I've read my fair share of fantasy in my time. I love fantasy and sci-fi the most of all genre's, but I have a hard time finding good works, so I read various other fictions more often. I try to stay away from the section of Barnes & Noble's that has all the Dragon Lance books and other such collections: those books are all about war and sex and power and love and tend to have the same plot and the writing is not usually all that good.
My boyfriend read Game of Thrones and we went to Barnes & Noble's together a day or so before graduation and he was buying Clash of Kings (the second book) and he sort of talked me into buying Game of Thrones (I was in a book-buying mood, and it was only $9, so I didn't need much convincing) but I wasn't really interested in it until I got into it. I had already set myself against it, as just another book about war and sex with uninspired characters and a boring plot. But then I met Tyrion Lannister.
Tyrion is not exactly a good guy--the Lannisters are easy to hate as a group, and as far as I can tell, they are the main antagonists--but what I love about him, and so The Song of Fire and Ice in general, is that he's not exactly a bad guy, either. Almost everyone in SoF&I garners my praise one minute and my hatred the next. Tyrion is a "dwarf" (think Warwick Davis, not Gimli) so most everyone either is repulsed by him or discounts him as being human at all. He says at one point, "All dwarves are bastards in their fathers' eyes," which pretty much sums up his relationship with daddy Tywin Lannister. Tyrion cares about those people he meets who are like him; spurned by the world for something they can't control, even if they're not friendly with the Lannisters (and very few of the main characters are). He designs a saddle for the crippled son of Lord Eddard Stark, even though Eddard, his wife Catelyn, and their son Robb are all pretty anti-Tyrion for various reasons. Because of his actions, his thoughts (he's pretty clever), and his wit ("Dwarfs don’t have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head") make him pretty likable, all things considered. But then you remember his Lannister loyalties and you get a little conflicted...
Likewise, Eddard Stark is the pro-est of the protagonists in the first book, and he's clearly the epitome of a "good man." When he, as a Lord, orders someone to be executed, he believes it's his duty to kill them himself. He believes he owes it to them. And he eventually goes to work for the King and urges him to take up the same policy. He believes there is a line to be drawn in war, and that it is suitable to die in order to preserve your own honor. Frankly, though he's a sympathetic character, he's stupid sometimes, and of the many times that I wanted to put the book down and stop reading out of frustration, most of them had to do with Eddard Stark. But even with his stupidities, you want him to win, because you know he's right.
The result of all of this is that, when reading SoI&F, one does not wish for Good to triumph over Evil. There are very few characters on either side that can be divided clearly down those lines. Instead, I find myself cheering on specific characters, noticing the good and evil in every action, and, more often than not, forgetting the whole good/evil dichotomy entirely. I love that. It feels way more real that way, and far less contrived.
And the writing does not suck like so much of the fantasy genre does. There are those cringey moments where Martin describes in detail the clothes someone is wearing or the food that someone is eating, and most of the names are nigh unpronounceable so that, for the first half of the book, the reader is struggling to keep Tyrion, Tywin, and Tyrell apart, and trying to remmeber which Rickon, Eddard, Robert, or Brandon they're talking about. But Tolkien's writing wasn't exactly streamlined and straight-forward, and everyone, including me, hails his works as the first generation of High Fantasy.
That's another thing SoI&F has going for it: the fantasy isn't too hard to relate to. Martin himself says that he took as much inspiration from historical novels as he did from fantasy novels, and the effect is obvious and positive. The magic, ethereal, other worldly stuff in SoI&F is pretty low key: there are legends and superstitions and gods and blood oaths and stuff, but any straight up magic stuff is introduced gradually enough that it's neither too complicated nor too unbelievable. This is a huge stumbling block for me when reading world-building fantasies: when the fantasy has to be explicitly explained to be enjoyed, the explanation had better be worth my time to read, and so often it is not.
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| When you play the game of thrones, either you win or you die. |
I would recommend this book to anyone who...
- Enjoys high fantasy
- Likes medieval-esque historical literature
- Wants to watch the HBO TV show (read the book first!)
- Reads fast or has a lot of empty time coming up (i.e. plane flights from California to Australia and the like)
On a related note, I listened to the audio book a bit and, as a self-proclaimed audio-book connoisseur, I grade it a solid "Not-Annoying." The reader does the voices well enough so that you can tell people apart without hating everyone, and he catches the tone of the narrative pretty well too.
Until next time,
--Mary
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