swingbeat 2/26: The Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin

Hey all, I found a copy of the one solo GRRM book that I haven't read yet, The Armageddon Rag. This book was published in 1983 and was one of his first books. In summary, I felt that this was one of his weaker offerings. It was actually kind of disappointing. But it was written 20 years ago for a different generation.

Here's the story in a nutshell (takes place in the early 1980's) - a journalist-turned-author, Sandy Blair, somehow finds himself in the revival of a 1970's band called the Nazgul. The Nazgul's lead singer was shot in the middle of a Woodstock-like music concert while on stage, and ever since then, "the music died". Apparently all the hippies/freedom lovers ended up getting sucked into mainstream America, corporations, etc etc etc.

There's a bigwig, Edan Morse, who wants to bring the Nazgul back together in order to bring back the music because "there is power in the music." Then it gets a little weird without much explanation. Somehow they got a lead singer who could channel the spirit of the original lead singer of the Nazgul, and people start having visions of what could happen when the music comes back, and some implications of evil forces coming to fight the good... but this is all kind of glossed over.

I can't say I'd really recommend this book. Maybe if you were a hippie in the 70's, you'd get some nostalgia from reading this, but for people of our generation, there's just too much of a delta in experiences for us to really get into it. That's my opinion :).

It won't keep me from reading his other books though... I looked through his bibliography and noticed that I've read two other earlier books by him:
Windhaven (reviewed on this site) - 1981
Fevre Dream (reviewed on this site) - 1982

My review of Windhaven wasn't really that good. I basically blamed its quality on his coauthor, but maybe he was just starting out and didn't have the mastery of English prose that he has now. :)

Fevre Dream, written one year afterwards, was very good! I'd recommend that one over this one.