{"id":3039,"date":"2010-10-01T22:41:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T17:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2010-10-09T02:22:27","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:52:27","slug":"book-review-storm-swords-song-ice-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/2010\/book-reviews\/book-review-storm-swords-song-ice-fire.html\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: A Storm of Swords \u2013 A Song of Ice and Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was mostly bad, but became much better towards the end. Nothing of importance happens till halfway through when George R R Martin decides to kill off two of the prime characters!<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A Storm of Swords - A Song of Ice and Fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a big shock, and for that alone he deserves credit. I mean other authors have also killed main personalities like C S Friedman in “The Coldfire Trilogy”<\/a>, but never ones who were this<\/em> central to the plot. Martin kills someone who had their own POV story and all – I mean wow. Balls of brass.<\/p>\n

He pulled the same stunt in the first book and hasn’t stopped his carnage since then. All three books till now are littered with the bodies of dead and important characters.<\/p>\n

But I just got the feeling that he did it because the book was going nowhere. Right upto that point I just couldn’t care for most of the story. He stubbornly refuses to let separated characters meet. One poor girl called Arya comes that<\/em> close to finally reuniting with her mother and brother, only to get pulled away again. The same happens with another set of brothers who would just love<\/em> to know the other is alive, but Martin conveniently makes one of their closest friends take a secret vow not to reveal their existence. I mean wtf.<\/p>\n

Finally, I understand that Martin is trying to be realistic and all, and that in real life the good guys don’t\u00a0always win but they win once in a while dammit!<\/em> Time and again the evil characters in the book outmaneuver the good guys who die left and right due to betrayal or just accident. After a while it gets depressing cause you catch on to Martin’s pattern. He just wants to keep killing everyone off without giving the protagonists a break. It’s as if he’s trying too hard to make a point that he’s a different writer from everyone else.<\/p>\n

Like the previous books, this one too had a lot<\/em> of fluff. Too many descriptions of clothes, castles, the landscape, what each person is thinking etc and too little plot development. It’s also a pain keeping track of the hundreds of house names. I just flip through those pages till I get to the meat of the chapter without missing much.<\/p>\n

Moving onto the fourth and last book of “A Song of Ice and Fire”<\/a>. The series hasn’t been completed yet. I really hope it’s more fulfilling than the previous ones and Martin manages to get a plot going without having to resort to murdering the book’s heroes.<\/p>\n

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\nThis was better than the last book though, and so I’ll give “A Storm of Swords”<\/span> a rating of 3<\/span> out of 5 on the