Cultivated Nonsense » fantasy

Re-Reading Old Favorites

Jason — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:54:36 +0000

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

George R.R. Martin

Lately I've been in a bit of a fantasy mood so instead of reading this book my parents let me borrow (Critical Judgement by Michael Palmer. One of those "everybody in the world gets sick" sort of books), I've decided to re-read the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin.

The first reason for this would be my friend Wassy has been borrowing them from me and finally got around to actually putting some time into reading them. Hearing her talk about the books has made me want to jump onto the bandwagon again and check out some of my favorite books of all time again. The second was that A Game of Thrones became the monthly book for the online Sci-fi/fantasy book club Sword & Laser, created by Tom Meritt and Veronica Belmont.

And as many times as I've read this book before, I could just keep on reading it over and over again. It's one of the greatest works of fantasy literature ever written and, hopefully once the entire series is done (come on George, get a move on!) it'll be looked back on as one of the classics of the genre.

If you've never read it, A Song of Ice and Fire is pretty intense for a fantasy novel. In a genre filled with magic and strange creatures, George R.R. Martin paints a more gritty, down to earth world. Magic does play a part, but it's not the end all force that it is in some worlds and is rare enough where it really means something when it comes up. It deals with adult themes and situations, but in ways where they make sense within the context of the book.

But the best thing it does is character development. George R.R. Martin is a master at creating characters. There's many main characters in this series (with 20 characters sharing the spotlight across the 4 written books). But each character is seperate, and fully realized with their own motivations and views of the world around them. A big part of the character development comes from the point of view. The book maintains a third person limited point of view but with each chapter the main focus of the narrator shifts to one of the main characters. Things that happened earlier in the book often times seem like one thing but are actually something else when seen from the eyes of different characters. It also really gives you the chance to spend time with individual characters and get to know how they act and think as they all have differing motivations and moral codes.

If you enjoy fantasy novels and you're looking for something sophisticated and you have not read A Song of Ice and Fire…I highly recommend it. Just be warned, the series is not yet finished. And the author is taking his sweet time in doing so. But it's worth getting started anyway, in my opinion.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend

The Wheel Of Time

Jason — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 13:30:15 +0000

Robert Jordan - The Eye Of The World

Wow, I really cant’ believe that I had trouble getting into this book. I just finished reading The Eye of The World by Robert Jordan, the first book in the Wheel of Time series and once I got past the 70 page barrier that I was never able to get past before, this book was great.

I wonder why it took me so long to actually start reading this series? I’ve been a big fan of Fantasy type novels for a good long while and have always had my eye on it. I just never got around to reading it I guess.

I’m currently fighting temptation to run to the store and pick up book 2. I knew I should have grabbed it while I was there on Saturday on my failed cooking book expedition.

QotD: Written By Yours Truly

Jason — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 10:58:46 +0000

If you could write a book about anything, what would it be about?

If it was a fiction book, probably some sort of either sci-fi or fantasy story . That’s what I read mostly anyway and what interests me most of the time. I actually started writing some short stories a while back, but then I realized I was not a gifted creative writer, so I left that up to the professionals.

Nonfiction, it would probably be some sort of book on City of Heroes since I know enough about that to write it I kinda sorta already write for that anyway with my guide postings. Not too big of a leap to write an actual book. Either City of Heroes or some type of computer related thing.

And if I could write any book in the world, it’d probably be some kind of handbook on social interaction that explained how to do it right in any situation you could possibly come across. Because I could certainly use something like that…