A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) in Daily Show / Colbert Report / Nightly Show / The Opposition

Jul 20, 2011 Nicholas rated it really liked it

Shelves: npr-s-top-100-sci-fi-fantasy, locus-fantasy-award-winners

The beginning of a modern fantasy epic that has the potential to be very, very good. I have to admit that halfway through I was having trouble understanding what all the hype was about. Martin takes his sweet time setting up his dominoes before starting off a chain reaction that unravels quickly with quite a few satisfying and saddening twists and turns by the end. While the first half of the book reads quite slowly (there's a massive cast of characters to introduce and geography to be laid out) The beginning of a modern fantasy epic that has the potential to be very, very good. I have to admit that halfway through I was having trouble understanding what all the hype was about. Martin takes his sweet time setting up his dominoes before starting off a chain reaction that unravels quickly with quite a few satisfying and saddening twists and turns by the end. While the first half of the book reads quite slowly (there's a massive cast of characters to introduce and geography to be laid out) the second half is quite gripping. Martin definitely deserves credit for the development of his plot and some, but not all of the characters. There are three separate, but finely intertwined stories that develop quite independent of each other throughout the course of the novel and one gets just the briefest glances of how they may someday come thundering together.

What's good? Martin constructs an interesting world that is heavily back-storied. In that respect, I suppose you could compare him to Tolkein. Families have lineages listed in an appendix and races and religions have histories that are deep. You can tell that Martin took as much care constructing the setting of his world and the tangential elements as he did with the main plot and characters. There's just a hint of magic and fantasy throughout most of the story that leaves you yearning for more. This is a world that's moved beyond magic and dragons - a time beyond the Age of Heroes and is mostly a story about men, and a few very cunning and clever women, who play out their lives doing what men throughout history have always done: they fight over territory, women, pride and honor to the disaster of their fellow men. Not to worry though, Martin starts to deliver and we do see some traditional fantasy elements begin to rear their heads by the end, which entices us into the second book. The politicking and intrigue is layered and keeps you guessing throughout most of this work and a lot of the predictions I made for where the story was going failed to materialize, which was actually quite pleasant. It feels like he's doing something quite unexpected and different from the usual vein of the fantasy genre. The characters are wonderfully round too, much to young Sansa's (who believes in epic tales of good knights and evil villains; a character not unlike the typical fantasy reader) despair. Noble men like Eddard Stark are blinded by their preoccupation with duty and honor into impracticality while crude and barbaric individuals display the occasional and inexplicable kindness, perhaps spurred by a memory of their past or a desire to be something more human for once. You find yourself rooting for some characters to be vindicated and ridiculously pleased when things turn against those you despise. Favorite among these is Tyrion Lannister, the misshapen dwarf brother of some of the main antagonists in this volume.

What's bad? I think Martin is trying too hard to be a rogue among epic high fantasy writers. Yes, it's refreshing to get characters with a bit more gray in this genre rather than the Stark blacks and whites and naiveté that are symptomatic of the poorer novels in this field, but it's easy to see how he can sometimes go overboard with the blood and rape and pillaging and the like. Maybe that's some people's cup of tea, but I could do without graphic depictions of rape several times throughout the course of a single volume of a multi-part epic. It's enough to introduce the idea that war is bad. Anyone with a shred of knowledge of history knows how terribly unpleasant it is to be among the losers in a war, especially if you're female. The casualness of these scenes is unpleasant and highly uncomfortable. Some people might argue that that was the intent of the author, and that's all well and good, but this series hardly strikes me as one that aims to break societal conventions and get us to rethink our culture and values. It's very nature is escapist entertainment and I don't like repeated instances of rape, especially of young girls, in my escapist entertainment and it made me uncomfortable enough to make me drop it a star in my rating. Other reviewers complained that the multiple sex scenes distracted from the narrative as a whole or were too explicit, but I don't necessarily agree with that. Yes, this is an R-rated book, but it's not smut fiction. As I mentioned earlier the beginning takes a long time to play out too. The pacing in the first half seemed like it could use some work from an editor, but I think it meshes by the end and you have to remember that this book was planned as only the beginning of an entire series that's thousands of pages long, so four hundred or so of exposition isn't too bad. ...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Celeste rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

My sister and brother recommended that I watch the HBO series, so I did. I then found out about the books, so I decided to begin reading the series simply to relieve the cliff hanger feeling from the end of the TV show. I may be hooked on them now.

If I had to point out a genre that I love and hate simultaneously, it would be fantasy. I love where the bending of reality can take the story, and I enjoy the romance and medieval undertones in so much of it. I can relax and flow along with the plot a My sister and brother recommended that I watch the HBO series, so I did. I then found out about the books, so I decided to begin reading the series simply to relieve the cliff hanger feeling from the end of the TV show. I may be hooked on them now.

If I had to point out a genre that I love and hate simultaneously, it would be fantasy. I love where the bending of reality can take the story, and I enjoy the romance and medieval undertones in so much of it. I can relax and flow along with the plot and chracters within Campbell's Hero Cycle (which is overly present in fantasy). What I hate about it? I hate the deus ex machina aspects of the plot lines, the flowery language that just wouldn't be used in any world, and frankly, the fans that go overboard with the whole thing.

I enjoyed A Game of Thrones. There are tons of characters and plot lines and places to follow. Reading it is almost like a brain workout but not one of those workouts you yearn to be done with, no, one that doesn't seem like work at all. I've heard Martin called "the American Tolkien" by Lev Grossman, and I have to agree. His writing is just rich enough, not to goopy, and has a good rhythm. The characters are varied and multifaceted, and there are so many of them! And I love that he is not afraid to kill them, and they stay dead. That's what it is: there's just the right amount of realism sprinkled over the fantasy.

There were chapters/sections that I didn't care for, and I sped through them. Since they base around characters, ususally it was a character that I didn't connect with or care for. I can't give a really fair judgement because I saw the show first, so my vision of the book is tainted by that. The show was so faithful to the book that I knew what was going to happen down to some direct quotes. That took some of th enjoyment out of the read. I'm curious to see what I will think of the second book since there is nothing to watch first.

I like the series so far, so I will keep reading, even though a friend of mine is worried the series won't get finished. This makes for good summer reading. ...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Taylor rated it liked it

Shelves: multnomahcountylibrary

I found this book engrossing after the first third or so, and then ripped through the rest of it. Because the storylines hop around, I found myself often wishing we could get back to the characters and plots that I actually cared about. This certainly was part of the fast pace for me. I was most interested in Jon Snow and the wall in the north, and to some extent Daenerys. Ah well, I'm off to read the second one now.

My number one pet peeve with this book -- the scenting of a certain female body ...more

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Mar 26, 2010 Tracy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi

This book was ok. I was interested enough in the story, but I had a hard time getting into the characters. For me, as soon as I was invested in a character or a certain part of the story, the next chapter would take place in a very different part of the world and then they wouldn't get back to the previous section for maybe 100 pages. Some of the story felt forced to me, but interesting enough and not bad writing. ...more

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Sep 27, 2011 Rachel rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This is totally not my sort of book at all, but suspending my usual cynicism and eye-rolling at talk of dragons & zombie-esque creatures, I really enjoyed it. The end was particularly interesting and of course, was so unexpected that I suppose I'll need to make my slow way through the second book in the long series. I'm interested to see how this held up in the HBO series based on the book. ...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Ezra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own, author-male, favorites, z-re-read, read-in-2012, fantasy-high

This was my third time reading it. The most recent prior was in the month before Storm was published. I had to give myself distance from watching the HBO series.

Still. Reading it again was like having lunch with a good friend after a decade. Why isn't it a more frequent occurrance? ...more

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Sep 04, 2007 Deedee added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 6-star-books, epic-fantasy, favorites, re-read, scifi-and-fantasy-club-read-twice, world-fantasy-award-nominee, twins, rws-group-reads-read, scifi-and-fantasy-club-read, challenge-2011-spring

re-read
Even better the second time around!
Re: goodreads policy, I've left the rating blank. I would have given it 5 stars, like I did the other edition of this book that I read. ...more

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