A Game of Thrones 289
| A Game of Thrones (A Song of Fire and Ice #1) | |
| author | R. R. Martin |
| pages | 807 |
| publisher | Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group |
| rating | Very Good |
| reviewer | John Hummel |
| ISBN | 0553573403 |
| summary | A gritty, dirty, disturbing fantasy tale of the court intrigues in the backdrop of an upcoming war. |
But Martin does it by focusing not on one main character, but on a whole slew of them, each chapter a view from their perspective as events rage around them. Mainly around the Stark family, who's patriarch, Eddard Stark, is the Lord of Winterfell, a country to the far north who's job it is to keep up the Wall - think "Great Wall of China", only make it out of ice and stone. The Starks put a lot of stock in honor and duty, concept that must serve them well to survive a world where summers can last for years - and the winters even longer. Eddard has known war and battle once in his lifetime, when he and his best friend Robert lead an army to overthrow the Mad King almost a generation ago. Now, with his 5 children and 1 bastard child, he looks forward to a life ruling his castle in peace and training the next generation to be Starks.
Or he would, but when Robert comes calling asking Eddard to become the "Hand of the King", Eddard and his family are put into a living chess match, where loyalties shift like chameleon color, and sometimes, the pieces are lost forever. And with all the court intrigues, something dark, magical, and deadly hovers in the background, like an avalanche about to fall without warning.
What makes Martin's writing so compelling is his ability to tie us into a fictional world as fully realized as our own. It's a gritty and disturbing world, where royal families can marry brother to sister to keep bloodlines pure, Mongolian horde empires have their own brand of laws and morals, and a joust is as celebrated as a professional wrestling match - and far more dangerous. He does have a tendency to go overboard in describing the littlest detail of what armor one person is wearing and how it gleams in the sun with cloaks as soft or supple as sin (I think he used that phrase around 3 times in the book, and it was old the 2nd time), but its also those little attention to details that makes the world breath.
But more than his descriptions of the places and events are his writings about people. As I mentioned, each chapter is written from the point of view of a different character, so you get the perspective of Arya, the tomboy princess on moment, the next the view of Tyrion the Imp, dwarf (physically, not Ghimli) who's royal family opposes the Starks and reaches for the crown. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, things you love them for and things you hate them for. And as they interact with each other, you can see all the chess pieces on the board moving, wheels within wheels spinning as Martin brings you closer into the story, making you feel a connection with each of them - even the ones you are certain are less than moral or good. He also has no compunction about killing off main characters, which means you can't trust that the "Good Guys" will make off all right in the end.
It's a book about the love of family, how it can be twisted into something terrible and ugly, or used as a tie that binds together. It's a story about the price of honor, duty and loyalty, and what those words actually mean. It's a great book, and I'm eagerly looking forward to trying out the rest of the books in this series to see if they keep up the excellent quality of this one.
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Waiting for the next book sucks.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent Book (Score:2, Insightful)
Tragedy and unfairness make realistic (Score:3, Insightful)
I was impressed with the author's courage to lead the reader into the life of a main character, cause the reader to empathise with and respect the character, and then unmercilessly have the character killed, unfairly and unjustly.
This is much more believable and realistic than the happy-happy tripe spoon fed by most authors: "The Rambo Syndrome" where a formulaic plot consists of
1. no bad guys can hit anything they shoot at
2. no good guys die
3. the bad guy is 100% evil
4. the good guy is about 98.44% pure
5. truth and love win EVERYTHING at the end
For these types of stories, you don't even have to read the whole book, or watch the whole movie. You know that if you flip to the last few chapters, the bad guy will be vanquished and the good guys will give each other hugs and high-fives.
I think that Martin's series is closer to some of the good old stuff like For Whom the Bell Tolls [classicnote.com] or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [filmsite.org].
Re:speak english! (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, this is a good comment, but...
Spelling errors ("sentance"), dependent clauses mingling with independent clauses, redundant direct objects in your second to last sentence...
(Sorry, I couldn't resist. Correct not, lest ye yourself be corrected.)
(I know, I know. "You're new here, right?")
Streaks of brilliance drowned in tedium. (Score:4, Insightful)
The frustrating thing about this book is that it contains the seeds of a great novel. Unfortunately, that storyline is hitched to too many other storylines that simply don't measure up. As a result, I found myself deeply regretting ever having started. I wanted to find out what happened to the two or three characters I actually cared about, but that meant wading through hundreds of pages of other subplots, most of which I frankly didn't want to read.
The best part of the book by far is the story of Jon Snow, bastard of King Eddard Stark, who is sent to "take the black" and join the garrison manning the titanic Wall that protects the north of the kingdom from attack from Beyond. There he learns about responsibility and sets to work improving the neglected defenses. And beyond the wall, some force is stirring...
It's a great story, and I wanted more of it. But by the end of the 800 pages of this book, that story is still just getting started, because most of the book is spent elsewhere. Which is where we get into trouble.
Basically, there are a lot of other plots going on, and most of them just did't measure up for me. Some of the characters, like Sansa the cookie-cutter princess, are simply shallow and insipid. The others are either objectionably passive (Eddard and Daenerys), mindlessly reactionary (Catelyn), or inherently unsympathetic (Tyrion Lannister). Bran and Arya might turn out to be likeable, but their stories haven't even gotten started by the end of the book. And yet, each of these characters is given their own series of chapters. The end result is too many chapters, and a book that is bogged down in the tedious lives of characters I didn't care about.
It also bothers me that in 800-odd pages Martin wasn't able to tell a complete story, or even get some of the plots fully started. Tolkien told the entire Lord of the Rings in about 900 pages, and LotR isn't exactly thin on plot or background. It also bothered me that when we got to the big battle at the end of the book, most of it happened off screen. Martin devoted more space in his book to people talking in bars! I felt cheated.
The pluses: Martin's writing does a good job of describing what is going on and establishing a sense of medieval atmosphere, and the world he builds in the novel was genuinely interesting to me. I still think the tale of Jon Snow would have made a brilliant standalone novel. On a paragraph by paragraph level, the writing is solid.
This book frustrated me immensely. It was good enough in parts that I didn't want to throw it against the wall, but most of the time it was like eating cardboard. I wouldn't read the rest of this series if I got it for free.
However, people who only want a book to immerse them for x number of pages should be satisfied with it, especially with three more equally overstuffed volumes already out in the series. Given the number of positive reviews for the book, your mileage may definitely vary.
Jon Acheson
Re:I stopped after Book 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly! While it's true that the Starks are obsessed with honor, it's as much a weakness for them as it is a strength. And a number of the characters who initially come across as "evil" (if only by association to characters who clearly are evil) actually turn out to be complex and even sympathetic characters (more so in the later books).
One of the best features of his stories is the fact that the line between the good guys and the bad guys is never very clear, and gets murkier and more complex as the story unfolds.
Re:Not for the more *less* experienced reader (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I did not find this to be true at all. I also found that he foreshadows everything that is going to happen--he is just not always obvious or heavy-handed with how he brings it to come.
The story tastes *real*: characters die, the line between good and evil is blurred, and there is an appropriate mix of what you can predict absolutely and what was simply led up to without ceremony.
He doesn't give us any information we wouldn't know from the points of view of each of the characters, nor does he give us everything that is going to happen in advance. He assumes that we are intelligent enough to be able to handle.
Yes, the depravity is rife in this world, yes, he uses elements from other stories, however, nothing that happens is out of whack with the way the world has been set up.
Re:Don't read it!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Better advice would be: Read it, but make sure you've already read every other worthwhile book first.
Not sequels - genuine heptology - and great (Score:5, Insightful)
They are such rich books! Massive, but not an ounce of padding. The conflict is almost fractal - there's an overall arc that gets advanced in bits and peices, hints and prologues, while the lower level stuff sorts itself out. Below the conflict between Fire and Ice, there's civil war in the realm - as many as 7-8 contenders for the throne. Within each faction is conflict. Within each family anchoring a faction, there is conflict. Within each family member there is conflict!
Which leads to...his incredbily strong characterization. He has nuanced bad guys. Even his good guys (Ned Stark) are so well rendered that I believed them, and knew them, even though they epitomized Good and Honor. His characters have delusions, and act on them, traits that are pro-survival and not so much. And he is ruthless with them.
As well as he knows the characters, he knows his world. It's a 360 degree view at whatever narrative location he puts us in. I get the sense that he could turn the narrative in a different direction, illuminate different stuff, and it would be as complete as what he did write about. It's not like Disneyland where you just have to peak behind a crowd control rope to see where the paint on the cement stops and the illusion ends. Wherever he puts our eye is enough detail for us to implicitly know that the world continues beyond our view.
I have to rave about his storytelling fu: he turns things over, so that we (and usually the characters) are surprised at how things turn out. But even when that's not the case, it is still strong stuff! I just finished rereading the 3, and even when I knew what was going to happen, I was compelled. I dreaded getting to certain parts.
The first time I read them, I went out of order (on the recommendation of some slashdot dweeb). I figured after reading the 3rd, that the 1st would cover the tremendously interesting backstory (a successful rebellion 10 years previous). Nope. It just went back about a year. He has such invention that he can "squander" a magnificent tale as mere backstory!
The series has elements of fantasy, but the rest of it is so strong that it would still work without it. It has the great politics of the first Dune, but the series is not in any way derivitave.
There's a whole class of tolkien wannabes I just can't read. "THis is different! They must destroy the *bracelet* of power!" "They aren't orcs
Re:We read to stay awake, not because of insomnia (Score:2, Insightful)