Author: George RR MartinSeries: A Song of Ice and Fire
Book 1: A Game of Thrones
Book 2: A Clash of Kings
Book 3: A Storm of Swords
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
To celebrate the publishing of the fifth book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, I decided to write a feature on one of the very best fantasy works. It feels like a good excuse to share my love for A Song of Ice and Fire!
A recurrent comparison is to say that George RR Martin is the American JRR Tolkien. My humble opinion is that they share the genius but are opposite writers in so many aspects that I feel it is unfair to equate them. While the Lord of the Rings presents a surge of hope against the greatest evil and draws from ancient myths and ancient epic poems in order to create a high fantasy, heroic setting, A Song of Ice and Fire presents a study of human nature and draws from history and medieval epics tales to present an entirely different result.
The first few chapters of A Game of Thrones hint at a masterful tale. They set up an intriguing premise and deliver a solid piece of low fantasy in its own right. But as we move forward, even before we hit the middle point mark of this first volume, we know that we were wrong – A Song of Ice and Fire is so much more than another tale.
George RR Martin has explained time and again that he dislikes spoilers, that he’d not even write the back blurb for his novels if he could help it... I will try to honor his wishes and give nothing away as I make my point. I will not speak of the perfectly interwoven plot lines, nor of the extreme detail he is able to go into, nor of the consistency of style that immerses the reader into a world not his own.
I will just say that every time I put down one of the volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire I feel as if the real world were bleak in comparison to his. For me, that is the greatest accomplishment for A Song of Ice and Fire: as dreams were created and shattered and events unrolled as inexorably as a snow storm in the dead of winter, not once did I think “it should not have happened like that!”. And it was because it had happened just like that that I could not complain.
This series has made me smile and cry and stand awake into the small hours of the night because I wanted – no, needed to know how the inevitable would befall, how fate would be thwarted. I saw the characters, their hopes, their fears, their actions and their consequences, and that was what kept me inside the world of Westeros. I never saw Mr. Martin’s hand weaving the tapestry behind the scenes. I never saw his words on the page yanking the characters like a puppeteer master to make them obey. I only heard the voices of the characters themselves and I only saw them fighting their own battles, unaware of the grand scheme their lives served to unfold.
The reader will get to know many of those characters and they will not leave him untouched. As the game is played and won and lost, we will find ourselves understanding every side of the conflict. We will love them and hope against all hope that they will be all they may become, we will hold them in contempt and await their failure, we will be surprised and stunned by their actions. We will see them grow and change, alive. And each of those actions will be their own: we will not scream and rage against the author, but against the unfairness of the world, of reality; ultimately, of mankind.
A Song of Ice and Fire is not a tale about Queens of Beauty and shining knights, and heroes who win the day.
It is a tale of greed and betrayal, and of the horrors of war and of the grey, grey souls of man.
I consider myself all the richer for having read this series.
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