Rating: 
Summary: Read this and you may never read Wheel of Time again
Review: George R.R. Martin is an award winning author, for many books (just read about his awards on the back). He's even worked at Hollywood. This author knows how to captivate and audience and leave them begging for more. Unlike other fantasy books, Martin uses subtle sorcery that seems more mysterious (whereas in other books charaters use "magic" like its some machine gun they can fire openly). His plot and the characters are brilliantly set up. Each one is unique- you have lords, ladies, children and even a dwarf. It has everything a book needs- compulsion, tragedy, perspective, mystery and dialogue that will keep you thinking and imagining. This is the start of one of the greatest series in epic fantasy. I say drop everything and get this book now. Lord of the Rings is a classic and in a league of its own. Song of Ice and Fire will probably be the "new classic." When this series is over, there will be only two in the genre- "Lord of the Rings" and "A Song of Ice and Fire." Everything else is just a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Six hours I'll never get back.
Review: Terrifically bad. As in nothing of worth. Reminiscent of Top-40 music, where any originality and substance is eschewed in favor of exploiting recognizeable cliches ad nauseum. The characters are caricatures. Not a single one has embarked on "The Hero's Journey". I had zero empathy for any of them. The protagonists and antagonists are indistinquishable, like the clowns on WWF, not the characters in Catch-22. The violence is without purpose. The conflicts are predictable. The mythos derivative. The language is crude, the writing ponderous. I can think of no greater insult to Tolkien's LOTR than to be compared with this tripe.
Rating: 
Summary: technically well-executed but ultimately soulless
Review: After having finished the book (after first having thrown it aside in disgust at the way females were portrayed) I feel now like revising some of my earlier comments. My earliest complaints about the book, that no powerful and important female characters existed, proved to be ultimately unfounded. In particular, Daenerys's journey from victim to khaleesi is well-executed and interesting. Martin writes with a great deal of technical skill and has an excellent ear for dialogue (I seem to recall reading somewhere that he worked in television for a long time, which is probably why). His plotting is well-crafted, and the idea of having events be seen and interpreted differently from different angles (one event that springs readily to mind is Eddard Stark's recounting to King Robert about finding Jaime Lannister on the Iron Throne during the sack of Dragonstone) is a good trick that other writers would do well to make use of. He also has certainly done his research on medieval times and depicts it convincingly. Some have complained about his depiction of Daenerys's wedding night, as she was only thirteen at the time. In medieval times, however, marriage at thirteen for girls was not at all unusual--when the average lifespan does not go much past forty, and may be shorter than that for women who had at that time the added risk of dying in childbirth, children grow up fast. (In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was only thirteen, and as her father (? can't remember off the top of my head) commented, "Younger than she are happy mothers made.") HOWEVER (and this is a big however), in spite of his technical skill, in the end I never got the sense that the author gave a damn about his characters. It was not that he had not put any thought into them, it was more a sense that he just didn't care about them as people, that he saw them as nothing more than puppets to push around at his whim. Robert Jordan has a similar problem, however with Jordan I feel it's more a function of a plot that has grown out of control; occasionally I do get the sense that he does care. I never felt that with Martin. This is not to impugn his skill as a writer; as I said previously he does evince a great deal of technical skill. However, it did make it hard for me to get into the story, because if the author doesn't even care, then why should I? (Contrast with Michelle West, who lacks Martin's technical skill in that her prose is often desperately overwritten, yet at the same time obviously cares a great deal about her characters and makes the reader care too--I was in tears at the ending of The Broken Crown.) His obsession with depictions of death and decay at first seemed a nice piece of scene-setting, but by the end of the book felt more like a gimmick, like something he was throwing in there because he thought it looked cool. If the book was in the horror genre I might have found it less gimmicky as such things are a convention there (although even in the horror genre, such depictions eventually become tiresome--Stephen King, I'm looking in your direction), but in the fantasy genre I'm less inclined to tolerate it. Some rather important characters remained undeveloped--Joffrey in particular was such a cartoonish caricature that I almost found him laughable--and to top it all off, despite his inclusion of active female characters, the entire book carried a hard-to-define air of misogyny. I couldn't quite put my finger on what I found so irritating, but I think it's there. For example, two of the main female characters, Cersei and Lysa, are walking, talking misogynistic stereotypes--Cersei is the False ... Queen who sleeps with her brother and swears eternal hatred to her husband for no better reason that he called the name of his deceased beloved on their wedding night, and Lysa is the Neurotic Emasculating Mother who still breastfeeds her son at seven years old. It is possible to write a negative female character and have her not be such a stereotype--Delores Umbridge in Order of the Phoenix is one example; Steven Brust also generally does a good job with this--but apparently Martin can't pull it off. Another factor contributing to this sense of misogyny may be the constant and casual depiction of sexual violence against women and only women--Viserys sexually assaults Daenerys, Lyanna was kidnapped and raped by Rhaegar, the depiction of the khalasar riders sharing the Lamb women, the ultimate fate of Eroeh--Again, I've seen depictions of sexual violence and life in a sexist society that don't come off this way, but somehow here I found the whole effect disturbing. (David Eddings, oddly enough, I have found, can write a sexist society and even sexist stereotypes of women without teetering into misogyny; perhaps it's because Eddings obviously deeply loves all of his characters, the women no less than the men, whereas as I mentioned before, I felt that Martin just didn't care. Eddings also tends to write extremely powerful females who command a great deal of respect from all the men around them, such as Polgara; with the possible exception of Daenerys, I didn't see one here.) At the end of this book, Daenerys possesses the most firepower of anyone in his world; it will be interesting to see if Martin lets her keep this firepower in the later books or if he diminishes or takes it away from her because she's a girl (and if he does diminish her power, he will have to do some very, very good writing in order to convince me that he didn't do so because she's a girl, despite whatever chain of events leads to this in the book).
Rating: 
Summary: What can fantasy do without magic?
Review: Plenty. That doesn't mean there is no magic in "A Game of Thrones." There is some, and more as the series flows on. But this first book is primarily historical fantasy, occurring in a world with incredibly long seasons, dragons, and warrior-queens, but still recognizably based on the history of England, especially the Wars of the Roses. It is Martin's triumph that he transforms this world into something of his own creation, and his writing talent has all the magic he needs. This first book follows the adventures of eight viewpoint characters: six of the Stark family, one of the Lannister family that opposes them, and one of the deposed Targaryen royal dynasty. The storylines intersect and then spin away again. Characters who are in close contact at one point may meet each other again, or scatter to opposite ends of the Seven Kingdoms. And at least one storyline, that of Daenerys Targaryen, takes place on another continent altogether, only brushed by political decisions in the Kingdoms. This can make sorting out the plot confusing at first, but one of the grand things about it is that the plot does not focus on a hero and heroine, making all the rest of the viewpoint characters into sidekicks. *All* of these characters are part of the plot, and all of them have something important to say and do. One could argue that Lord Eddard Stark, who stands at the heart of most of the political action and is searching frantically for one of the book's main family secrets, is the hero, but the struggle of his wife to find out who nearly killed her son is just as important. So is his ... son's adventure on the Wall, and Tyrion Lannister's travel- both willing and unwilling- south and back north, and Dany's arranged marriage to a barbarian prince. Martin is an expert at making each character the center of his or her own universe, a hero or heroine in his or her own eyes. And none of them are evil. Though we receive indications that a vast inhuman threat, in the form of a long winter, will soon descend on the Seven Kingdoms, there is no Dark Lord sitting on a throne and laughing. There are ordinary people, who may happen to be a bit crazy, but who are also following human motives such as trying to protect their children. The political intrigue spins out of those motivations, rather than out of forced advance of plot. This is yet another thing that makes the story such a breath of fresh air. Some of the characters may well be advancing along the lines of destiny, but they often don't know it. Yet another thing the large absence of magic and destiny does is to make it more strange when it appears. Blood magic, foreseeing the future, and the bonds between the Stark children and their direwolves might seem commonplace bits of magic in a "normal" fantasy setting; in this one, they gleam like jewels in their settings. This helps to restore the sense of wonder that fantasies strive for and so rarely achieve. This book is not perfect, of course. At times, Martin's making of human characters worked a little too well for me; one character, Sansa Stark, remains essentially a shallow and helpless pawn throughout the story, and it was nearly impossible for me to sympathize with her. At the same time, I was sure I was meant to sympathize with her. Such things make for an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. There were also some transparent tropes and very obvious symbolism, such as the dead direwolf the Starks find. Martin could be setting these up just to destroy them, but at other times he handles them delicately enough that I felt required to take them seriously. I was left unsure what to think or feel. However, this book is a living, breathing thing, and some discomfort with living, breathing things is normal. And a great number of what I perceived as flaws here are worked out as the series progresses. Martin has spun glory with 'A Song of Ice and Fire,' and this is only the first tapestry off his loom.
Rating:
Summary: Left me wanting more
Review: A Game of Thrones recreates a complex Britannic feudal society subjugated by the vain ambitions of its squabbling lords and ladies. The chapters alternate between eight key characters without jumping around chronologically. The story that unfolds is light on both supernatural invention and adrenaline pumping action. Instead we are spun a tale of political intrigue with an insight into the motivations of some of the key players. The manifold characters are well drawn and the plot is well crafted. However, in a book that focuses on the trials and tribulations of its characters I came away caring too little about any of them to find out what fates await them in the sequel. An admirable work that left me wanting more - but not of this story.
Rating:
Summary: Moderately disappointing
Review: After reading the first 4 Harry Potters, Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, I was still in a fantasy mood so I asked around and one common book came around : A Game of Thrones. Well I don't know why I listened to them but this wasn't that great a book. The story begins rather slowly until the Hand of the King is murdered and one of the characters has an assasination attempt on him(he lives), and it's trying to figure out who killed him and for what purpose. Well you know what? After 400 pages, I didn't care. The writer uses a different method to chapters: each "chapter" is actually the point of view of a character and jumps to another character for the next. This is extremely irritating as the story will finally pick up then it goes to this boring person's perspective, then it finally goes back several chapters later but to find it's still boring. I didn't care for the character at all. All pompous and long winded and seemingly bitchy. He is however a good describer and the POV idea is new to me but man this book is slow
Rating:
Summary: I just didn't care...
Review: The first time I read this was after I read the Lord of the Rings. (Yes, I've just gotten into Tolkien.) I love LotR so much that I wanted another story to be just like it. This was not. So I put the book away for a while until I realized that there can only be one Tolkien. So, I read a few more fantasy books, enjoyed them (Thomas Covenant Series was excellent) and then came back to Game of Thrones. Again, I just couldn't get into the story. I just didn't care what happened. The author didn't make me care about what happens. He is a good writer and he will appeal to many readers, just not this one.
Rating:
Summary: Throne of blood.....
Review: After over 900 reviews what can I add??
This book shows what talent really is. The story shows people & their nature, whether it's courage, greed, vengeance or righteousness. And how it affects their lives & ultimately their futures.
The characters have virtues & faults. So like us, so you feel for all of them, and there lies Mr. Martin's talent.
The book is called a game of thrones, & it is that.
Mainly it's the fight between two families for the throne, in between deceit, an unknown evil from the north, dragons & more.
I read the beginning a few years back but didn't get the "living dead" thing at the time. I read the book a few days back & truly enjoyed it.
If you like the intrigue of the minds, hidden motives, mysteries & the making of wars.
If you are intrigued by scheming on a grand scale, then this is the book for you.
The cast is large but easy enough to follow, there is a lot going on at the same time & you will be right there with them living the adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: Martin begins an incredible journey with this book. It lays the foundation for a deep, intricate plot that will keep you reading, and guessing, well into the night.
Rating:
Summary: Cannot... Put... It... Down!
Review: I feel compelled to add my voice to the chorus of positive reviews. This is an excellent series! It's been a long time since any fantasy novel has had me so engrossed. Martin spins a complex, richly plotted tales of rivalries, feuds, allegiances, battles, intrigues, betrayals, and supernatural menaces. Though the Arthurian world that the story is set in didn't seem terribly unique at first, it grew on me through the details. I found myself soon wrapped up in the intertwining storylines of the dozen or so main characters, whose actions, personalities, and experiences Martin renders more interestingly and honestly than most writers in this genre seem capable of. Yes, (to address the complainers) there are long stretches where there is more dialogue than action, but as much of import takes place in the throne room as on the battlefield, and Martin's dialogue is cracklingly true to life (unlike, say, Tolkien's). This is definitely an ambitious, epic tale, involving enough players and factions to necessitate an appendix at the end of the book, but Martin manages to keep all the pieces moving in a way that's logical and compelling. This is a fantasy series that refreshingly focuses first and foremost on the individual characters, weaving the story from their own flawed but genuinely human perspectives. Very often, the plot takes twists and turns that surprise not only them, but likely the reader as well, sometimes just when it seems Martin is finally building towards some time-worn cliche. This is one of those books that will keep you up until the small hours of the morning, because you have to know what the hell happens next, and next, and next... The traditional fantasy elements, like dragons or sorcerers, are there, too, but Martin treats these details in a nuanced, economical way, using them to lend the story a mythic aura without overwhelming its players. I'd caution younger or more senstive readers, though, that the violence (and language) in this and subsequent books can be quite savage at times. Brutal slayings occur throughout, and there are more than a few incidents of wanton rape or torture depicted as well. I don't think it's overly heavy-handed and it seems realistic to the medieval-level societies portrayed, where there was never much value placed on human life or rights, particularly where the poor were concerned, but some readers might find the grim details a bit much. Definitely R rated material. If you liked this book at all, I think that the series only gets better with the next two (all that have been written to date). By "A Storm of Swords" Martin seems to be writing more confidently, and his characters finding their own inner strength, as well. The "good guys" are darkened by having to make ugly decisions, and many of the "bad guys" become more sympathetic and interesting. Some readers have complained that there isn't enough of a distinction between the heroes and the villains, but I think they're missing out on the subtleties that make this a better series than most fantasy paperbacks (I got bored with the "Wheel of Time" books years ago).
|
