Review: A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was all about trade-offs. On the one hand, Martin introduces a fair amount of complex political intrigue and (what seemed like) realism in his world building gave it just enough grit to appear different then the standard epic (low) fantasy I had grown used to. In fact, some time later I read that Martin was quite pleased with the fact that just because a character was a 'good' guy, doesn't mean he will survive the story ... the only problem was that it really was difficult to find them. Jon Snow was perhaps the only individual I liked much at all, but his story seemed to be there to set him up for something much later. The nominal hero of the story was probably Eddard ... whose complete rigidity and lack of empathy really made him a detestable figure, despite his adherence to honor et. al. It was not until the War started that the story started to redeem itself ... And it did so admirably. The War of the Five Kings was the best part of the book; but even that drops a star because of the number and frequent changes of the various Points of View within (8 total POV across 3 major plotlines). 

This was THE most frustrating aspect of the book as every single switch made it real easy to put the book down and forget about it for awhile (at least until the later part of the book where I was more tempted to just skip ahead and ignore the crap in between ... Then maybe going back and reading the next POV/storyline parts. I did struggle through to the end though ... And the irritation faded enough that I purchased the next book in the series after finding it in a yard sale for a quarter ... And it wasn't long before I encountered enough 'realism' and not enough 'idealism' to decide that this series wasn't as good as I had remembered. Parts of it were really fun; parts of it I really intensely disliked and I would have preferred to do without. I still haven't read past book two.

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