A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, book one

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.(description from Amazon.com)

An absolutely epic series opener.

I can't even really decide what to say about this book. I watched the first season of Game of Thrones on HBO and decided I had to read these books. (Not to mention I had seriously good recommendations to read these from about five really trusted friends - Geri, Jen, McKean...I'm looking at you guys, especially! :P) I'm so glad I did not just decide to watch the show. Yes, the show is awesome...seriously if you don't get HBO, when the DVDs come out, get it from the library...seriously. You will not regret it! But...the book gives you sooo much more background info.

There were a lot of political and family histories that I did not understand all the nuances of as I watched the show. Martin has so many characters and intricate plot lines going at once that you need to have the explanations that you can't get visually. Martin is a storytelling genius that manages to keep track of a million things and has built a world so EPIC that it defies all expectations. I am in total awe of his abilities as a writer and as a reader, I just want to dive right back into this fascinating world.

For a thousand and one almost unexplainable reasons, I have to give this book a GOLD STAR review. If I did double gold star reviews, this book would get one.



If you love fantasy, you MUST give this series a try.

Now, the book size can be daunting...each book has around 800 pages...but, I read this on my Nook, a few chapters at a time between other books and it was very manageable that way. I'm not sure I can read the second book that slowly, as I will probably read it before the second season of the show comes out and I'll be dying to know what happens, but I do plan to get it on my Nook because an 800 page book is SO much easier to carry around that way!! LOL.

Final thoughts - I had a dream when I was little that I would grow up to have a baby dragon that rode around on my shoulder. This was directly related to reading Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger, Dragonsong, and Dragondrums several times as a child. Imagine how my heart sang when I discovered a very similar scenario in this book????