REVIEW: “A Game of Thrones”
I will be the first to admit I’m a book snob. If a book doesn’t pull me into the story within the first page and a half or so, then I generally won’t read it.
So it goes without saying that I love books that begin with a pick-up line. I’m talking classic beginnings, like “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.”
It just doesn’t get better than that. For all of you who don’t know, that’s from Pride and Prejudice.
I am such a fan of first lines that when I picked up George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones,” the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, I was not sure if I’d like it.
The prologue begins, “‘We should start back,’ Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. ‘The wildlings are dead.'”
Fairly lackluster. However, the first few pages fill out the boring beginning with the promise of a tale of harsh times, cold times.
I was very lucky to stumble upon the series. I would have picked it up eventually, but I was sitting in a class this past spring semester when a young man in my class and I somehow began talking about fantasy books. He told me about the series and, after discussing books, and then a couple weeks later after he decided he didn’t want to read the books, he gave me the first four.
A Game of Thrones is written from a variety of people’s points of view and can, at times, be difficult to follow because of that. The book begins in a land of summers which last decades, and winters that last even longer.
The book series has become a hit on HBO, and seems – from the two episodes I’ve watched – to follow along. However, the book begins slowly.
Because the story is told from different points of view, the character development sometimes seems sporadic. It took me about a month to get page 500. In a normal book, it would take me three days or so to get that far.
The characters are rather complex, and can be divided into a couple groups – good guys, bad guys and people somewhere in the gray area.
The story is centered around the Starks, a family who have moved from having control of the north to being in critical danger in the south. Ned is the patriarch and helped the current king overthrow the former monarchy. He is asked to be the right-hand of the King, and to keep everyone honest.
This comes right at the time when his wife, Catelyn, is written by her sister who tells her the former right-hand of the King was murdered by the
Queen.
Another family in the story are the Lannisters, who are the most powerful family in the realm, even though the King is from another family. Cersei Lannister is the queen, who is sleeping with her handsome brother, Jamie. Tyrion is the dwarf brother who is a Lannister, although his whole family pretty much hates him for being “deformed.”
The Baratheons include the King, who has grown fat and hardly moveable since he became king, after drinking and sleeping around. His brothers are Stannis and Renly.
Then there are the last two descendants of the former monarchy – the Targaryen house.
This story, like all truly incredible fantasy books, combines a twining and complicated plot with strong character development and flips and turns.
For example, Tyrion Lannister is my favorite character in the series. He is a Lannister, so you’re supposed to hate him because his sister is conniving and cruel and her brother is a bloodthirsty jerk. Tyrion, while technically a bad guy, won me over with his sarcasm and his attempts to be a good man.
Ned Stark’s oldest daughter, Sansa, annoyed me so much. She seems so hoity-toity. She is a tattletale, concerned only with her appearance and finding a husband. Oh, the many parallels that can be drawn to the Sansas in my own life.
It’s little things like the writing of his characters that made me fall in love with this book. The pace it moved for the first 500 pages or so was killer, and I had to force myself to read. But once the character development really worked itself out, I was enthralled. I read the last 300 pages in two days. Seriously.
The other amazing part of this book is the way Martin makes his story come alive and infect his reader. The story truly comes alive – and came into my dreams. I read the second book in two and a half weeks, and it was 900 plus pages.
Martin has me enthralled in his book series, and while I made it through about two and a half books, I can no longer allow myself to read because I know with such writing as his, I will forget my homework and jobs and not put the books down. So needless to say, I can’t wait until Christmas break when I’ve graduated and can read each night until well into the morning.
Martin has published five books in the series and is working on the 6th. I can’t wait. Martin is a writer who is quickly working his way up to my elite list of favorite authors – of which in the past 17 years of my reading life, has had a total of three writers on it.
Warning: This book, like most adult fantasy books, contains sex and some other adult themes.
– April Ashland is a senior in interdisciplinary studies who hopes to be able to find a job when she graduates. She spends her time reading, playing cards and laughing. Send comments to april.ashland@aggiemail.usu.edu or via Twitter: @AprilAsh2012