A Game Of Thrones

May 25, 2009 | No Comments | @andrewmarcec

A Game Of Thrones is the first book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire series.  At an over eight hundred page count, this book seems a little intimidating to people who aren’t fully involved in fantasy novels, however, if you can make it through the entire book you will be incredibly satisfied.  George R. R. Martin does an amazing job in carefully crafting a world where complex characters live and interact.  The book follows several high born families and their attempts to keep peace throughout the land.

Eddard Stark reigns over Winterfell in the North with his wife Catyln and his several children, one of whom is his bastard son.  His best friend and now king, Robert Baerethon, visits proclaiming that he is pronouncing Eddard the king’s hand and that he and his family is to move south to live in his kingdom.  After much contemplation and waiting due to an accident that leaves one of Eddard’s sons paralyzed from the waist down, the Stark’s decided that Eddard and his two daughters will proceed south with king Robert and his wife Cersi of the house of Lannister.

Unbeknown to the king and his now hand, the house of Lannister is putting to action a plan to usurp the thrown from Robert so that they may rule unuqestioned over the seven kingdoms.  Eddard’s wife Catyln not only discovers their devious plan, but also takes a personal vendetta against the man whom she thinks is responsible for her son’s accident.  The man is a Lannister, and her unlawful act spurrs tension between the houses making war immiant throughout the land.

This book will leave the casual fantasy reader scratching his head after every chapter until about halfway through the book.  Instead of numbered chapters that follow a sequential pattern, George chose to make each chapter character-centric.  This left me confused, and also consulting wiki pages quite a bit so that I could figure out the names of each character, and also the nicknames that are given to them by other characters but never explained.  Once I had sufficiently learned the character’s names this book became immensly more enjoyable to read.

George took special care to create and incredibly believable world for these characters to interact in, and for me to look forward to re-visiting with each read.  The character development is incredibly well rounded (with an exception for the names), and the politics and governing law was so in depth I felt as if I was one of the members of the king’s counsil watching in silence.  This book also takes into consideration several componants of the middle ages of history.  Instead of having mages and fantasy creatures that would appear more in a Lord of the Rings or Dragonlance novels, this book really takes several issues like usurping, treason, and corruption into play.  These types of things can even be related to by people who aren’t into fantasy.  Since this book does such an incredible job of explaining things in detail there is nothing left to question, and can really become the middle ground for excellent book discussion between fantasy and non-fantasy fans alike.

Just remember, when you play the game of thrones you either win, or your die.

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