Dying of the Light

Too many isolated thoughts on this one and no desire to connect them into something coherent. It's bullet time, baby!

• This is the first book I've posted since The Beautiful and Damned in late April. Last year, I went from late April to late July without posting a single video game. This year, I've accomplished the same feat with books. Needless to say, I'm more embarrassed this time around.
• Yeah, that's right. This is a book by George R. R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones and all of its sequels. But it's a very different book than any of those are, clocking in at just 240 pages and easily and aptly called "science fiction" rather than "high fantasy" or anything like that. The book was Martin's first, published in 1977 when he was just 29 years old. Wow!
• I really liked this story. I didn't love it, and the ending left something to be desired, but I was impressed and awed by the premise, the consistency of tone and mood, the depth of the four or five main characters, and most of all the imaginative and descriptive world-building done by Martin. Solid characters, dark tones, and vastly imagined worlds are all part of what makes Martin's magnum opus series so great, so I really wasn't surprised to find any of these elements all the way back in Martin's earliest work.
• The story takes place on a rogue planet called Warlorn, drifting slowly away from its multiple suns and toward empty blackness and certain impending doom. The planet thus serves as both a last frontier of sorts, at the edge of the inhabitable galaxy, and also a symbol of human decadence, as all the time mankind has put into terraforming and building up the planet is ultimately going to waste. Damn, the guy who would later bring us the concept of years-long winters sure knew how to set a dark tone right away.
• The main race left on the planet, the Kalavar, are an interesting war-oriented race of people with unique marriage concepts (two guys, one girl) and a complicated honor system comprised of duels and slavery. The main character arrives on Warlorn to rescue his former flame from one of these two-dude marriages to semi-abusive husbands, but, of course, our main guy slowly comes to embrace certain aspects of the at-first-backward Kalavar culture. In this regard the story had a bit too much in common with Avatar, and I hated myself for realizing that, even though the book predates that movie by some 32 years.
• Unfortunately, the main plot - our hero rescuing his lady - doesn't really end up going anywhere. That's not to say that he does or doesn't rescue her, nor that there are or aren't complicated twists involved, but mainly just that the girl herself is a total MacGuffin of a character. She's alright, and not just a flimsy damsel in distress, but she's painted in broad strokes, as is the main character's past relationship with her. The central aspect of the story, then, was easily the weakest thread. Having said that, this was well worth the read and it entertained me thoroughly. In my mind, a good science fiction story is one that can drop you into the middle of a theoretically plausible place somewhere in some made up corner of the galaxy and, in doing so, force you to think critically about aspects of your own society. This book accomplishes that and then some.
• I'll consider more non-Game of Thrones George R. R. Martin books in the future, but here's hoping the next one I read - and soon - is The Winds of Winter.