Very short thoughts on A Game of Thrones
Posted in Fantasy |
(Ok, I admit, I am shamelessly trying to get more books from the www.nemira.ro promotion. So sue me. I did read the books so I might as well get something if that’s possible. And books are the best prizes! Also, since most of the things I can pick are (hard) SF, it will make some of my friends happy that I’m not reading “fairy tales” anymore :P Writter for Scrie ca sa primesti… o carte.)
But this isn’t going to be another raving review about how GRRM is the best thing since Tolkien and how he singlehandedly changed the face of fantasy and blah blah. It’s going to be more of a “why I didn’t like A Song of Ice and Fire at first”.
I’d been hearing about the books for ages. Wow, amazing, brilliant, best fantasy cycle ever etc., but I didn’t read them until my friend Horia sent me his copies. Needless to add that given all the praise I’d been hearing, I was expecting to love the story. What I got was confusion. Lots of.
The prologue was ok. Things happen, blood, people die. I managed to figure out who was who and… the characters dissapeared from the story. Back to square one.
The good thing is that GRRM does the main characters brilliantly. My favorites are Arya and Jon and I hope they don’t get killed off in book 6 or something, or I’ll be one pissed of Jen. However, all the billions of secondary characters and all the ancient kings with the same name and all the unending details about who and what armor is wearing and all the political plots… aaargh! That almost killed the story for me. I honestly don’t give a damn about the endless descriptions. I can imagine a character, but I don’t give a fuck what he’s wearing. And politics bore me in general, but I can take them in moderate doses.
I think I only started to enjoy the book in the last quarter, when things starting to clear up. But a couple of hundred pages is a bit too long for that, and if the book wasn’t so incredibly hyped I would’ve given up loong ago. What kept me going was… well, the fact that GRRM is smart. He gives you one little clue to make you curious then switches POV and you’re left hanging, so of course you have to read on - even through the boring chapters. Dany and Jon and Tyrion and especially the hope I’d learn more about the Others kept me going. The world beyond the Wall is much more fascinating to me than the politics of Westeros.
And, after bashing the book so much, what do I have to say? Well, I devoured the next 3 volumes, to the point when I was on a plane and I was hoping it wouldn’t land before I found out what happened to Arya, so something must’ve worked to get me hooked.. The downside of all the details is that almost 2 years after reading the books my mind is blank and I can only remember the very basics of the plot… thank God for internet summaries :)
August 26th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I like “A Song of Ice and Fire” and I think it is one of the best Fantasy works.
And don’t worry about remembering only the very bascis, that happens to me too when I read a series with interruptions. I mean when I read other books between those from the series. But someday I will read a series from the beginning to the end, still not the case with George R.R. Martin because he didn’t finished his series yet :)
August 26th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
That’s why I usually try not to read series already in progress… My bad memory + authors taking their sweet time to finish something = BAD combination.
Good thing I only discovered The Dark Tower after it was all published, waiting 20+ years would have sucked immensely.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:41 am
I love “A Song of Ice and Fire” and find myself rereading bits of it when a new book is released. (Least it hasn’t reached Robert Jordan like length yet.)
When the last book in “The Wheel of Time” series is released I plan to go back and reread the whole lot just to try and get all the millions of characters straight in my head. Though I do look at the shelf containing the whole series so far and realise that it could take a while to do.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
You’re a brave man… I don’t think I’ve got what it takes.
(I also got bored of WoT around the first half of book 1, but I hope one day I do give it a shot and at least read the first volume.)