A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

[There is a thorough review for ASOIAF here on amazon which outlines many significant points, but I thought I'd put out a review in my own words, simply because I care so much about this series.]

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin consists of:

1. A Game of Thrones (to be aired as the HBO series Game of Thrones on April 17, 2011)
2. A Clash of Kings
3. A Storm of Swords
4. A Feast for Crows
5. A Dance with Dragons (via Martin's "Not a Blog" LiveJournal, he has 3 POV chapters left to finish at the time of this writing.)
6. The Winds of Winter (forthcoming)
7. A Dream of Spring (forthcoming)

What's all the fuss?

This series is the progenitor of a new wave of literature which combines elements of epic fantasy, dark fantasy, and intellectual literary fiction. The idea was to create a true world (in all its color, grit, mystery, politics, realism and so on) through cultured prose, and yet still have all the elements of escapist fantasy; the idea was to create real people with real drama, and insert them into a fantastic reality; the idea was to reinvent the fantasy genre from cliché hack-and-slash/sword-and-sorcery to something original, passionate, and enthralling.

Martin succeeded in these goals, and inspired others to follow in a similar vein: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Kingkiller Chronicles, The Prince of Nothing, The Gentleman Bastard, The First Law, etc.

Why so good?

1. Exceptional writing: Martin is a literary master. His prose doesn't just "work," it really inspires. His vocabulary is learned yet approachable. The text inserts me directly into this medieval kingdom. Imagery runs rampant with details galore. Just a very well written story.

2. Believable characters: Grey characters! Real, believable characters with unique dialogue, motivations, and reactions populate this entire series. Martin develops interesting personalities with his talent for voice. These characters come alive within just a few pages of reading their chapters. People change! What a concept!

3. Risk: This is a world of blades and steel, arrows and leather. People die in war. This is a story of politics, intrigue, and betrayal. People are assassinated. Main characters may serve as a central window into the chief plotline, but that certainly doesn't mean that they are safe from harm. Pain and death MEAN something, and Martin loves to make us feel.

4. History: Martin has spent years living in this world, and the history is so rich that the immersion is instant. It's almost disorienting. The details that he has planned out and the meticulousness of the layers within the story are so natural that you cannot help but be in awe.

5. Tactful use of fantasy elements: No "magic missile" spells or "jelly-legs" jinxes here. There are strong fantasy elements, but they are used in tactful, and oftentimes subtle, ways. The supernatural is seen as superstition by most of the characters in the story, and so when something akin to "magic" does show up, it is unique and potent.

6. Details matter: Watch the description of a character, even if you don't know the character's name; they'll show up later. Actually think about what people say; you may be able to find out the answer to a question far before the characters do. Dreams and prophecies may be vague, but they are actually vital! Martin has also acknowledged his use of the unreliable narrator (in fact, he has to use it, in order to make the POV chapters believable); find the inconsistencies between what happens and what characters think, and see the story from a different perspective!

7. Engaging plot: All three main plotlines are exotic and entertaining: the fight for power over Westeros' throne, the exile of the last Targaryen queen, and the threat of the Others in the north. Filled with cliffhangers chapter after chapter, mysteries that need solving, epic moments of badassery, horrible moments of dread, cool one-liners and philosophical quotes, raunchy sex, and violent death, the story is brimming with awesome.

Why doesn't everyone like this series, then?

Virtually every one- or two-star review I have seen (amazon, goodreads, etc.) can be boiled down to one of three categories:

1. "The Fantasy Lover" (a.k.a. "Sex is Nasty" Syndrome) a. "Ew, it's so gross and disgusting and tragic and there's so much sex and violence and swearing! Where is my damsel being rescued by the handsome, heroic prince? Why do people die? I felt like washing in industrial cleanser' to get this filth away from me! Fantasy should only be about romantic ideals and have nothing to do with reality... and the good guys should always win!" b. To you, I say, stop being such a prude. The writing is excellent and appropriate to its content, and the idea is to explore the connection between fantasy and reality. Fantasy does not have an "end purpose" in mind, and you are simply being obstinate about originality and progress. People are not black and white and neither is life; people die, and people are maimed, and people have sex, and people go to the bathroom, and people are raped, and sometimes, the bad guys' win; however, I think escapist fantasy may be even MORE engaging when combined with those aspects of reality... and that is an opinion enjoyed by millions of people.

2. "The Whiner" (a.k.a. "The Author is My Bitch" Syndrome) a. "It's been five years since the last book, and Martin is fat and old, and he has his fingers in so many pies, and he doesn't care about the series anymore, and he's just trying to milk it, and why can't he finish it already, and I could have the next book written by now, and and and and and...." b. To you, I say, no, the author is not your slave. Your buying his books did not indenture him into servitude, nor did it oblige a contract. He writes when he writes, and you read when he's done. Complaining about it [timing, his other projects, etc.] makes you look pathetic, silly, and a tad bit unstable. It's like trying to intimidate a world-renowned TV chef to finish his/her magnum opus because you just want lunch on your TV tray, damnit! How full of yourself do you have to be? c. Also, the books do not deserve a one star rating simply because they aren't coming out as fast as you want.

3. "The Pragmatist" (a.k.a. "But Reading Takes So Much Time!" Syndrome) a. "The first book is 800 pages, and they just get longer from there; there's no end in sight for the series and no single book tells a full story; there's too much exposition with too much `backstory'; the plot is so slow!" b. To you, I say... well, this might actually be a valid concern for some people. The story IS huge... but in case you didn't see the genre description, it is EPIC fantasy, and Martin has himself described it as having a "cast of thousands." The advantages of longer books are that characters can develop into fully fleshed out beings and that a fictional world can become, in some part, real. It's also a huge story in terms of scope - the synopsis states it simply enough: "...where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime...."

Minor Spoilers on Individual Books:

A Game of Thrones A brilliant first book, this begins each of the three main plots. For the first plot, the main house we deal with here is the Starks, the house "in charge" of the North. For the second plot, we are introduced to the naiveté of Daenerys (Duh-NAIR-iss) and for the third, we get to see the shabby condition of the Night's Watch. Though each plot develops independently, it is easy to see how they interconnect. The characters really drive this piece, and it is a true trip for anyone, new or old, to the genre. A 5 star book if there ever was one.

Obliviously, I not only recommend this specific book, but the entire series. All the best, and happy reading!

If you're going to consider reading `The Song of Ice and Fire' series, then be prepared for an investment. These books aren't for casual readers, but rather slower and more methodical ones. Requiring a great deal of your time, attention to detail, and the memorization of various characters' political and social associations. The amount of content the book contains is equal to the level of commitment you are willing to give. This may sound intimidating to some people, but Games of Thrones is able to deliver a very deep story targeting a mature audience because of this, though this also means the book's level of comprehension and adult content may become a deal-breaker to some people. Persevere and you'll enjoy one of the best fantasy epics in quite some time.

As I previously said, the narrative of A Game of Thrones can be quite cumbersome to comprehend at the very beginning, and the faint synopsis doesn't exactly paint a very big picture of what's to come. So I've decided to provide a brief synopsis of my own.

With the murder of King Robert Baratheon's Hand Jon Aryn', his Majesty himself has requested that his old friend Eddard Stark, head of House Stark take up the role at his side in King's Landing to help him properly govern the realm. Of course taking up this honorable task would mean Eddard, Ned' must leave the sanctity of Winterfell and his family. But he soon realizes that treachery and deception have consumed the nobility, no one can be trusted, everyone is trying to seize power by any means necessary; particularly the cunning Lannister family. The book doesn't just follow the character Ned, but rather a large collection of personas, some intertwine with the central story arc involving Ned, others involve their own. Daenerys Targaryen, one of the last of the feared House Targaryen, is forced into a marriage with a savage Dothraki warlord in order to gain in army for the means of reconquering her rightful throne. The last major story arc involves Ned's bastard son Jon Snow' and his indoctrination in the enigmatic Night's Watch', where desertion is punishable by death.

While the plot of A Game of Thrones is truly an epic piece of fiction-writing, it would be nothing if the characters weren't believable. George R. R. Martin has established himself as a very strong character-driven author, one who focuses on the problems of these people and how they affect them. While there are characters which are not affiliated with Eddard Stark, the majority of the major characters can be allocated into the two major noble families: the Starks and the Lannisters. The Starks characterize honor, duty, diligence, and integrity, making them the primary protagonists. They're opposed by the ambitiously materialistic Lannister family, who seem like Martin's equivalent of the Borgia's. Though if there's a weakness in the characterization department, it would be that not enough is done with characterizing the Lannister family. The Stark family makes up the bulk of the story's protagonists, but they aren't exactly perfect. They can be rude, selfish, jealous, and even bratty at times, they're delightfully flawed characters. With the exception of the great character `Tyrion Lannister', we're given very little insight into the life of the family aside from their obvious immoral tendencies. The Lannisters, while morally vague, come off feeling much less defined. I really wish more could have been done with them when compared to the excellently characterized Stark family.

In a seemingly endless miasma of betrayal and deceit, the only beacon of hope comes in the form of family. The Starks, particularly the Stark children felt like the real heart of the book for me. Their precious innocence helps invest the reader in the story even further, especially since they're among the victims in this malicious game that the adults are playing. It only reinforces the insurmountable stakes and that nobody is truly safe or completely innocent.

Even the world itself feels like a character that helps ground the reader in the author's fiction. Martin's Seven Kingdoms' are vividly brought to life with intricate detail that makes it really pop off the pages. Its geography, political structure, and the dominant noble houses are all elaborated upon in surreal detail that really gives the reader a feeling of place. Less reliance on more fantastical elements like elves and dwarves gives Martin's world a pinch of reality that most authors tend to avoid. With the exception of the White Walkers' and the extinct dragons, all mystical aspects are kept at an all-time low, favoring words and steel over mysticism and spells. The outcome is a fantasy world that surprisingly, comes off as genuinely plausible. The Seven Kingdoms feels like a realm that very much could have existed. It's an interesting divergence from the typical high fantasy settings.

There's going to be the inevitable comparison between Martin's work and the legacy left behind by Tolkien as the great forefather of fantasy writing. The notion of comparing the two is entirely misguided, simply because Martin's writing is completely different from Tolkien's in nearly every angle. Tolkien emphasized the ongoing struggle between good and evil, the thrill of high adventure in a fantastical world, and the triumph of great heroes over terrible villains who would do the world harm. Martin on the other hand is much less black and white with his delivery. There are obvious characters you can label as `dishonorable', while others stand atop a pedestal as paragons of altruism. But are these characters truly evil for trying to secure the benefit of their family and future generations to come? And are these characters considered good if they're ensuring the stability of the realm by dishonest methods? Martin chose to forgo typical fantasy conventions of magic and obvious morality in the favor of characters who feel genuinely believable in all the most despicable ways. They're not the great heroes Tolkien illustrated; they're morally ambiguous human beings. That's the defining characteristic which separates these two giants of fantasy, the selfless heroes and the morally grey humans. Comparing these two juggernauts is completely irrelevant, for Martin isn't trying to replicate Tolkien but rather make his own beast.

Yet, I never like to jump on a bandwagon and proclaim with the rest of the world that a novel is absolutely perfect. Of course these critiques are personal ones and admittedly border on flat-out nitpicking. The first is the absolutely insane overabundance of minor characters. I'm not referring to the central characters that the various chapters shift between; they're all perfectly characterized and fascinating. I'm referring to the endless onslaught of characters that overcrowd the book, but serve little importance in the greater scheme of things. Every story arc is jam-packed with so many characters that range from semi-important to useless. I usually wouldn't mention this, but with a book of this magnitude it really became an issue with me, though it may not for other people. The second issue is the lack of a proper climax to the story. I'm all for having an intriguing plot over a mindless slog of action scenes, but with a book of this size, it would have been nice to have it end with a bang. It's little things like these that stand out when the rest of the book is just so good.

When Hollywood absolutely bastardized the final Harry Potter novel by splitting it into two movies in order to fill their glutinous craving for money; I became somewhat of a skeptic to segmenting visual adaptations of popular literature. Creating a television show made me raise an eyebrow, "instead of making a movie they're going to milk it with a whole season of episodes" I thought. After reading A Game of Thrones, I realized that making a television show out of the book isn't just a good idea, it's absolutely mandatory. This book and its sequels have so much content in them that a movie would never do the plot and its various characters justice. It's the perfect source material for an epic fantasy television series, which is great considering we don't exactly have many of those.

A Game of Thrones is the start of something special. The beginning chapter of an epic tale that needs to be read by everyone of age who can truly appreciate its complexity. Read the book first before you watch the show, only then can you truly appreciate George R. R. Martin's natural talent for weaving such incredible stories.

I am writing this review as an individual who watched Game of Thrones on HBO before picking up the book series, so with that in mind you may or may not find my review helpful/useful. I will also try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible.

As a fan of the tv series, I came into this book knowing what to expect; I was told that Season 1 and Book 1 are very similar, and that is most certainly true. But do you know what? I still loved the book. I’ll do list format for the book’s good and bad points (in my opinion and in no particular order) to make this a little more organized.

-- GOODS:

DIALOGUE/WRITING - George RR Martin has a way with words. His descriptions of the various locations and lands and kingdoms of Westeros, from Winterfell to King’s Landing to Vaes Dothrak, have flawless flow. I love descriptive writing, and there is always a fine line between not describing something enough to give the reader a good picture and going overboard to the point where it gets boring to read through paragraphs of superfluous text. This is especially true in the fantasy genre, where the lands and people and words and customs are all…well, fantastical. This book finds that balance, with evocative, beautiful language that puts you right in that setting and right in the thick of the action. Hell, the descriptions of food always made me hungry even if they were serving something that I would never actually eat! As for the dialogue, if you are a fan of the show’s dialogue, or clever dialogue in general, you will enjoy this book. There are a good number of memorable and poignant quotes throughout the book, my favorite being “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” an apt summary for sure. Bottom line, when you pick up this book, be prepared to engross yourself and be swept away to a foreign land.

VOICES/POINTS OF VIEW - Notable about this book, and all the books in the series, is that it is constantly switching from various characters points of view (POVs, as I’ll refer to them from now on). And by various, I mean roughly 7-8 characters. As difficult as this is to pull off, Martin does a great job. It’s an effective way to see what is going on in multiple locations at roughly the same time while keeping us invested. I applaud his decision to present us the information this way as it gives us a greater connection with the characters and more insight into various situations as we see how they are impacting the character that we are viewing it through. Not to mention, Martin manages to keep each of the individual POVs unique enough that you don’t need to flip back to see who’s narrating. Each character has distinct personality traits and ways of thinking/speaking that distinguish them from the others. Sansa is lady-like, a romantic and naive. Arya is fiery, resourceful and a fighter. Tyrion is shrewd, astute and full of quick-witted jibes. And so on and so forth. It is also worth noting that each character, even if a few of them are in the same place at the same time, sees different things and different people and analyzes situations in different ways, so each chapter gives you new information in some way or another. It’s very cleverly done and just as frustrating when you realize “UGH this character doesn’t know what was revealed to me, the reader, in THIS CHARACTER’S chapter” which is a great way of keeping you hooked.

CHARACTERS: HEROES VS VILLAINS - Getting inside the characters heads, you start to understand their motives and the ways that they think. So you get to decide for yourself what motives are justified and who you believe in or who you’re rooting for. But then again, just because one character appears to be the “hero” of the story, doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily get a happy ending. If you’re looking for a feel-good story about about good conquering evil, this probably isn’t for you. If you’re looking for a story with deep, cunning characters who you can’t always trust, who are shades of grey versus black and white, then you’ll find this book a compelling read.

DEPTH - Martin has done his homework and has developed rich histories for each of the characters and their houses. Hell, the Appendix of the book has small blurbs about each house, its history, its sigil, its words/slogan and the relevant members of the house. It’s always available for you to flip back and read if you find yourself confused, which can happen. Having watched the tv series, I was less confused about the various Houses and characters coming into the book, which helped a lot. Yet I still found myself learning new information from the Appendix. It’s a great tool and shows the author’s dedication to his characters and their backgrounds. I was impressed by how richly developed everything was, even though this is only the first book in the series.

NO TEENAGE DIARY DESCRIPTIONS ABOUT SEX - This book has sex in it. Quite a bit, too. I can see how this would be off-putting to some readers. Personally, I don’t mind it much. What I appreciated was that the descriptions of sex weren’t long, drawn out, excessively pornographic or mushy-gushy. I appreciated not having to wade through pages upon pages of “his fingers brushed against my fingers and my heart fluttered, he looked at me and I admired his beautiful eyelashes” or other mushy teenage romance dialogues that frankly bore the poop out of me. On the other hand, you’re not reading through pages and pages of detailed erotica either. It’s written very matter-of-factly, very bluntly and to-the-point and only went into a bit more description when it was warranted. Again, I imagine this isn’t for everyone, so you may consider this a negative. The way it was presented throughout the book, however, I felt warranted a checkmark in the “Good” category.

FEMALE CHARACTERS - Some of the best depictions of female characters I have read. I was very impressed. The female characters are at all ends of the spectrum in this book, from feminine to tough to conniving. In a book where you’d assume the male characters take front and center, the female characters are just as fascinating, if not moreso in some cases.

X-RAY - I have the Kindle version of this book. The X-Ray features really helps you keep track of the book’s many characters and remind you who someone is if you forget, which is SUPER helpful. I used the features many times throughout the book and it definitely aided my understanding and allowed me to further appreciate the depth of the characters and the story.

-- BADS:

MULTIPLE POVs SLOW DOWN THE ACTION - The constant cutting back and forth between different characters and settings, while well done, also has the side effect of slowing down some of the action. You end a chapter on a cliffhanger as the one character’s POV learns something horrifying or experiences something shocking. But then the next chapter jumps to a character who is in a completely different setting and you have to wait until you get to a chapter of a character who is in place where the cliffhanger first happened. It slows down the action a bit, which can get a little frustrating. If it really bothers you to read a cliffhanger and then wait a few chapters to see a reaction or resolution to that cliffhanger, then this book might frustrate you more than entertain you. Not to mention, if you find one character’s voice/writing style/actions particularly boring, you might find it tiresome to have to wade through those chapters to get to the “good stuff.” I know I personally had that problem in a few instances.

TYPOS - I have the Kindle version of this book, and it had quite a number of typos. Not on every page or anything, but more than I would have liked. A few of them sort of interrupted the flow of the story while I was reading, but for the most part they aren’t a huge deal. Just a little annoying.

LENGTH - Not gonna lie, flipping through the Table of Contents and realizing there are 72 chapters was a little daunting. And if you have a really busy schedule, you might find the length a little scary too. I’m very glad I stuck it out and plowed through, though!

-- Overall, I’m a happy camper and am going to pick up the second book in the series ASAP!