A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

Rating:
Summary: One of the best fantasy books I have read recently
Review: This book was a delightful surprise! It had the plot complexity and epic feel that one expects in a fantasy novel. However, unlike most of these books, this one had richly drawn, fully textured characters and sophisticated, elegant writing. This book both enthralled and surprised me. I can't wait for the sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a 10 !!!!!
Review: Actually the only reason I decided to give it a nine is because the story leaves me hanging on an edge by the tip of my little finger, it's taking too long for the sequel to arrive !! Aw what the heck , IT IS A 10 !!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book!
Review: This is a wonderfully written book, complete with magic, mystery, intrigue, and war. This tale of the heroic Stark family fighting to protect the world they know and love will take you on a wild ride. Creating a world where the readers feel for the heroes and hate the villians, Martin keeps people on the edge of their seats. There is never a dull moment, and the readers will be left waiting for the next book!

Rating:
Summary: A Powerfully Written Story!
Review: "A Game Of Thrones" is one of the few books that I wish with me shipwrecked on a desert island. A book that exists to entertain! Sparse, clean, memorable prose despite 800+ pages. A twisting, turning, churning plot that endlessly surprised me. Strong characters who really speak to my inner world. Fantasy is written for escapists, and comparisons between Anya and Sansa, or Jon and Joffrey, offer events that will send misfits like me into radical swings of emotion! Some of the most affecting scenes are the small ones. Never pedantic like Herbert's "Dune", but less intelligent. A far stronger sense of place and character than in Williams' "Memory,Sorrow,and Thorn". All the female characters, when they enter the dream world, instantly focus on plunging necklines and demure vs risque attire, since it is a genetic feature of women to dwell on their appearance --- oops, that was Robert Jordan's "The Wheel Of Time", not this one. Far better characters, especially the women, than in Jordan's misguided and culturally shallow epic. My greatest fear is that George RR Martin will not be able to sustain this invented world. Jordan's "The Eye Of The World" showed real promise, but it has collapsed. Will the same happen to Martin's "A Song of Ice And Fire"? The sneak peek "Theon" appearing at the end of the paperback was a minor pleasure that tells me nothing of the second book's potential for greatness or for crashing failure. The settings are often amazing: The journey to the castle where there are sloping dungeon floors was stunning to this reader (to be more specific would mean giving a pleasure away to new readers). Surprisingly adult scenes stake out a claim in territory unusual for the mostly juvenile genre. Did you too get the feeling that "The Lord Of The Rings" was all white and all right? Martin's world is irrevocably multicultural, though most action occurs in societies that appear European. It contains strong femininist material set in telling counterpoint to a sexist fantasy world. It mostly avoids cultural controversies of the modern day, with allusion to anti-abortion leaning and two small disturbing homophobic inferences (in the author's voice) in a book otherwise absent of author-intrusive positive or negative slant. I wonder if such "sneaky Puritanisms" as these will date this book, much as "The Lord Of The Rings" is dated, and as Jordan's sexism has already rendered his epic obsolete and howlingly unintentionally funny. Otherwise, Martin has been able to cast a spell on this reader. Read this book. It is full of major and minor pleasures, full to bursting! Grand entertainment. This is one of only three books I have ever read to which I would award the '10'.

Rating:
Summary: Fantasy Mastery
Review: This short-story master's epic fantasy novel is quite simply the best of class since Tolkien and one of the best novels of any genre I've read in years. I work as a freelance book editor/doctor and can say it's more than rare to read a novel of this length, with so many subplots and characters, that so perfectly justifies its breadth. Hollywood would do well to perk up. This is eminently adaptable. Highly recommended for even non-fantasy fans.
Ed Stackler

Rating:
Summary: A great job of characterizations and plot twists.
Review: The story of a hardened but loving father during a middle-ages time-like war. Great characters and plot twists. Mr. Martin certainly knows his military tactics and any fan of fantasy and history will thoroughly enjoy this book. I read it three times and am awaiting part two impatiently...

Rating:
Summary: I should hate this book
Review: Many of favorite books are works of fantasy, but the genre as a whole suffers from a lack of imagination and originality (ironic, that!), and as a result I read relatively little fantasy. I picked up TGoT because years ago I read Martin's Fevre Dream and liked it (even though I don't generally care for vampire novels). There are many reasons why I should have disliked this book, but mainly: (1)I find needlessly long books distasteful. I thought, for example, that Eddings's original Belgariad would have made a reasonable couple of books, but was much weakened by the dithering about that stretched it to four. TGoT runs some 800 pages in the pbk edition - for the first volume alone! (2) I dislike books told from a variety of viewpoints, particularly when the author keeps shifting back and forth from chapter to chapter. Too often this convention attempts to mask weaknesses in characterization or plotting. Martin tells this story from multiple points of view - about eight, if I remember correctly. So did I hate the book? Obviously not, since I rated it a 10! Length wasn't a problem since there is no fat in this novel - every chapter advances at least one of the plots. The multiple points of view didn't bother me in practice because the voices are all distinct, and I became quite fond of several of the characters. Martin also does several things that I find all too infrequently in fantasy fiction: his characters are not two dimensional, representing "good" or "evil". They are complex, and believable. Some of the "good guys" I find rather distasteful, and some of the "bad guys" (one in particular) are among my favorite characters in the book. Also, Martin presents us with a complicated, twisting plot that depends much more on good old-fashioned political intrigue than the usual trite Dark Power on the rise again (I get _very_ bored with "Sauron Syndrome"). In both his complex characterizations and his Byzantine plotting, Martin's TGoT reminds me of some of the best of Glen Cook - although their writing styles otherwise are quite dissimilar. I cannot remember the last time I reread a book within a few months of finishing it the first time, but I did with this one and found it just as gripping the second time around.

Rating:
Summary: BEST FANTASY NOVEL OF 1997
Review: Best Fantasy Novel of 1997. If you like "The Wheel of Time", "The Sword of Truth" and "The Lord of the Rings", then DON'T MISS THIS BOOK\SERIES!!!! Martin writes with Asimovian clarity and entertainement. I Can't recommend this book enough, so rather than spend hours doing so, I'll just tell you that the series could be The Epic of Epics and that it will most likely win the World Fantasy Award and maybe a Hugo? Stop reading this review and BUY THE BOOK!!!!!! (And the sequels).

Rating:
Summary: Don't read the Kirkus Review
Review: Great, great fantasy epic -- if Martin can maintain the excitement and wonder in A Game of Thrones for three more volumes, he will indeed stake a claim as a modern-day Tolkein. But whatever you do, _don't_ read the Kirkus review on this page -- it gives away all the plot twists!! A huge part of the fun in this book is trying to guess where it's going -- and being outsmarted by Martin again and again.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely one of the best in the genre!
Review: This is one of the few books in any genre that I have re-read and on second reading it was as absorbing, thrilling and exciting as the first time. The sequel is too far in the reader's future! Please hurry, but then again, a quality book is worth waiting for. Better than Jordan's Wheel of Time, an example of what happens when not enough time occurs between one book and the next or when a publisher won't let an author end it. Martin is an author who can allow the reader to learn about and care about his characters, their situations, and their very tenuous futures. They cease to be a figment of his imagination and become a fabric of a reader's life. When I read the first Wheel of Time, I was discussing with a fellow devotee (both of us having faded away after book 3) who we would have playing the roles in the movie of the century. The same theme runs through the mind with A Game of Thrones. I will buy multiple copies of this paperback to distribute to my fellow movie-theme readers. Bravo, Martin! Keep up the terrific work.