Even George RR Martin can't handle the amount of death in 2016
"Please, let this wretched year come to an end," the Game of Thrones author writes following the death of Carrie Fisher and author Richard Adams
When Game of Thrones author George RR Martin says there has been too much death in 2016, you listen.
The man responsible for the series of books where keeping up with the death count is a full time job says he wants "this wretched year to come to an end" following the deaths of actress Carrie Fisher and Watership Down author Richard Adams.
Writing on his blog, George RR Martin paid tribute to both Fisher and Adams, beginning, "Death, death, and more death... this year just keeps getting worse and worse."
The author wrote that Fisher "was way too young. A bright, beautiful, talented actress, and a strong, witty, outspoken woman," adding, "Princess Leia will live as long as Star Wars does... probably forever..."
As for author Richard Adams, Martin called him one of the world's great fantasists.
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"Gardner Dozois ranks Watership Down as one of the three great fantasy novels of the 20th century, right up there with Lord of the Rings and The Once and Future King, and I agree," he wrote. "A truly amazing book... and one that somehow always seems to get forgotten when fans discuss the great fantasies. Maybe because of the talking rabbits? No idea...
"Adams was a wonderful writer. Yes, Watership Down was his masterpiece, but it was by no means his only great book. He wrote two terrific epic fantasies with human characters, Shardik and Maia, both of which I think are criminally underrated, as well as an erotic ghost story, The Girl on a Swing. His other "animal book," The Plague Dogs, also has some wonderful sections... though it is such a dark, depressing, angry, gut-punch of a novel that I can't say I 'enjoyed' it," Martin added.
"Adams was not 'one of us,' in the sense that he was never a convention-goer or part of our genre fantasy community, which may be why he was never honored with a life achievement award by the World Fantasy Convention. Nonetheless, he deserved one. I've been suggesting him for that honor for at least twenty years... in part because I wanted to meet him. Now I never will. That's sad (though not as sad as Plague Dogs)."
2016 has almost come to a close, but this chapter has not been a happy one for the author of A Song of Ice and Fire.
"A wonderful actress, a great writer. The world is poorer tonight," he ended. "Please, let this wretched year come to an end."
