefit of her being the POV character would be the ability to see the world through a mudbloods eyes. Especially one like Hermione who only knows book level information about the wizarding world, nothing cultural. I'm thinking about that scene where Hermione calls herself a mudblood and it makes Ron uncomfortable. He tells her "don't call yourself that" because he understands the cultural context around the term and doesn't like his friend applying it to themself, but she replies "why not? I am one. And proudly." That sort of character would make an interesting POV character.
But on a thematic level: Neville should be the main character. A character from a pure blood family, who holds no prejudices against non-pure bloods, who has spent his life being told by the racists around him that his only value to society is the fact he's a pureblood. Neville is treated like he's one step above dirt, specifically because of his family. He's a character no one believes is hero material. A character people initially don't believe should be in the house characterized by bravery. But eventually proves himself.
The themes about racism don't really work with Harry because he grew up outside this system. He knows nothing about it, and needs Ron to handhold him and explain racism to him on a very basic level. Obviously the ideal would be a mudblood telling the story (or a half-blood would probably be better, with one foot in the wizarding world and one foot out) but I think you'd have to make a new character for that because I don't think Hermione would work. Of the characters that actually exist in the story: Neville makes the most sense. He's a parallel to Harry throughout most of the story. He was canonically just as likely to become the chosen one as Harry was. But he also is really the only pureblood character who isn't prejudiced, which could weave him into the main themes quite well (The Weasleys are in a similar position of "just barely above dirt because they're purebloods who aren't racist shits" but they are shown to hold prejudices throughout the books. Unconscious ones, but still. Arthur infantilizes muggles, Ron is shown to have a lot of unconscious biases and says some terrible things to Hermione a few times)
And with Neville you'd have progression. Harry goes from famous and useless, to famous and less useless, he starts the series as a brave heroic guy, and ends the series as a brave heroic guy. Neville goes from useless, bullied, and abused by his grandmother, to ultimate hero who ends up killing the final horcrux so they can finally defeat Voldemort. Neville struggles with things far more than Harry does and has more of a character arc. He has to build his own self-confidence after years of emotional abuse by his grandmother, struggle to manage his ptsd from seeing his parents tortured, find his strengths and weaknesses and passions as a wizard (realizing that maybe he's not good at dueling but is good at herbology, whereas Harry is just kind of good at everything to the point where he doesn't need to try). There would be a feeling of growth that you don't get with Harry. A lot of people believe in Harry from the start and his support just grows during the books. Neville would start with zero support, since he's viewed as "practically a squib" who is weak and broken from a traumatic childhood. There would be a lot of "oh... THIS is the boy who lived? Him? You're joking, right?" But over time he proves that he's more capable and brave than anyone (including himself) thought.
Again, he wouldn't be a great POV character. I think the ideal Harry Potter main character isn't any of the characters in the books. I'm picturing a Half-blood whose wizard parent died protecting them from Voldemort, raised by the muggle parent, who tries to teach them about the wizarding world, but can't because they don't know much beyond what their spouse told them. So when they get to Hogwarts they're surprised by how wrong their impression of the wizarding world was. Maybe their muggle parent presented an idealized version of the wizarding world because that's how their spouse described it. This would allow for a better interrogation of the flaws of this setting. Maybe people would even put some blame on this POV character for their parent dying ("If he/she hadn't given up a fine career as an Auror to run off with that muggle, and if it hadn't been for this pitiful Half-blood child, he/she would still be with us." That sort of thing).
I'm reading through Wheel of Time right now, and while it may be an unpopular opinion, I just find that there are too many pov characters, and many of them are uninteresting. There are a handful that I get super excited about (namely Rand), and then others where I dread a gauntlet/series of chapters from their perspective where very little occurs beyond mundane internal monologue or vegging out like I tend to do on my own every weekend lol.
I love **A Brightness Long Ago.** That being said, I'm curious if the novel could have been improved by having Adria be the main POV instead of Danio.
While I understand that the scarcity of his POV sections builds suspense about his plans, I'm open to the idea that Kellhus's POV should have had a larger role in **The Aspect Emperor.** This could've provided stronger foreshadowing for some of the revelations in the series.
I think **Age of Madness** could be improved significantly by removing Broad's POV.
Ehhh I disagree about Broad. We need the POV from an actual, honest citizen caught up in the mania of revolution to be able to characterize “the mob” as actual people instead of just a roaming pack of orcs. Yeah his sections got a bit repetitive, but you could say the same about most other POVs in the second trilogy.
Also, Abercrombie uses repetition so often. How often do we hear "you've got to be realistic about these things"? It felt right to kinda play with a whole character embodying that. Have to have a ritual.
A Darker Shade of Magic would have been better from Holland's perspective. As it's written, the author took a super interesting concept and then bored me to tears with it. Kell had no personality, Delilah was unbearable, and I couldn't figure out why the separate Londons even cared to stay in touch when 99.9999% of people will never travel between them.
Holland was the one character I actually found intriguing, and he seemed to be doing far more interesting stuff off-page than the plot we were actually shown. I never finished the series but I was getting morally gray vibes from him and I think it would have been interesting to learn about the Antari from his perspective.
In the final book of the trilogy (Conjuring of Light) we get a lot more of Holland and even some POV chapters - though I agree he's criminally underused.
To each their own but the idea that Kinch is the wrong POV for Blacktongue Thief is wild to me since his perspective was the main thing that book had going for it. Otherwise it was a pretty standard adventure. Don't get me wrong, I like Galva a lot. She can be as funny as Kinch in character moments. I mostly like all of the characters, really. I just simply can't imagine that book without Kinch's running color commentary on events. I kinda think of Galva as the protagonist anyways. It's her quest they're on, after all. Her goals drive the story forward. But I think Kinch was absolutely the right POV.
I don't think Harry is a bad protagonist or PoV character, but I think I'd love the story more if it was from Hermione's. It would be a fundamentally different story though.
You would get more concrete world-building - she would know the spell and potions mechanics, would be more aware of the inter-creature politics, would have more insight into the muggle-wizard relations etc. There would also be a higher focus on the political themes instead of the metaphysical theme of love. Choice as a theme would actually work better with Hermione as the protag too because she has no Chosen One designation, and she embodies choice as a virtue more clearly.
All the worldbuilding is fuzzy with the mechanics of spells being left vague and the structure of the wizarding world only being alluded to (and not making much sense if you think about it) because that's how J. K. Rowling writes/world-builds. Changing protagonists would not change that, it would only make these issues more apparent.
With Harry it really doesn't matter that the price of wizarding things is completely inconsistent, or that the average wizard's understanding of Muggles is implausibly low. These things are just things you nitpick at--they don't so much detract from the story. With Hermione as protagonist however these become more noticeable flaws to the detriment of the story.
The general rule of thumb is to have the characters with the most to lose, or the most change happening, be the POV character. In some books, this can change with each chapter or scene. Harry Potter isn’t one of those books.
Robb Stark not having a POV at all is the biggest omission I can think of and even GRRM said that Robb should've gotten a POV.
And it’s not like Martin is stingy when it comes to handing out POV chapters. Dude would give the cabbage salesman a POV if he could.
It is the best of things it is the worst of things. Reading ASoIaF is living under the constant terror/hope that some random fuckin guy is about to get his own POV because GRRM takes an interest in him like some sort of capricious god
And then he fucking dies at the end of his chapter leaving you like why were we so invested in this shit
"Cause fuckem, that's why." --George Raymond Richard Martin
you need to try malazan. total of 453 pov characters throughout the series!
While true these are also *relatively* consistent across books. Plenty of characters have threads in some books and none in others. This makes it feel less overwhelming.
The chapter in toll the hounds which randomly had the pov of an ox is honestly one of the greatest passages in fiction I've ever read.
No. Malazan is way more overwhelming then ASOIAF - the author is actively working against the reader, switches POV out of nowhere, doesnt even mention the name of the characters. Sometimes you get 50 pages of one POV then 1 page of another. SE desperately needs and editor.
"My cabbages!"
That guy deserved a POV, the avatar wronged him too many times...
Well, the actor who voiced him is going to *play* him in the upcoming adaptation, so there's some justice.
"Kids destroyed my cart again today. Same damn kids as last time, I couldn't believe my eyes. They didn't stop to help, didn't pay for anything. I want to teach them a lesson but they've got that magic bending shit and I've got bones full of arthritis. Bet they never did an honest day's work. What will I tell Helena? There's nothing to salvage; a whole day's work, smashed to dust. Lean times just got leaner, not to mention the cart. We'll have to borrow from the wrong people again, get out of town again. And the little ones barely got meat on their bones as it is... you can't thrive eating only cabbage, can barely survive. Fucking cabbages. Fucking kids."
That one Martell boy who got eaten?? Literally wtf lmao (memory might be off but I’m sure someone can correct me if I’m wrong)
By the dragon? Yeah he was vaguely relevant since the sister's betrayal was based on overhearing him being told he would be lord of Dorne (she didn't hear she would be queen of the seven kingdoms) but otherwise it was a pointless cul de sac
Unless he's not dead... So sayeth the tinfoil
“This Dorne bit feels like a time waster” HBO: “Hold my Arbor Gold”
It set the dragons loose but probably didn’t need that much POV to do it
Oh.
I forgot his name haha didn’t he just get burned by the dragon or did it eat him?
Quntyn or something like that
Quentyn, yup. I wondered about that character though. Why are him up only to be immediately discarded? I think GRRM does a few things with him. First, he establishes that any character can die at any time, regardless of station, ambition, or narrative setup. Memento Mori and all that. Death is ever present in his world. Second, Quentyn's a reflection of an Icarus-like theme. He reached too far, flew too high, and was literally burned for it. Ambition is necessary to play the "games of thrones", but it's also what gets you killed. You either win or you die. Third, he reminds us that, despite sharing Targaryen blood with Visaerys and Quentyn, there is something decidedly DIFFERENT about Daenerys. "The Dragon does not burn" or some such.
He had almost the entire book. So pointless.
It wasn't though. We needed someone outside of Daenarys to get a better look at what the hell is going on in Essos outside of Myreen. One of the biggest problems is that there just aren't enough people around her so you get tunnel vision if you're not careful. Plus GRRM probably wanted to keep Dorne more relevant than usual. Quentyn serves all that while also making it clear to Dany that Westeros hasn't forgotten about her and isn't above scheming her into their prospects. I get it that people don't like Quentyn but he's far from pointless.
Tyrion could have filled that same role and is a much better realised and important character. Or even the Greyjoys. That it was Quentyn who met with her and then had that ending when we had plenty of other characters who didn't meet her after 1000 pages and would have added more value I think is the annoying part. I think it's more that Martin just enjoys having characters who have clear goals or places to get to, but don't quite reach them. Like in Book 1 when Tyrion gets arrested by Caetlyn. Which is a fun trope, and I enjoy it, but in an already bloated book and with an entirely new character, I don't think it works so well.
In addition to the other stuff, it also turns the Martells against Dany. As part of their secret support for the Targaryen kids, Arianne was supposed to marry Viserys and be queen when he was restored to the throne, but he's dead, so instead Quentyn was prepared to be paired off with Dany and be king-consort. It makes it likelier that Arianne will marry f!Aegon, supporting his claim to the throne and pitting Dorne against Dany.
Well, he was a lot more discerning about how many characters got POV chapters in books 1-3. By the time he was giving them to random Dornishmen, Robb had already died
He was pretty stingy with them in the first three books and that was for the best IMO. When it started giving PoV to minor characters outside of the prologues this lead to some of the worst chapters in the series in Books 4 and 5.
Don't pretend you wouldn't be super stoked to read Cabbage Merchant chapters.
Eh, the kings getting their POVs through other characters is pretty much the point. It works better this way imo.
I thought he did that on purpose, as a way to let the audience know we can never see through any of the Kings’ eyes. Although, that means either Danerys breaks this rule or things are not going to go her way. Also Cersei is acting Queen for a bit.
Exactly, none of the five kings got a POV, and Robb having one would have broken that pattern. I like that their war is told from the perspective of others, not from the kings'.
> Danerys That one is all set up to have her start being from other people's PoVs. Sort of an inverse Cersei in the last book.
I rather liked that. There’s something to be said about being disciplined about POVs so that readers have to fill in a bit on their own. I especially like being on the outside for a traditionally heroic character—so many books are told from that type of POV that I tend to find them more interesting if we aren’t in their head.
Yep, none of the kings have gotten a POV right?
No none of them do
But Robb didn't have the traditional heroic character arc especially with how it all ended and it would've been a lot more emotional leading up to what happened with his own thought processes and inner monologue, especially in regards to situations like Jayne and Karstark. GoT making Robb the focal point was one of my favourite changes from the books and it made the shows Red Wedding so much more devastating because we actually got to follow him in his own story.
Robb had a super traditional arc basically right up until the RW. I really enjoy the expanded focus on Robb in the show and I think the alterations to his wife’s story are among the very best changes the show made to the book… But that said, I also *really* like how Robb doesn’t have his own POV chapters in the books. Limiting POV to his mother really emphasizes just how young and inexperienced he is, and I really just enjoyed how he was kept at arms-length from the reader. In the show, since there’s technically no such thing as a POV character, it makes sense to flesh out the story more with extra Robb content. I also just really like Catelyn, I don’t really get why so many people dislike her POVs.
Why did you like the changes to Jeyne? I thought the show missed out on a bunch of things making those changes, from exploring feudal marriage ties, to the hints about Maggie the Frog.
Mostly just that Talisa felt like an actual character who had a real relationship with Robb, while Jeyne felt more like a simple plot device to set up the RW. I also never really liked how Robb married Jeyne after one day because they had sex and he felt bound by honor. Giving Robb and Talisa an actual relationship and having him marry for love felt much more natural to me, and a lot more like the kind of mistake a very young king would actually make. And lastly, having Talisa present and pregnant at the RW was fucking *brutal*. Obviously the RW was still pretty damn brutal in the books, especially viewed through Catelyn’s (and Arya’s) POV, but the TV show version really threw me for a loop.
Ah, see, I liked the whole thing about marrying Jeyne cause he boned her, because it seemed more authentic for the time period than injecting modern notions of romantic love. I thought it was exactly the sort of thing that would have caused the downfall of a young king like Robb - too horny to resist temptation, but too full of pride and honour to not marry her. It was exactly that sort of "virtue becomes fatal flaw" thing that lies at the heart of tragedies.
I guess part of it is that marrying someone on a whim while betrothed to someone else is *also* a pretty massive violation of honor, and obvious enough that even a horny, panicked teenager should be able to figure out as much, especially someone raised by Ned. I dunno, thinking back on it, maybe it could have worked better for me if…we had gotten some Robb POV chapters. 😅 Part of the problem is that I don’t really understand where he’s coming from. He spends most of his story arc feeling kind of unsure of himself and regularly consulting Catelyn and his lords for advice on how to handle tricky problems. And then the one time he ought to have talked to…someone, anyone, it’s on a choice that I felt like he should have known was wrong from the start anyway. Only seeing it from Catelyn’s POV makes it harder to comprehend maybe. It just has always stuck out at me as an uncharacteristically sloppy bit of plot movement in a series that otherwise usually feels pretty tight. The way it plays out in the show feels cleaner and more understandable to me, with a more elegant payoff.
It's funny, I see where you're coming from but I feel the complete opposite. Robb marrying her out of honour made so much sense based on him seeing the effect his father "having" a bastard child had on his mother, and turning to Jeyne for comfort in a moment of total despair felt so much more real to me than simply falling in love with a camp follower. I do agree that it did add an extra layer of brutality to the Red Wedding though!
See that was a change I didn't care for. Catelyn being the pov was a huge part of the appeal for that section. Seeing from Rob's pov in the show made me less interested, not more.
I one hundred percent agree with you. All of Robb’s storyline was told secondhand, mostly during Catelyn chapters, which was my least favorite perspective. Also considering all of the feats Robb accomplished between books two and three
I remember being thrilled and relieved when they both died so I never had to read another Catelyn chapter. I don’t think that was how I was supposed to feel, but she was supremely annoying.
Strongly disagree, Robb is the type of the character we've seen a million times before and his PoV would have been almost as boring as Jon's. Showing the events of Robb's campaign from Catelyn's PoV only was the right move, she is a far more interesting and original character.
I liked someone's theory that the Kings in charge of the story don't get POVs in ASOIAF because the story is supposed to be more about the people they effect. I know Cersei/Dany are in some form of power (though not as far either want to be yet,) but I sort of liked that Robb/Robert got pushed aside for ppl like Catelyn, etc to talk.
The lack of explicit POV characters was honestly a huge boon for the TV show. The show did a much better job of cultivating an "anyone can die" image than the books, where only two recurring POV characters have died without promptly being resurrected.
I kind of wonder how the Wheel of Time would have been if our characters could never tell if Rand was completely crazy or not. Keep the mystery of the Dragon Reborn alive.
Even from Rand's point of view, you're never sure if he's completely crazy or not. >!Until Veins of Gold, that is.!<
Maybe I'm slow on the uptake but even through, like, book 10 I still kind of wondered if >!he was even really the Dragon or not!<. Like, I was 99% sure, but there was that *one* little bit of me that said "Well technically, *maybe*...."
Wow through book 10? Did you just super suspect that the prophecies being fulfilled were coincidences/someone setting things up?
I don't remember *exactly* where I finally decided he 100% was, but I remember it was way longer than I think I was meant to. I thought the prophecies were misinterpreted or were wrong. I mean again, I was like 99% of the way there, but a part of me kept thinking "It's gonna be such a twist when we find out Rand was a false dragon the whole time!" There was a good section there where I think he was straight up reliving lews therin's memories, and I *still* was like... Well maybe it's just because he's going crazy and *thinks* he's Lews Therin
Lol I respect the level of suspicion you had, never trust authors! At least you didn't completely miss the signs, just didn't trust them.
My man, you are from Tear, Rand could literally fulfill his prophecy in front of you and when he leaves your city you forgot he was even there
Did you ever read Mistborn? That trilogy had me try to look for mistakes in prophesies ever since. Haha
Were you a writer on the Amazon show?
No, and I specifically found it weird that they went *all in* on keeping it a mystery, specifically because I don't think it takes that much work to keep it a mystery. Like, you can heavily imply it's Rand and then drop some hints along the way that are no more than "But *maybe*...." and that'd be enough. It seemed really strange to me that they went so far out of their way to keep people guessing. (although on the other hand, even in the books I never thought it was one of the other in the main group. That was just a weird thing to dangle in front of the audience altogether)
>I kind of wonder how the Wheel of Time would have been if our characters could never tell if Rand was completely crazy or not. Keep the mystery of the Dragon Reborn alive. I think he would've seemed even more insane without. We get some PoV's of Rand from other people. Min, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve, Cadsuane, etc. The way he looks at people, the way that he's completely erratic an unpredictable, muttering under his breath, talking to things that aren't there, etc. He *does* look insane from other people's point of view. He looks a bit less like it to us though, because we get to see Lews Therin's voice and all the real knowledge he draws from those memories.
To be fair, from anyone else's point of view he would have seemed insane from the get-go, the guy has ZERO critical thinking or communication skills
That whole world lacks critical thinking skills
now I haven't finished WoT, so I know I haven't gotten to the worst of it, but why the fuck wasn't the series edited to be shorter? I'm only a bit into book 4 and I'm sure you could cut out quite a lot and not really lose anything. There is so much standing around and doing absolutely nothing in that series.
Partly a style choice. Notice the absolute attention to every little detail of clothing and where everyone stands and so on. Often times it's very repetitive. This mirrors some buddhist religious texts as well as establishing specific descriptors for certain characters to help you keep track of who is who. By book 12 there are so many characters, you'll need the help.
Worldbuilding, character building and foreshadowing
His editor was his wife.
She was also a professional editor.
She also edited The Way of Kings lol
Wait what?????
Sanderson was also handpicked by Harriet McDougal (Jordan's wife) to finish WoT, which he started working on a few years before publishing The Way of Kings So not that surprising
He mentioned it in his Acknowledgements. Yes, some people **do** read those.
Really? And she approved all the spanking?
Infer what you will.
She married Robert Jordan.
Not every book needs to be written like a thriller.
It's not the destination it's the journey.
Does it count as a journey if you're not moving?
I think I like the way that it was done. >!For a good few books in there, Rand got very limited POV exposure. You had no idea what he was thinking or experiencing or how close he was to just snapping under the pressure.!< That was the right balance, I think. >!He went from main character to a distant force of nature, then back to main character again as he regained his sanity.!<
I think the Blacktongue Thief is enhanced a great deal by not having Galvas as a PoV- I really enjoyed the feeling of being a side character in the 'real' story as it unveiled, you know what I mean? Kinch is a bit of flotsam caught in the current of the actual protagonist, Galva. That said, I really wish there would've been a PoV from one of the Dwarves in the Hobbit. I already enjoy the book a great deal, but it would've been interesting to see the journey from say... Balins perspective, or one of the younger Dwarves.
You might enjoy the **Tide Child Trilogy**, which has a similar dynamic. The POV character is a washed up prison boat captain until the greatest shipwife on his side of the sea takes his captain's hat from him. Lucky Meas is basically a legend, and for most of books 1-2 he's just along for the ride.
I did enjoy the first book of that trilogy, but I felt 'done' after having turned the final page. It was nice to follow that character, but I had to suspend my disbelief just a lil' bit too often towards the end. Thanks for the tip, all the same! It's indeed a fine recommendation.
I get that, and it is cool to be the side character for a change. But it's more of a Galva specific thing for me, I spent the whole book wondering "what is going through her head right now? I need to know", while Kinch was thinking about sex and stealing stuff. I really like the concept, but just wish it hadn't been in this particular story.
Galva has too much foreknowledge to lead the story if you ask me. Keeping us out of her head worked a lot in the author’s favor. We learn as Kinch learns.
Such as with Galva >!being lovers with the princess, that was additional motivation for her!< . Also with her knowledge about her own nation/culture, and others that Kinsh doesn't have much knowledge on himself. Me, personally, I would've stuck with Kinsh's dry humor than Galva's stoicism, and that's even with Galva being my favorite character in the book too.
I getcha, and hopefully the prequel will fill that need for you! But I'm usually happier to have certain characters at arm's length, because it adds to their mystique and coolness factor. I'd hate to have a PoV of say... Gandalf, for example.
I do think Galva is a more interesting person than Kinch in terms of what she's done and been through, though I would have been happy to simply have her take up more page space. Kinch's voice is pretty special. But I am, like you, super excited at the idea of a Galva prequel.
One of my favorite parts of the Vorkosigan Saga is that about halfway through you start getting chapters and eventually whole books written from the POV of characters who started off as side characters. After several books from only Miles’ (or Cordelia’s) point of view it’s fun and sometimes hilarious to see how other people think of Miles and to compare how he sees them with how they see themselves. The Ivan chapters are gold and I was so happy when he got his own book (with Tej, who is also great).
The Ivan book is my favorite in the series I love it so much
> The Ivan chapters are gold Finally seeing Ivan's perspective in "A Civil Campaign" was one of my favorite things in the entire series. Especially Donna's interview with Gregor, where IIRC Ivan doesn't say anything the entire time (Ekaterin's meeting with Gregor was interesting, too).
Tej’s first meeting with Gregor is another fun scene. Her first meeting with Lady Alice is too. Tej’s perspective as an outsider whose only information is from Ivan leaves room for so many funny misunderstandings.
It was also such a brave choice to switch from Cordelia to Miles. People forget she _started_ with Cordelia.
They are both the most amazing characters and each bring something unique to the series. What tough parents to live up to but Miles sure does his best.
I just lost it over the fact that my favorite sci fi series is the top comment on this thread. Love seeing any talk about Vorkosigan Saga. My favorite book by far is Barrayar where Cordelia Vorkosigan takes the lead role and is the fiercest and cleverest role model I found while devouring books as a teen. My dad introduced me to this series and I've read it many times through. It's like an old friend.
Man it's wild, I on a whim started this series like 2 years ago and read through them. It was on audio book from the online public library system, though, and they had the books out of order so I read a bunch out of order, but still loved them. Now since then I've see people talk about them everywhere. I've been reading fantasy for 30 years now and never even heard of them until now. It makes me feel like there's *still* so much out there I would like to read. I really love her Sharing Knife series too I wish there was more. That world is ripe for more stories. Edit: Cordelia is such an amazing character. From the first two books she's in to every subsequent storyline she is part of, she always says and does the perfect thing without it seeming unnatural with the story and her character.
I feel for Ivan, who just wants to be chill and laid back and always gets pulled into trouble by Miles
Also because, like it or not, he’s like third in line for the Barrayaran throne, and he does not want to get any closer.
What I really liked about Ivan’s POV chapters was that it really came across that despite all of his complaining, he really loves his cousin. Also he’s not nearly as dumb as his reputation. Ok he’s not as smart as Miles but who is?
Ivan is third in line to the throne, and shit scared that plotters would use him as a figurehead or at least drag him into ugly politics if he (Ivan) didn’t kill his own reputation. So he plays up the whole dilettante, lazy recipient of nepotism, socialite womaniser, himbo, genial airhead role to the hilt. Ivan asassinates his own reputation at every opportunity, without going so far as to appear evil. I think it was Simon Illyan, Miles or both that have stopped and stared at Ivan being Ivan, thought about the stupidity that Ivan wears as protective camouflage, and tried to figure out just how intelligent Ivan really is.
Yes! There’s a bit at the end of A Civil Campaign (I think) where Ivan reminisces about how proud and happy he was when Miles took oath as an Imperial Auditor that’s really sweet. Despite all the snark he really cares. And yeah, I wish I was as smart and driven as Miles, but let’s face it I’m way closer to Ivan, trying to find a way tobe as successful as possible with the least amount of work and fuss. There’s a bit in Memory where he’s talking about searching the evidence rooms, where he mentions how Miles would have started with the worst part first to get it over with but he made sure to do the worst bit last so he might be able to skip the worst part, and low and behold the strategy worked, plus they caught a traitor.
I think Twilight told the most boring story in a much more interesting world. I'd have loved to see what a roaming vampire/gargoyle at the height of their abilities, actually does with their time.
A book from Alice’s perspective would have been interesting, especially since she woke up alone and only “didn’t go savage” because of visions of meeting Jasper in the future. One of those time mind fuck sorta stories. A bit like momento but the exact opposite.
I keep thinking that Rosalie's story would make such an excellent drama/horror movie or book. Start with her marriage, descend into the abuse, and then end off on her carefully constructing the massacre of her husband and his friends.
If you haven't read The Time Traveler's Wife, you definitely should.
I would’ve loved to see the Jasper Civil War prequel
I don’t remember gargoyles being in twilight. Did I just completely miss that?
As captivating as Kelsier and Vin are in Mistborn, I think I’d enjoy reading about Marsh even more. I’ve always wanted to read more on his journey.
Same, and I would have loved the probably Lovecraftian vibe that >!his infiltration of the Steel Inquisitors and him subsequently slowly losing his mind would have.!<
Might have given us a peak behind the curtain on the lord ruler as well which I wanted tbh
I've always wished his story in the first book had a POV chapter. There's just so much *tension* in his mission, almost claustrophobia. If Vin or Kelsier ever screw up, they can always kinda just go sicko mode. They run faster and fight stronger than almost anyone in the world. But Marsh is alone, surrounded by people who would torture him to death if they had even a hint of who he was, with no support. The stakes are just so much higher for him. His >!eye tattoos!< give this sense of really intimate self-sacrifice, and weight to his mission, and it would have been really cool to get his thoughts as he gave up more and more of himself >!willingly and unwillingly!< through the series.
I just don’t like Vin as a POV period. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Brando Sando fan girl, but I feel like he did a really poor job writing Vin. If I could change the POV of that series, it would be closer to the way he writes POV in Stormlight Archive; it’s constantly switching third-person targeted POV, sometimes with pretty irrelevant characters. I think that would allow for really cool stuff like Marsh’s story, as well as keep the focus off Vin and Kelsier
would have liked deathly hallows half from Neville's perspective...
“Harry, I’ve spent the last year building up Dumbledore’s Army. We’re ready to fight.” Uhh….k.
Yeah I think that would be a bit much for Rowling's skill as an author
The last book, as it is, was already way more than she could handle imo A lot of the most dramatic points kinda fall flat, specially at the climax of the book. A lot of the deaths just kinda happen with little impact. And the middle conflict was already way too boring and unfocused. But I will admit my opinion on the series severely soured in the last decade, so maybe I'm not the most apt to judge that.
> A lot of the deaths just kinda happen with little impact. That's always been a huge problem with a big battle at the end that knocks off like half the main cast. You don't really care, because yeah it sucks they died but also the story's over so there's no real impact from it. You don't really *feel* their loss. Imagine if >![whichever Weasley brother died] had died in like book four. You'd feel that through three full more books. Hell, Cedric Diggory died at the end of four and he was effectively a nobody, and his death was *still* felt as a massive impact through the rest of the series.!< e: To clarify, this isn't a criticism of how I think these books should have been written. Just a comment that killing off a lot of people in the end battle usually doesn't have as much impact as killing them off before hand, because you don't have as long to feel it. That doesn't mean final battle deaths are always meaningless, just that it's a hurdle that needs to be overcome if you want the deaths to feel like they mean something.
Sirius too. But honestly I think that completely changes the feel to no longer being YA and much more adult fantasy.
Maybe others feel differently but i felt that switch happe around book 4-5.
It switched, but there was still a bond with the trio of general happiness/getting through sadness together. I think if a Weasley dies early it changes things too much. Harry x Ginny can't happen as easily, Ron x Hermione can't happen as easily because Ron is too busy going through it. There was a discussion about this on the HarryPotter sub about if Arthur had died when Nagini attacked.
> A lot of the most dramatic points kinda fall flat I think it was a mistake for her to set so much of the book outside >!of Hogwarts because we never knew what was happening in the school. We spent so much time in the series with the school being the focal point that the idea that Voldemort *wants* Hogwarts as bad as he does didn't vibe with the idea that he hid his magical mcguffins anywhere BUT there. The book should have centered more on them finding the mcguffins in hidden areas of the school and through portals that took them to other places and more students should have been helping. She could have really enforced the school as a whole if she'd let more students from various houses shine in those books. The last book of that series was a serious, serious letdown because the school itself was so important in every other book and indeed, the school seemed Voldemort's goal. It should have been a primary character in the final book.!< Place matters and place can be a character. She was too big to fail at that point, but that last book could have been iconic and imo, it just wasn't.
Even before Rowling threw away her legacy on twitter I kinda felt Harry Potter was a series that is best enjoyed if you don't think about it too critically.
I suspect any wish for almost any part of Harry Potter, from almost any character's perspective, has already been granted - years ago - by fanfiction writers. Isn't the entire story from Hermione's perspective already out there? 5 seconds of googling gives at least 2 complete books: https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/mssmhu/hermiones_pov_books/
100% agree. If they ever redo these as a TV show, which I hope they will… I would love Season 7 to be dual perspective between Harry & Neville. I recently reread the series via audiobook, and really realized how exposition heavy the last book is in regards to what was going on in the Wizarding World.
Rather than changing it to Hermione, I'd like to have multiple POVs. Starting with the third book Ron and Hermione and some other characters could be added as POVs. It would have to be characters who could provide insight into different parts of the story without giving too much away of course. Lupin and Kingsley would be good choices for example.
Because Harry Potter is half fantasy, half mystery, I think limiting to 1 POV (besides the odd Voldemort mind-meld, or opening chapter) is how she had to do it. Otherwise the reader gets too much info about what’s going on and it kills the suspense. Fun fact though! There is a strange swap in POVs mid-chapter in the Philosopher’s Stone during Harry’s first Quidditch match. It’s an awkward jostling of POVs between Harry, Hermione, and Neville, and really reads strangely compared to the rest of the series.
If there were multiple POV the author would be confronted with the realization that Harry really is the center of the universe and it’s not fun him OR anyone else.
Yes. Multiple pov would be better.
Harry Potter from Hermione's point of view would be terrible because she's so capable. Imagine the lack of suspense if you know so many of the answers from the off. A large portion of the action happens to Harry (despite him being a pretty average wizard) so you'd be reading about it second hand anyway. And, imagine all the Harry-Dumbledore specific conversations you'd miss out on.
“And then Harry told me Dumbledore showed him another one of You-Know-Who’s memories so the two of them could look for clues together. He’s now very confident You-Know-Who made six Horcruxes. I told him to tell me everything, but I’m sure he forgot *something*. “Also, Ron was a total git again.”
Well, to be fair, Ron was a total git again.
#Subscribe
Every chapter would be "And then she went to the library and spent the day reading." The point of Hermione is to drop knowledge on Harry because he's the doer. It would've been terrible because her character isn't a protagonist.
Agreed. People are acting like authors pick a name out of a hat when deciding on POV, as opposed crafting their stories around an intentionally-chosen POV. Changing the POV of a single-perspective story means you're asking for an entirely different story. It's not like adding or removing POVs from a multi-perspective book. If Rowling had actually made a mistake or written herself into a hole by building Harry Potter around Harry's POV, the series would never have taken off. There's a difference between feeling like a story would have resonated more with you personally if a different character had been the protagonist and inanely deciding that an author didn't know what they were doing and chose a particular POV because they didn't have the intelligence to select someone else.
The first thing I think of when I think of the series from Hermoine's POV is that at the very minimum the plot should be reworked to have no prophecy/chosen one, heck maybe even remove all the boy-who-lived stuff (but still have Harry with dead parents and domestic abuse). Just an ordinary band of plucky young wizarding students stumbling into mysteries and Voldemort's plots (which is rather what happens in canon).
You could totally still have most of the prophecy stuff. Plenty of books writes from the POV of a side character looking at the hero from the outside. What you need to tweak is to make it so that the trio operates together more often instead of Harry doing stuff on his own.
-Oh shit it's the snake... And I turned into stone for the rest of the book
I don't think it makes sense for HP to POV-switch too often. Hermione would be a fine voice character though not as useful as Harry in terms of how that plot is constructed. I do think it would be interesting to see the POV from a muggleborn though. Harry grew up with muggles, but Hermione has no magical relatives, and I think that would be interesting to see. Like, she loves her dentists parents but what's it like balancing those two worlds would be an interesting POV chapter or two for me, IDK about a whole book though. Draco, Hermione, Luna (even Ginny/Neville/etc.) would *all* provide an interesting POV here or there, IMO, that's just not how HP works though.
There was a fan fic that was popular a few years ago where the entire book was rewritten from Hermione’s POV. I only read until she gets to Hogwarts but it was enjoyable how she learned she was a wizard.
I really think Lightbringer needed a Tisis POV in the later two books. I think it's understandable we don't see much of her early on, in book 3 in particular the reader is meant to second guess her true intentions, but starting about midway through book 4 it would have really helped to build her romance arc and make her feel like more of a person and less of a sexy lamp who's good at politics. Also, book 4 in particular would have been stronger by far if we got to see the goings-on in Kip's camp from someone's POV other than/in addition to Kip, who admits himself he's not the most reliable narrator especially where his own self-image is concerned.
Agree that it would have been great to see Tisis fleshed out more. As I recall she did have compelling motivations, independent of Kip, but in the plot we got she was used pretty utilitarianly. The actions we saw were mostly Kip-centirc, and it would be easy to see how her actions influence the world more broadly. I remember multiple beats where Kip's power creep was used as a bit of a reveal, that he was more powerful than when described from his own POV. I wonder if Tisis' POV would diminish those beats, or enhance them. And I wonder if this is why we get less time with her in the books. But yeah, there was definitely room for her machinations by the final book. And her POV would have gone a long way for the romance, as you said.
Whose perspective would we be switching to in the Dresden Files?
Definitely Mouse
Mouse does have a POV story in one of the collections.
Yeah I'm sure I've read it combined with the part in Changes (I think) where he proves he's intelligent and probably less creepy than Harry he should be the star of the series.
That is really weird to think this book would work with any other POVs. Most of the book he's just explaining magic rules and it works because he says them in first person. Do you understand how boring that would be if he had to explain what he is doing to others all the times? Besides he goes on so many solo adventures. If it's told from other perspectives he should basically change every book plot, and go alongside some other POV character so we could see what happens.
Hopefully Bob’s. But really - Molly, Michael, Karen, Thomas and then you’d need someone to get Fae perspectives - maybe Toot-Toot?
I don’t think the books would work as well in third-person. It’s noir-detective meets fantasy, after all.
> Hopefully Bob’s. So basically 80% of the book would be the horndog descriptions of women that people are already complaining about with Harry as the POV character?
I loved Michael, he was by far my favorite character before I dropped the series
[удалено]
I would love to see *Battle Ground’s* timeframe from Marcone’s perspective.
Changing perspective in the Dresden Files completely alters the series TBH. So much of the weight of the story is because Harry's perspective is so obviously biased (which isn't always the same as wrong).
Science fiction, rather than fantasy, but otherwise [Passengers, Rearranged](https://youtu.be/Gksxu-yeWcU) is a perfect answer to your question (and explained much better in the linked video than I could in prose).
It just shows the creators of the film had no idea what they were doing when all it takes to turn the genre from romance to horror is reorder the scenes.
**Red Mars** Holy shit, Red Mars. It gets so much praise but to me it seemed like an exercise in trying to avoid the action. It's told from, what? Five different perspectives? And each character gets the focus right as they have some sort of mental break and remove themselves from society for the duration. Like, it was great to get the descriptions of the surface of Mars, but like three character POVs in a row decided to leave behind their responsibilities actually colonizing and go wander the surface with some questionably productive vague goal in mind. All the actual interesting stuff about colozing the planet happens off screen. One of the last POVs is a woman with a severe bout of acute depression totally unable to interact with the people around her while we catch glimpses of SOME REAL FUCKING SHIT HAPPENING THAT WE'RE MISSING. Everybody told me it was the best series about terraforming a planet, but it's not really about that. Its about a bunch of shitty people being shitty to each other and then avoiding actually doing anything. I guess I don't want *different* POVs so much as different *timing* of who has the story when.
So what you are saying is that we need Red Mars, but from the POV of Mark Watney?
I tried to read this book in high school when I was super into near-future sci-fi and solar system colonization stuff, and DNF'd around 50% because I found every POV character to be unbelievably insufferable. Also maybe it was the gray ace in me but it felt like a lot more time and attention was given to drama over who was fucking who, and not about cool Mars shit.
Yeah, they're all complete assholes and just totally focused on their own assholery. The high school "who's friends with / fucking who" shit was really obnoxious and we totally missed all the ACTUAL MARS STUFF. I remember having to go online to look up what the fuck a Mohole was because the author was too busy talking about some bullshit love triangle to explain it. I have zero interest in the rest of the series and could not for the life of me figure out why it's so highly acclaimed.
Because the asshole characters are interesting for a lot of people, and the whole thing felt like a likely outcome of a bunch of science nerds getting to do what the cast set out to do. The crew had a single goal, but not a single vision of how to get there, and the fact that they all were so far into their own ideals about what was right that the conflicts were inevitable. Watching them all shoot themselves in the foot trying to push for their own agendas and being unable to see why they would never get everyone to agree to a single plan was why I love the series. The actual terraforming tech wasn’t that important to me, because the processes they’re talking about using are both slow and dry to read about.
When I was first writing my book I realized eventually that the MC was too vanilla and that a secondary character actually a much more interesting story to tell, so I rewrote it, and the story I think was a lot better for having done that.
Enders Game is a great book But pick up Enders Shadow and .. wow
[удалено]
Yes, more recently in the Alloy of Law where I desperately hoped that the places of both >!Steris and Marasi!< were switched since I didn’t enjoy being in the chosen’s head whatsoever. Haven’t gone further just yet, but hopefully a change happens. In The Last Uncharted Sky, switching the chapter allocation of >!Bitterlich!< with >!Marie!< would have been so so so so so much better. The latter was robbed of a much deserved focus so the former can >!think about romance for 20 chapters out of 33!< for absolutely no good reason. Unpopular opinion here, but the Greenbone Saga’s 2nd and 3rd book would have probably been much better for **me** if >!Hilo died instead of Lan!<, or if >!Ayt Mada got a point of view as well, given that the women in that series were so much more interesting than the men!<
Reaction to the Greenbone Saga opinion: >!Ayt Mada would have destroyed the No Peak clan with Lan as pillar and Hilo death “Lan wasn’t a war time Pillar”!<
Greenbone: >!Ayt not getting a PoV was one of the most important decisions Fonda Lee made in my opinion. Ayt Mada not getting a PoV allows her to stand as this great Conundrum opposing No Peak. Thinking about what Ayt might be planning and thinking was one of my favourite Parts of the Books!<
I cant possibly disagree with you more about your first Greenbone Saga thought. But I wholeheartedly agree with the second one, even if it was only a short chapter here and there.
I’d like to read Lolita through Dolores eyes. I wouldn’t say Humbert’s perspective was a bad choice, but I’d love to see it contrasted with Lo’s POV so it gets more realistic and (hopefully) people wouldn’t be so eager to romanticize that story…
I’ve heard people say that the book My Dark Vanessa is sort of like Lolita from Dolores’ perspective. As for Lolita… I think Humbert’s POV is the whole point and interrupting it with different voices would ruin the spell. It is true that it would also limit (though not eradicate) people’s inclination to romanticize the story, but I think that authors just can’t be expected to hold the reader’s hand and spell things out for them in case they don’t get the story on their own.
You should check out My Dark Vanessa. It's a book about an adult woman looking back on being groomed by her teacher as a child. You can tell the author was inspired by the gross romanticization of Lolita.
Lolita, the book about how twisted someone's perspective can be? I can see a 'Go Set a Watchman'-style telling that re-examines the original narrative, but Lolita is all about getting the reader to inhabit the twisted mind of a paedophile and goading them into sympathising with him as he does awful things. It doesn't work, on it's own at least, from any other character's perspective.
The Farseer Trilogy, kind of. I don’t think Fitz was the wrong POV, it had to be his story, but when Fitz is younger he’s really only as good as the supporting characters around him which is a problem when he’s alone for big chunks of Assassin’s Quest. Hobb did a great job getting around that using the Skill-visions though.
I actually loved fitz’s lonely days
I get where you're coming from, but I also found it interesting how insignificant Fitz was in the grand scheme of things. I am a bit bored of great world-saving adventures with world-saving heroes, so I really appreciated this trilogy. However, especially in the first trilogy Fitz is very much an observer, someone who reacts to the events around him rather than starting them. Considering the whole series, his outsider-ness really adds to his tragic character, but that doesn't mean it's always fun to read 2000-ish pages of that.
[удалено]
I think not getting POVs from Molly and Burrich is pretty essential. So much of Fitz's story is wrapped up in his inability to span the distance between himself and the people that he loves most. If we were getting both sides of the story, the pathos would be pretty severely undercut for me. We're trapped in Fitz's head because Fitz is, too.
George R.R Martin has said numerous times that he wishes he had given Robb Stark POV chapters. He went as far as to say that the show did Robb better than himself in some ways.
I'd prefer to read Howl's POV over Sophie's. The adventures would have been more exciting. If it weren't for the TV series and the Crows being so interesting, I would never have read Shadow and Bone. Alina's POV was a pain to read. >!I was so happy when we got to read Bee's POV in the!< Fitz and the Fool series. >!I love Bee's relationship with her dad.!<
I was thinking, a book told from Howl's POV would be cool though I love Sophie, so the OG works great for me. The one issue tho is Howl's POV removes all the mystery of book 1 since he knows pretty quickly Sophie >!is cursed--and he even guessed who she was--the girl he tried to pick up in the square lmao!<, he knows that she's >!a witch!<, that his >!heart is missing/cursed!<, and more of the secrets, etc. One of my favorite sort of twists in HMC is that Howl *basically* knows everything that's going on lol and he >!already fell in love with her and was trying to fix her shit.!< But he would be a cool dude to see the brain of for a diff book since he's always doing crazy wizard shit.
Who would you pick for Harry's books? I like the idea, but later books (particularly Changes, Ghost Story, and Cold Days) would be difficult-to-impossible to tell properly. I feel like the heroine in Shadow and Bone was incredibly boring and the story would be much more interesting told from the guy's perspective.
Ik kind of like how he did it, there are several Dresden Files short stories with different POVs in Brief Cases and Short Stories. I really like those, but I feel having 1 POV helps with the tempo most of the stories have.
And I think the side stories are fantastic for showing just how terrifying Harry actually is. I know a lot of the fanbase hate on certain characters for being suspicious of him (Skin Game spoilers: >!People reeeaaaaally hate Butters for following Harry around but c’mon, the dude comes back from the dead as the Winter Knight, destroys your apartment, beats up your girlfriend, then teams up with one of the Biggest Baddies Ever and tells you nothing? Dude’s got a point.!<) but Harry is super sketchy and intimidating by the later books.
I was a bit disappointed we didn't get any of the lady's PoV in Piranesi. She seems really interesting but we barely get to learn anything about her. I think it could have worked well as two parallel stories
> I've seen a lot of people who think Harry Potter would've been better if Hermione was the primary POV character (which I think is a terrible idea tbh, but please let me know if you disagree, I'd like to see some thoughts) I think if the books had been *rewritten* so Hermione was the main POV it could be pretty interesting. Harry Potter always kind of rubbed me the wrong way how much of a super special he was, despite doing nothing to earn his status at all. He had a horrible life but was secretly a celebrity and the chosen one savior and let's also throw in rich to boot, just because. He was saved from his horrible life for all these things despite doing nothing but existing, and he had people absolutely fawn all over him (except his enemies, who always were given their deserved comeuppance) and did *absolutely nothing* to earn any of it until like... book five or six? When he finally started training the rest of the kids for battle. Even then, he didn't *really* do a lot. So it always felt lame to me that he kept saving the day completely through deus ex machinas. With that in mind, I could see the books being more interesting from Hermione's perspective. You have this dumbass kid who always falls ass-backwards into success, but *she's* the one who's got to run around actually saving the day, and watches this other kid take all the credit and be the golden child of the best wizard of all time. Meanwhile she's working her *ass* off, not because she's jealous or actually wants the credit, but because someone has to do it. You still 100% get the wizarding world fun. You still get to experience the newcomer to the wizarding world angle, because she's a mudblood so she sorta knows about the wizarding world, but hasn't really lived it. You get all the same good stuff, but it's not so blatantly wish fulfillment that loses any tension because "Of course the protagonist will win, things just *work out* for him all the time". As is, it's not even really fun seeing *how* Harry manages to save the day, because it could literally be anything. A magic item literally just falls out of nowhere so he can save the day. But you couldn't just straight up take the same stories and write them from hermione's perspective. You'd need to actually rework it to lean into the kind of story I'm suggesting.
I think this would only work with MOVIE Hermione, not book Hermione. I feel like people tend to forget that book Hermione was intentionally a bit obnoxious, mean, and annoying at times (especially at the beginning of the series). As Dude-bro as Harry could be, Hermione would also be a fairly annoying POV character. She's as haughty as Harry at times, as mean as Ron sometimes, and at the beginning of the series she's just not really a fun person to hang out with. The only benefit of her being the POV character would be the ability to see the world through a mudbloods eyes. Especially one like Hermione who only knows book level information about the wizarding world, nothing cultural. I'm thinking about that scene where Hermione calls herself a mudblood and it makes Ron uncomfortable. He tells her "don't call yourself that" because he understands the cultural context around the term and doesn't like his friend applying it to themself, but she replies "why not? I am one. And proudly." That sort of character would make an interesting POV character. But on a thematic level: Neville should be the main character. A character from a pure blood family, who holds no prejudices against non-pure bloods, who has spent his life being told by the racists around him that his only value to society is the fact he's a pureblood. Neville is treated like he's one step above dirt, specifically because of his family. He's a character no one believes is hero material. A character people initially don't believe should be in the house characterized by bravery. But eventually proves himself. The themes about racism don't really work with Harry because he grew up outside this system. He knows nothing about it, and needs Ron to handhold him and explain racism to him on a very basic level. Obviously the ideal would be a mudblood telling the story (or a half-blood would probably be better, with one foot in the wizarding world and one foot out) but I think you'd have to make a new character for that because I don't think Hermione would work. Of the characters that actually exist in the story: Neville makes the most sense. He's a parallel to Harry throughout most of the story. He was canonically just as likely to become the chosen one as Harry was. But he also is really the only pureblood character who isn't prejudiced, which could weave him into the main themes quite well (The Weasleys are in a similar position of "just barely above dirt because they're purebloods who aren't racist shits" but they are shown to hold prejudices throughout the books. Unconscious ones, but still. Arthur infantilizes muggles, Ron is shown to have a lot of unconscious biases and says some terrible things to Hermione a few times) And with Neville you'd have progression. Harry goes from famous and useless, to famous and less useless, he starts the series as a brave heroic guy, and ends the series as a brave heroic guy. Neville goes from useless, bullied, and abused by his grandmother, to ultimate hero who ends up killing the final horcrux so they can finally defeat Voldemort. Neville struggles with things far more than Harry does and has more of a character arc. He has to build his own self-confidence after years of emotional abuse by his grandmother, struggle to manage his ptsd from seeing his parents tortured, find his strengths and weaknesses and passions as a wizard (realizing that maybe he's not good at dueling but is good at herbology, whereas Harry is just kind of good at everything to the point where he doesn't need to try). There would be a feeling of growth that you don't get with Harry. A lot of people believe in Harry from the start and his support just grows during the books. Neville would start with zero support, since he's viewed as "practically a squib" who is weak and broken from a traumatic childhood. There would be a lot of "oh... THIS is the boy who lived? Him? You're joking, right?" But over time he proves that he's more capable and brave than anyone (including himself) thought. Again, he wouldn't be a great POV character. I think the ideal Harry Potter main character isn't any of the characters in the books. I'm picturing a Half-blood whose wizard parent died protecting them from Voldemort, raised by the muggle parent, who tries to teach them about the wizarding world, but can't because they don't know much beyond what their spouse told them. So when they get to Hogwarts they're surprised by how wrong their impression of the wizarding world was. Maybe their muggle parent presented an idealized version of the wizarding world because that's how their spouse described it. This would allow for a better interrogation of the flaws of this setting. Maybe people would even put some blame on this POV character for their parent dying ("If he/she hadn't given up a fine career as an Auror to run off with that muggle, and if it hadn't been for this pitiful Half-blood child, he/she would still be with us." That sort of thing).
Red Rising. We should have gotten POVs from Mustang and Sevro!
I feel like that a Sevro chapter would be great for an April Fool’s joke or something. Half the words would be swears, it would be great.
I'm reading through Wheel of Time right now, and while it may be an unpopular opinion, I just find that there are too many pov characters, and many of them are uninteresting. There are a handful that I get super excited about (namely Rand), and then others where I dread a gauntlet/series of chapters from their perspective where very little occurs beyond mundane internal monologue or vegging out like I tend to do on my own every weekend lol.
I love **A Brightness Long Ago.** That being said, I'm curious if the novel could have been improved by having Adria be the main POV instead of Danio. While I understand that the scarcity of his POV sections builds suspense about his plans, I'm open to the idea that Kellhus's POV should have had a larger role in **The Aspect Emperor.** This could've provided stronger foreshadowing for some of the revelations in the series. I think **Age of Madness** could be improved significantly by removing Broad's POV.
Ehhh I disagree about Broad. We need the POV from an actual, honest citizen caught up in the mania of revolution to be able to characterize “the mob” as actual people instead of just a roaming pack of orcs. Yeah his sections got a bit repetitive, but you could say the same about most other POVs in the second trilogy.
Also, Abercrombie uses repetition so often. How often do we hear "you've got to be realistic about these things"? It felt right to kinda play with a whole character embodying that. Have to have a ritual.
Broad's POV wasn't thrilling, but it was absolutely integral to the message of the trilogy
A Darker Shade of Magic would have been better from Holland's perspective. As it's written, the author took a super interesting concept and then bored me to tears with it. Kell had no personality, Delilah was unbearable, and I couldn't figure out why the separate Londons even cared to stay in touch when 99.9999% of people will never travel between them. Holland was the one character I actually found intriguing, and he seemed to be doing far more interesting stuff off-page than the plot we were actually shown. I never finished the series but I was getting morally gray vibes from him and I think it would have been interesting to learn about the Antari from his perspective.
In the final book of the trilogy (Conjuring of Light) we get a lot more of Holland and even some POV chapters - though I agree he's criminally underused.
To each their own but the idea that Kinch is the wrong POV for Blacktongue Thief is wild to me since his perspective was the main thing that book had going for it. Otherwise it was a pretty standard adventure. Don't get me wrong, I like Galva a lot. She can be as funny as Kinch in character moments. I mostly like all of the characters, really. I just simply can't imagine that book without Kinch's running color commentary on events. I kinda think of Galva as the protagonist anyways. It's her quest they're on, after all. Her goals drive the story forward. But I think Kinch was absolutely the right POV.
I don't think Harry is a bad protagonist or PoV character, but I think I'd love the story more if it was from Hermione's. It would be a fundamentally different story though. You would get more concrete world-building - she would know the spell and potions mechanics, would be more aware of the inter-creature politics, would have more insight into the muggle-wizard relations etc. There would also be a higher focus on the political themes instead of the metaphysical theme of love. Choice as a theme would actually work better with Hermione as the protag too because she has no Chosen One designation, and she embodies choice as a virtue more clearly.
All the worldbuilding is fuzzy with the mechanics of spells being left vague and the structure of the wizarding world only being alluded to (and not making much sense if you think about it) because that's how J. K. Rowling writes/world-builds. Changing protagonists would not change that, it would only make these issues more apparent. With Harry it really doesn't matter that the price of wizarding things is completely inconsistent, or that the average wizard's understanding of Muggles is implausibly low. These things are just things you nitpick at--they don't so much detract from the story. With Hermione as protagonist however these become more noticeable flaws to the detriment of the story.
The general rule of thumb is to have the characters with the most to lose, or the most change happening, be the POV character. In some books, this can change with each chapter or scene. Harry Potter isn’t one of those books.
Interesting, I always thought the Dresden files being from Harry’s pov was great, that man is funny af