Review - A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Blurb: Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men.  All will play the Game of Thrones.

Summers span decades.  Winter can last a lifetime.  And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.  It will stretch from the south, where heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the bast frozen north, where a 700-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond.  The Game of Thrones.  You win, or you die.

My Review:
I know that for many readers, my motivation to read this book probably wouldn't be considered to be the best start.  I picked it up because I had been avidly watching the HBO series based on the novel.  I know, not necessarily the right reason to start reading, but a reason nonetheless.

If anything I was even more excited than normal as I stood in the line at Waterstones to purchase my copy.  You would have thought that all this hype would have been begging for a major disappointment once I started reading.

And yet, from the first page the book had me hooked.  I discovered, quite rightly, that the novel was better than the TV series, even though the TV drama did have an effect on how I saw the novel.

Each character had their own individual voice that drew me in and kept me reading from one chapter to the next, anxious to find out what happens next.  The way the chapters were arranged with many different points of view, changing between a small group of key characters, was perfect for this style of novel.  With so many different stories going on, all linked together in some way, hearing from lots of individual voices and different points of view really gave me a complete sense of the world I was in.  And yet, amongst all these different voices there were a few who naturally stood out more.  Eddard (Ned) Stark's chapters are an obvious one to pick out as important.

As a central character I found Ned very interesting.  He is clearly a very honourable character and always wants to do what is right, and yet he allows himself to be persuaded to leave Winterfell by Robert Baratheon, the man whom Ned helped onto the Iron Throne, even when it isn't in Ned's wishes or even his best interests to leave the life he wants with his family in the north.

Sean Bean as Eddard Stark in
HBO's Game of Thrones

One of the things that shocked me about the novel, probably because I'd been watching the TV series, was the age of many of the characters.  Martin's original characters are much younger than they are portrayed in the HBO series.  Sean Bean, the actor who plays Ned in the TV adaptation, looks all of his fifty years, and yet his character is described as being around thirty-five by George R.R. Martin.  Other characters, such as Daenerys, who is portrayed as an adult on TV is only fourteen years of age at the beginning of the novel.

And yet the youth of these characters in the novel only emphasises how vulnerable they are and increases the shock the reader feels when they learn what they have been through.

Another positive is that George R.R Martin doesn't shy away from challenging or even harming his characters, a strange aspect to look on as positive but if you read the novel you will probably understand where I'm coming from.  In other novels of a similar nature, you don't get the sense that a character is in real danger, and yet with A Game of Thrones there are so many twists and turns you never feel like a character is safe and never know who you can trust.

The atmosphere that Martin creates in this book is phenomenal.  I could almost feel the cold, icy winds coming from the north as Jon Snow performed his watches on the the Wall in contrast to the heat of the south.  Each section of Martin's world is clearly defined and different from every other location, making the world feel a lot bigger and give the events that happen in that world a much grander and more epic scale.

My conclusion; if you're a fan of fantasy novels, pick this up and read it.  There is still so much I haven't said about this novel that you will have to read for yourself.  I can't think of a book I have read recently that I've enjoyed more and I can't wait to pick up the sequel and delve further into the world that George R.R Martin has created.