A thousand pages of hobbits hasn't been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough.
If you've ever looked at a map of the European Union, you'll notice an awkward blob in the middle which doesn't belong to it and that blob is Switzerland.
The play is an odd sort of tragedy, lacking either the abrupt brutality or all-consuming romance that characterize Shakespeare's other work in the genre.
He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.
So resolutely, she let him drop down into her mind to some uncomfortable oubliette, from whence he threatened, with feeble insistence, to pop up at any moment, like a strange question or a sudden shame.
What method of distillation will yield us invariably the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume?
And Stannis laughed. A sudden gust, rough and full of scorn. " I told you, Melisandre, " he said to the red woman, " my Onion Knight tells me the truth" .