Review: A Game of Thrones


Title: Game of Thrones
Author: George R.R. Martin
Genre: High Fantasy
Rating: 4/5

I went into this book a little nervously: people either seemed to love or hate it, and generally when half the world loves a book, I'm in the latter camp. I grew up on fantasy novels, but over the past few years I'd switched over to sci-fi, but after some glowing recommendations from a few friends I decided to give this a try. I'm glad I did - I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would.

Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some aspects of this book that I didn't like (Daenerys, I'm looking at you). I know it has something to do with the historical context, but it was disturbing how young all the girls were when they were getting married and having children. Also, I felt like it was very unnecessary for all the men to have whores and mistresses (if the word "manhood" comes up as much in the next few books, I'm going to scream). Can't there be one healthy relationship out of the hundreds of relationships in this book? Daenerys especially drove me nuts for much of the book. She was so meek and submissive towards her brother, and after she is given off to Drogo, she one day decides she likes getting raped and embraces her inner mother-woman. Oh, I forgot to mention: she's THIRTEEN. I kind of aged her to 20-something in my mind, especially because of her role in the end of the book. [Show]

Although I'm usually quite the feminist, I wasn't all that bothered on that front. Of course, Daenerys drove me nuts, but for every Daenerys, Lisa, and Sansa, there was an Arya, Catelyn, and (dare I say it) Cersei. Yes, even though Cersei is a twisted and power-hungry woman, she is certainly not meek and is one of the largest driving forces of this novel. My point is that there were some weak women but there were also strong ones. And while we're on the subject of flawed characters, the men were pretty messed up too, so I don't take offense at the women being messed up.

I really enjoyed the plot twists and the multi-layered characters and world. There is not a single perfectly good or bad character, and the constantly shifting loyalties/betrayals/alliances kept things interesting. My favorite character was Lord Eddard Stark, because he was one of the few truly good characters (but then again Jon Snow is evidence that even he is not as morally upstanding as one would think). [Show Spoiler]

There were just so many characters I wanted to punch in the face, which is quite a strong reaction for me. I didn't know who to trust and who to root for. Although it was about 800 pages (and I was reading during finals week...hehe) I finished in less than a week. This series is seriously addicting!

Comments

  1. I've been reading through your reviews and I saw your spoiler buttons! How do you do add those to a review? :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's this ridiculous html code I found when I googled how to include spoiler tags. Here's the website:
    http://gendou.com/t/26412

    You type in the text you want to hide where it says "spoiler_content" and you can change the tag [Show] to [Show spoiler] so that the link says "show spoiler."

    Hope that helps!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm that html code is ridiculous haha. I'll probably have a couple trial and error rounds with it, but yes, that helps! Thanks Kritika!

    ReplyDelete

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