{"id":3027,"date":"2010-09-24T22:23:56","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T16:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/?p=3027"},"modified":"2010-10-09T02:21:52","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:51:52","slug":"book-review-a-game-of-thrones-a-song-of-ice-and-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/2010\/book-reviews\/book-review-a-game-of-thrones-a-song-of-ice-and-fire.html\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: A Game of Thrones – A Song of Ice and Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had heard of George R R Martin’s Fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire” a while ago, but was hesitant to begin reading it since it wasn’t yet complete. I had heard such high recommendations though that I felt I had<\/em> to see what it was all about. And so I started reading the first book “A Game of Thrones,” just after finishing the Coldfire Trilogy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A Game of Thrones - A Song of Ice and Fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first thing that struck me was that it barely hovers at the fringes of fantasy. There’s nothing “fantasy like” about the book except for a few pages here and there. But the book ends with the promise of a lot more in the future. So that’s a good thing.<\/p>\n

Once that’s out of the way though, the book really catches your imagination. I’ve realized now what some of the key elements of a series must be in order to keep you at the edge of your seat. You must be able to separate your primary characters and give a story line to each. You need to have many threads in the story so that you pick up and leave off to increase the suspense.<\/p>\n

In “A Game of Thrones,” each chapter bears the name of one person and is dedicated to telling the story through that person’s eyes. It’s a fixed number of people so it cycles between them. The most frustrating (sweetly so) plot device is that almost each chapter ends with a cliff hanger. It can be very tough to calmly start on the next with the sound of the previous one still ringing in your ears so to speak.<\/p>\n

Martin also shows me a new style of realistic writing. Not realistic like Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth”<\/a> with gratuitous violence and painful rapes – that’s as unrealistic as a sugary fairy tale. By realistic I mean that the good guys don’t always win, and there are no last minute heroic rescues. In fact, there’s a marked lack of heroism in general, perhaps reflecting real life. Also, there isn’t any central character with more power than everyone else as is so common with fantasy novels – not yet.<\/p>\n

The book has wolves, or direwolves as they’re called. They’re pretty damn cool and are my favorites. It’s sad, because people die. Those who are at the center of the storyline die! And when all the while you’re expecting them to be saved at the last minute. That requires guts. I’m curious now as to how this book is going to finally turn out. I know it isn’t complete, but I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me. A nice feeling isn’t it?<\/p>\n

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\nI’ll give “A Game of Thrones”<\/span> a rating of 3.5<\/span> out of 5 on the