In a world where the approaching winter will last four decades, kings and queens, knights and renegades struggle for control of a throne. Some fight with sword and mace, others with magic and poison. Beyond the Wall to the north, meanwhile, the Others are preparing their army of the dead to march south as the warmth of summer drains from the land. After more than a decade devoted primarily to TV and screen work, Martin (The Armageddon Rag, 1983) makes a triumphant return to high fantasy with this extraordinarily rich new novel, the first of a trilogy. Although conventional in form, the book stands out from similar work by Eddings, Brooks and others by virtue of its superbly developed characters, accomplished prose and sheer bloody-mindedness. Although the romance of chivalry is central to the culture of the Seven Kingdoms, and tournaments, derring-do and handsome knights abound, these trappings merely give cover to dangerous men and women who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. When Lord Stark of Winterfell, an honest man, comes south to act as the King's chief councilor, no amount of heroism or good intentions can keep the realm under control. It is fascinating to watch Martin's characters mature and grow, particularly Stark's children, who stand at the center of the book. Martin's trophy case is already stuffed with major prizes, including Hugos, Nebulas, Locus Awards and a Bram Stoker. He's probably going to have to add another shelf, at least.
Author: George R. R. Martin
Series: A Song of Ice and Fire
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Bantam; First edition (August 1, 1996)
Media type: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audio Book
Pages: 704 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0553103540
Followed by: A Clash of Kings
Publication date: 6 August 1996
Reader Review
Well plotted and paced; excellent, fresh fantasy tale
First off, I'm a heavy duty fan of GRRM. I've read over a 100 different fantasy authors in my time (started at 12; I'm now 32). Took about 5 years off from the genre b/c I felt it was all getting too formulaic and cliched.
So, when I came back to fantasy at the end of 1999, I read the usual: Goodkind, Jordan, etc. and then someone told me about GRRM and man, that was the kicker!
Here are the reasons to choose GRRM. I've also listed the reasons not to choose him to make it fair b/c I know their are certain personalities who won't like this series:
WHY TO READ GRRM
(1) YOU ARE TIRED OF FORMULAIC FANTASY: good lad beats the dark lord against impossible odds; boy is the epitome of good; he and all his friends never die even though they go through great dangers . . . the good and noble king; the beautiful princess who falls in love with the commoner boy even though their stations are drastically different . . . you get the idea. After reading this over and over, it gets old.
(2) YOU ARE TIRED OF ALL THE HEROES STAYING ALIVE EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE UNDER CONSTANT DANGER: this gets even worse where the author kills a main hero off but that person comes back later in the story. Or, a hero does die but magic brings him back.
This sometimes carries to minor characters where even they may not die, but most fantasy authors like to kill them off to show that some risked the adventure and perished.
(3) YOU ARE A MEDIEVAL HISTORY BUFF: this story was influenced by the WARS OF THE ROSES and THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR.
(4) YOU LOVE SERIOUS INTRIGUE WITHOUT STUPID OPPONENTS: lots of layering; lots of intrigue; lots of clever players in the game of thrones. Unlike other fantasy novels, one side, usually the villain, is stupid or not too bright.
(5) YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BIASED OPINIONS AND DIFFERENT TRUTHS: GRRM has set this up where each chapter has the title of one character and the whole chapter is through their viewpoint. Interesting tidbit is that you get their perception of events or truths. But, if you pay attention, someone else will mention a different angle of truth in the story that we rarely see in other novels. Lastly and most importantly, GRRM doesn't try to tell us which person is right in their perception. He purposelly leaves it vague so that we are kept guessing.
(6) LEGENDS: some of the most interesting characters are those who are long gone or dead. We never get the entire story but only bits and pieces; something that other fantasy authors could learn from to heighten suspense. Additionally, b/c the points of views are not congruent, we sometimes get different opinions.
(7) WORDPLAY: if you're big on metaphors and description, GRRM is your guy. Almost flawless flow.
(8) LOTS OF CONFLICT: all types, too; not just fighting but between characters through threats and intrigue.
(9) MULTILAYERED PLOTTING; SUB PLOTS GALORE: each character has their own separate storyline; especially as the story continues and everyone gets scattered. This is one of the reasons why each novel is between 700-900 pages.
(10) SUPERLATIVE VARIED CHARACTERS: not the typical archetypes that we are used to in most fantasy; some are gritty; few are totally evil or good; GRRM does a great job of changing our opinions of characters as the series progress. This is especially true of Jaime in book three.
(11) REALISTIC MEDIEVAL DIALOGUE: not to the point that we can't understand it but well done.
(12) HEAPS OF SYMOBLISM AND PROPHECY: if you're big on that.
(13) EXCELLENT MYSTERIES: very hard to figure out the culprits; GRRM must have read a lot of mystery novels.
(14) RICHLY TEXTURED FEMALE CHARACTERS: best male author on female characters I have read; realistic on how women think, too.
(15) LOW MAGIC WORLD: magic is low key; not over the top so heroes can't get out of jams with it.
REASON TO NOT READ GRRM
(1) YOU LIKE YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS: GRRM does a good job of creating more likeable characters after a few die. But, if that isn't your style, you shouldn't be reading it. He kills off several, not just one, so be warned.
(2) DO NOT CARE FOR GRITTY GRAY CHARACTERS: if you like more white and gray characters, this may unsettle you. I suggest Feist or Goodkind or Dragonlance if you want a more straight forward story with strong archetypes.
(3) MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEWS TURN YOU OFF: if you prefer that the POVS only go to a few characters, this might be confusing for you.
(4) SWEARING, SEX: there's a lot of it in this book just as there is in real life.
(5) YOU DEMAND CLOSURE AT THE END OF EVERY BOOK: this isn't the case for all stories in the series. Some are still going on; some have been resolved; others have been created and are moving on.
(6) IF YOU WANT A TARGET OR SOMEONE TO BLAME: this can be done to some extent but not as much. This is b/c he doesn't try to make anyone necessarily good or evil.
(7) ARCHETYPES: some readers like archetypal characters because it's comfortable; we like the good young hero (sort of like Pug in Feist's THE RIFTWAR SAGA); it's familiar and we sometimes like to pretend we're this upcoming, great hero. You wont' get much of this in GRRM with the exception of one or two characters.
(8) LENGTH: you don't want to get into a long fantasy epic series. In that case, look for shorters works as this is biiig.
(9) PATRIARCHY: men are most of the main characters with lots of power (one female exception).
- by MISTER SJEM "sonofhotpie"
Exceeded my wildest expectations...and I expect a *lot*.
I see where a reviewer below faulted A GAME OF THRONES for being so chock-full of "tragedy, bloodshed, cruelty, death, rape, incest, drunkeness, murder, (and) infanticide."
Heh. Where I come from, that's a five-star recommendation.
Glibness aside, the person has a point. A GAME OF THRONES is indeed a graphic, viciously unsentimental novel. It features all the offenses listed above and more besides. It revels in them.
Can't you people see? That's the *point.*
The writers of heroic fantasy like to write about huge and epic struggles between capital-letter Good and Evil. Yet over and over again they demonstrate only the most puerile understanding of what good and evil actually are. In their blinkered, constrained little worlds, "evil" consists of sitting in a dank tower all day sending orcs or demons or what-have-you after the Crampon of Justice or some similarly-named hogwash artifact. Not even the darkest of their generic Dark Lords would be caught boffing his own sister or murdering a child (much less get away with it), and in that fundamentally nonsensical bit of characterization lies the crux of their problem: by sticking horns and a lightning staff onto a one-dimensional pulp villain and calling it Ultimate Evil, they cheapen and debase *real* good and evil.
I'm sure most of these writers realize this perfectly well; the problem is that they're writing to one of the most idiotically attenuated audiences on the face of the planet, people who really want to read the same book over and over ad infinitum with just enough variation from the template to create the illusion of difference. It's a sad state of affairs when we consider that fantasy, which should rightly be the domain of myth, wonder, and what Warren Ellis calls "mad, beautiful ideas," is the second most rigidly unimaginative genre out there (right behind romance, with whom it shares more than a few readers and tropes).
The "Song of Ice and Fire" series is a show-stopping six volume call to arms against this nonsense. Readers who come to the novels expecting another eminently predictable generic quest might be lulled to quiescence in the first few innocuous chapters, but will awake - sooner or later - to the unsettling realization that they're playing George R.R. Martin's game now. In A GAME OF THRONES, he systematically slaughters every sacred cow of "heroic fantasy" and, in so doing, injects a vigor and a zest for life and the written word into the genre that hasn't been seen since the beautiful insanity of Tolkien. Heroes die and villains turn out to be not so bad after all. Magic appears only very rarely, making it infinitely more interesting. The plot steadfastly refuses to go where you'd expect. And lest you purists think that Martin holds fantasy in contempt, consider this: unlike practically every other fantasy writer out there, he's gone to the trouble of writing this novel as if it were the most serious literature: his characters and their motivations are fully fleshed out (Eddard Stark and Tyrion Lannister are especially well-done), his prose is exciting and full of witty and lovely turns of phrase, and his themes are complex and multilayered. In other words, he's actually assumed that his readership is *intelligent.*
After reading this and China Meiville's PERDIDO STREET STATION, I have renewed hope for the future of fantasy. Works like these deserve to be read, reread, and passed to friends; they yank the genre - and its readers - out of bed and lead it blinking and cursing into the light of genuine literary merit.
- by Jacob G Corbin
After a hiatus from SF and fantasy fiction writing spent working in television, George R.R. Martin came home. And — who'd have thunk it? — he threw his hat into the epic fantasy ring with jaw-dropping results, beating Brooks, Jordan, Goodkind, et al at their own game with the effortless confidence of a consummate, seasoned pro. It's almost as if Martin was saying to himself, "Well, I guess I better show these kids how it's done."
A Game of Thrones is a knockout, a bullseye, a touchdown, a home run with bases loaded. A gargantuan fantasy saga set in a world where seasons last years, it earns the right to be called an epic by virtue of its sweeping and engrossing story, and the most believable and human cast of characters to populate a fantasy this side of Guy Gavriel Kay. Sure, it's a bit of a chore to keep track of all of them, but Martin rewards stalwart readers with the kind of storytelling most fantasy writers can only dream of pulling off. Multiple plotlines abound, intrigues pile upon intrigues, and virtually none of it flags or falters despite the book's nearly 900-page length. While many authors seem to think that all you have to do to write an epic fantasy is make it really, really long, Martin knows you've gotta fill all those pages with a narrative that engaginges your readers' hearts and minds, their empathy and their intellect, and keeps them glued.
Martin's epic is set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, on a world in which summers can last a decade or more, and winters nearly a century. Eddard Stark is lord of the Keep of Winterfell, who finds himself hosting a surprise visit from his old friend and king of all the realm, Robert Baratheon. Eddard once aided Robert in an uprising against the ruling Targaryens, and only he seems aware just how dangerous Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, and indeed the entire Lannister House, really is. Cersei has designs upon the throne for her snot of a son, Joffrey, and will evidently stop at nothing to achieve her ends. King Robert asks Eddard to take the position of King's Hand — sort of like his prime minister — as the previous hand, Jon Arryn, has met with an untimely death. Eddard accepts only out of duty, for his wife Catelyn has told him that her sister, Arryn's widow, is convinced Queen Cersei is behind his poisoning. Robert, though he dislikes his wife, remains blissfully ignorant of the extent of her intrigues.
Eddard's appointment begins under a cloud. One of his youngest sons, Bran, nearly dies in a horrible fall that leaves him paralyzed and comatose, and which we know was no accident. Bran has inadvertently stumbled upon one of Cersei's darkest secrets, and nearly pays with his life. After Eddard is miles away from Winterfell, at court in King's Landing, Bran awakens from his stupor, and though he cannot remember what it was he saw, Catelyn and the eldest Stark son, Robb, are now convinced that the Lannisters are up to absolutely no good. Catelyn hurries off to King's Landing to warn her husband, leaving Robb in charge of Winterfell, a 15-year-old boy suddenly thrust into the position of Lord.
It is easy to forget just how hard it is in a novel to create a living, breathing, fully three-dimensional character until you see it done by a genuinely gifted talent. Among the more memorable players in this game are Tyrion Lannister, the black sheep of the Lannister clan, stunted by dwarfism. At first the one member of Cersei's family remotely sympathetic to the Starks, he finds himself swept up in the growing turmoil between the two families until all of his skills at conniving must be brought to bear simply to stay alive. Jon Snow, a bastard son of Eddard's, rejected by Catelyn, joins the Night's Watch, a legion whose duty it is to guard an immense wall far to the north, beyond which lies a fearsome supernatural threat to the Seven Kingdoms. And in a fascinating subplot, we meet princess Daenerys Targaryen, one of the last surviving heirs to that unseated regime. Living in exile in a land far across the ocean (the book doesn't even provide a map to it) and having been wedded to a savage but noble warlord, she dreams of returning to her homeland one day and seeing the Targaryen name and its power restored.
Martin has an ability to go for the gut that most of his contemporaries in the fantasy genre simply lack, because they also happen to lack his character development skills. Whether in its bloody and savage battle scenes or in its intimate portrayal of the bonds of family and brotherhood, A Game of Thrones has a raw emotional force that hits you where it counts while avoiding the graphic excesses of, say, Terry Goodkind. Much of the time you do feel you're being manipulated — there are certain characters you simply want to see die in the most agonizing possible way, and occasionally Martin pays off — but it's being done so expertly you don't mind.
There is an exhilarating quality to this story that has been absent in fantasy, which has in turns been stultifed by literary pretensions or hamstrung by recursive, self-referential humor, for who knows how long. Martin's tale mostly dispenses with such post-Tolkien clichés as wizards and elves and spells and dark lords, turning its focus to real people and only hinting at supernatural or mystical goings-on behind the scenes. Thus the whole saga feels more like historical fiction than formula fantasy. In spite of its length, one factor for which I criticize epic fantasies on general principle most of the time, the book almost never flags in its pace. Martin's conceit of finishing most of his chapters with a cliffhanger keeps you wired, athough the multicharacter and multiplot nature of the story can make it terribly frustrating when you're presented with a shocking turn of events only to be suddenly thrust into another scene, without being able to get any sort of resolution for another 60 or so pages. But mostly, Martin balances his story well, leaving, in the end, only a few characters' narratives lacking closure — a situation successfully calculated to have you clamoring for the next book.
Dazzling in the scope of its legendry and in its heartfelt humanity, A Game of Thrones signals the onset of perhaps the most significant work of fantasy since Bilbo found the One Ring. True, that is a claim that critics and readers have made time and time again about virtually every fantasy saga to see print, but until now, in all honesty, it's been hyperbole. With A Song of Ice and Fire, it may well be true. This is one that will go beyond the status of bestseller into honest-to-goodness classic.
- by SF Reviews
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