Book Details
| Title: |
|
Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon |
| Author: |
|
James Hibberd |
| Times Read: |
|
1 |
| Last Read: |
|
03.11.21 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
Notes History
| Date Read |
Note |
| 03.11.21 | An official oral history of Game of Thrones. Perhaps my expectations of this were too high coming off the Dazed and Confused book, but what I wanted was a detail-oriented retrospective of the show as told by the people who made it now that it's all said and done and they have a little perspective to look back. What I got was more or less a consolidation of all the behind-the-scenes vignettes that HBO published as the show went on. There were a few nice tidbits here and there but mostly it was material already familiar to a fan like myself. It might serve a purpose as being a single point of knowledge but even at 440 pages it felt like it skipped over quite a lot. There was also quite a bit of author text bridging gaps that grew more active as it neared the end of the show. Maybe it's just my perspective but it felt to me like the book gets pretty defensive about the decision to end the show and the last two seasons. Any friction or critical response is noted but also quickly defended. This is where I feel like maybe if the book wasn't so "official" we may have gotten more candid responses from people... but then again maybe without HBO's blessing not as many people would've gone on the record. We do get to hear the writers' reasoning behind the choices that they made, but the author never pushes or questions them to go deeper so it all feels pretty canned. At least the severe kickback by fans is mentioned and not white-walled completely. So, like I said, maybe it's unfair to expect the same level of candor as I got from the Dazed book here, and even 440 pages is not enough to exhaustively cover a 70-hour show... but I still hoped for more. You figure the people interested enough to sit down and read the book would be the type to welcome a deeper dive, but on the other hand... when you're dealing with an oral history like this you're pretty bound by what your interview subjects say. Oh well. |
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