Professor Bainbridge bemoans George R.R. Martin's delay in finishing his latest overwrought crapfest. Normally, I don't criticize the literary tastes of people both smarter and more respected than me, but this, coupled with the Instantaneous One's admission that he enjoys the alt history of Harry Turtledove makes me seriously concerned about the legal scholars whose work I read regularly. I'll just have to compartmentalize my feelings about their literary taste whilst I admire their legal and political acumen.

Martin peaked when he was editing Wild Cards. I'll admit that when A Game of Thrones came out I was obscenely delighted, but upon reading it and its sequel I've never been more disappointed in an author since I read Turtledove's Worldwar series, with its bipedal, spacefaring lizards. Easily the two greatest disappointments of my adult life of reading.

People who know my literary habits know that I am a completist, and so I must confess this horrible fact: I quit reading Martin's Song of Fire and Ice after A Storm of Swords, and Turtledove's anything following the original Worldwar series.

Martin used to be a sort of American Michael Moorcock, absent whimsy. He was fantastic. His sci-fi was serious, but not seriously hard. His fantasy was dark and wise. This latest Robert Jordan-esque, fatiguing exercise in grim sadism is little more than David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series set in a fantasy world.

As for Turtledove, the editing of his Worldwar series was so poor as to make it unreadable. And still I slogged through it, like the fool I am. Luckily, I had checked those books out of the library, and so don't have to worry about having wasted both money and time on reading them.