Posts tagged george rr 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.