Written by: George R. R. martin
Series: A Song of Ice and Fire
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Publish Date: August 6, 1996
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 694
Source: Bought at Indie Bookstore
Buy the Book: A Game of Thrones
Synopsis: Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.
Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
Shaunta’s Review:
I feel like I might be the very last book blogger on Earth to get to this book. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t much new that I can say about it that hasn’t already been said and said and said. I’m going to give it a shot though.
I really enjoyed Game of Thrones. I was already a major fan of the HBO series, so I went in knowing the story pretty well. I have a few friends who didn’t enjoy the book, to the point of putting it down. Their big complaint was that it was too dense–there are too many characters and story lines to keep track of. I didn’t have the problem. I think a big reason I didn’t was that I already knew the characters. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have been confused either way, but who knows.
I really love big, epic books. If I’m in love with a big, epic book and a new one in the same world comes out every few years, that’s even better. I love a dystopian world. George R. R. Martin has managed to build a fantasy world that is rooted enough in familiar things that you don’t feel like you need a glossary to get through it. I identified strongly with Caitlin Stark, far more than I do with her in the show. The dynamic between the Starks and the Lannisters is drawn in a much deeper way in the books.
There were some things that either surprised me or bothered me. I kind of expected Game of the Thrones to border on erotica, since the show borders on soft porn much of the time. It didn’t. At all. I’m not sure what caused Martin to decide to make some of the main characters so young. Daenerys is only 13 when she’s sold to her husband by her brother. It’s much more comfortable to watch her played by an adult actress than to think about her as barely a teenager–although, I do believe that one reason why her age isn’t more of a turn off (like to the point of putting the book down) is that other than the plain statement of her age, she doesn’t read as that young. Neither do Joffery or Jon Snow or Robb Stark, who are all very young in the book and not as young in the show as well. Sansa does read as young, but not as eleven. The decision to cast them as older in the show was a good one, in my opinion. I think that if I didn’t already have Emilia Clarke, an actress in her mid-20s, firmly fixed in my head as Daenerys, I would have had a much, much harder time with that aspect of the book.
The bottom line is that I could not stop reading Game of Thrones. I brought it with me to New York, where I spent ten days on vacation and attending Book Expo America. Despite coming home with at least 50 pounds of free books between my daughter and I, I would have bought a copy of the second book if I’d come across one.