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Summary: If you liked Game of Thrones, you'll LOVE Clash of Kings!
Review: Part 2 is even better than the original! The male AND female characters (a real first in fantasy) are complex, convincing, and crucial. You'll root for old friends and make new ones. Chapter endings made me gasp with horror and laugh out loud. Sign me up for part 3 now!
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Summary: An awesome, on the edge of your seat story!
Review: This series is great! You never know whats going to happen. Good guys fall to their doom. Nothing goes right for them but they are always able to stay up to par! Can't wait for the next book!!!
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Summary: A Rich, Intelligent, Potboiler Fantasy
Review: This book is as good or better then A Game of Thrones. The story is involving, if a little unweildy, but its strength is a cast of three-dimensional characters that you really care about. They do, say, and think interesting things, and you don't need as much suspension-of-disbelief to identify with them as most epic fantasy characters. In fact, ACoC reads more like a historical novel, a novelization of England's War of the Roses say, than a fantasy. There is just a touch of magic (although more than in the first book), and like a good spice it's just enough to give it a pleasant fantasy flavoring.There is a fair amount of salacious detail and stark (no pun intended) violence, but its not gratuitous; in most cases it fits right in with the medieval wartime setting and the moral leanings of the characters. And let's face it: most of us find that stuff interesting (if you don't believe me, glance to your left the next time your in a supermarket checkout line...) I highly recommend this book, but it does have one problem: it shows signs of the "plot creep" that has ruined Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Martin is a better writer than Jordan (although I loved the first five books of WoT), and I hope that he realizes that he doesn't have to make a career out of this series. If he keeps it to four or five books it will be a classic.
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Summary: Woah . . . Wow.
Review: 700 pages? I don't believe it - it reads like a 200 page novel over before it seems you've begun. This second book was WONDERFUL but too SHORT (if you can believe it). Too many characters (too many INTERESTING characters) that could all have books of their own. Wow, what a book, what a story, what wonderful characters. Highly recommended - and there's no doubt that Martin is here to stay if he continues to produce wonderful books such as this!
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Summary: One of the most amazing books I have read
Review: When I first read The Game of Thrones I was totally mesmerized. When I went into the book store and saw he had written the second of the series I was sooo happy. I absolutely adore fantasy's and love Terry Goodkind and Fiest. What I loved most about his book was the suspense. I would get so into what was happpening to one character and all of a sudden the chapter would end and move on to another. I found I just had to keep reading until I got to a chapter that told of that character again. But of course by then I got wrapped up with another characters life. The characters in this book are so alive and different. You either love them to death or hate them with a passion. I found myself living the characters lives and feeling love, hate, and sadness with them. It is an exsulant book and I recommend it to all.
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Summary: MASTERFUL!
Review: Without a doubt, this is one of the finest fantasies I have had the pleasure of reading. The characters are wonderfully developed and the plot keeps you guessing what will come next. Unlike many books of this genre, Martin does not sugar-coat his tale. There are no clear cut lines between "good" and "evil", "black" and "white"-in Martin's Westeros, dynasties are founded on incest and brother plots against brother (and sister). You will find yourself alternately cheering and cursing the same characters as the story unfolds. Undoubtedly, "A Song of Fire and Ice" will find a place among the giants of fantasy. I anxiously await the next installment in this series.
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Summary: Fantastic!
Review: I love these characters! Jon the bastard, hero in the making. Arya, the little she-devil. Tyrion, the devious imp you can't help but cheer for. Theon the ultimate jerk. Bran, the crippled prince with a destiny of magic. Hodor. Dany. The Hound. Even beautiful Sansa (I didn't really like her at first, but ever since her perfect world was turned upside down she has been one of the most interesting characters of all.) And what a world they live in. So brutal and real. Great stuff! My only complaint is that I now have to wait a year or two for the next book, and a year or two more for the one after that, and so on. I HATE waiting!
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Summary: Much more than just another fantasy book...
Review: Following "A Game of Thrones", George Martin provided us with another oeuvre of epic fantasy, the sequel "A Clash of Kings". Unlike, for example, Robert Jordan, George Martin keeps a tight grip on his brilliant plot and amazingly real characters. "A Clash of Kings" has everything a good fantasy book needs: Romance, court intruiges, treason, war. But it has more. George Martin displays characters that just slip into your very soul. You hate them and you love them as passionately as if they were a part of your real life. This makes "A Song of Ice and Fire" not only a masterpiece of fantasy, but of Literature. Martin refuses to play the usual good-and-evil games, he refuses to give the reader the sugar-coated heroic-fantasy he probably expects. His characters have amazing depth, they just steal your heart, no matter if they are good or bad. This, combined with a sensible treatment of magic and a natural feeling for suspense and climax make "A Clash of Kings", as well as "A Game of thrones" a book you simply fall in love with. And George Martin one of the most remarkable authors of our decade.
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Summary: Exhilarating... Intoxicting... Addictive
Review: I think those three words just about sum up how I feel about A Clash of Kings and A Game of Thrones. A Game of Thrones is the only 700 plus page book I've ever read 4 times (and I will probably read it again even though my hardcover copy is starting to fall apart), and A Clash of Kings is catching up (read it twice so far). It's true a lot of people die in these books, but reading them makes you feel so alive! When I read them I grip the books so tight I practically leave my handprints. Best books I've ever read. I can't wait for A Storm of Swords!
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Summary: Absolutely Enthralling. Not for the meek...
Review: While working in a bookstore I picked up the paperback version of AGOT on the advice of a coworker. Aside from Jordan, I hadn't been reading fantasy for a while, but it sucked me in like no book had done in a long while. I snapped up "Clash" the day it came out, and found it surprisingly easy to dive back in to this complex and immense weave of plots and characters! If you've grown out of the predictability and niceties of other writers (all mentioned elsewhere here, you know'em), and are ready for some pull-no-punches, hardcore, life-is-hard-get-a-helmet fantasy, open to page one, you WILL NOT be dissapointed! What can be said that hasn't already about these characters?? Martin takes you on a trip into their souls, and whether they're "good" or "bad" guys, men or women, you see a little of yourself in all of them, and that is what allows him to pull off this epic tale, which I agree does have that "spinning out of control" feel. It's like a violent carnival ride you're on, pitching and groaning, your stomach's in your throat but yet you don't want it to end just the same. Many have bemoaned Eddard's death in the first novel (I swear I felt something on my neck), but was he really a major character?? Both he and the larger-than-life Robert Baratheon were really just setups for the real struggle just beginning as their wives and children battle for survival and power, all the while unsuspecting of the magical and supernatural forces that are massing against them...I can hardly wait for the next one, and the one after that, and after that...write on, George!!
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