Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - A Game of Thrones

It was just sooo similar to the show that I wasn’t getting anything new in the story to inspire me to keep going (which is definitely more a commentary on the diligence and attention to detailed paid to the story by the show than anything else.). On the whole not a bad book but just too similar for me.

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samschultz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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shiveryteacup's review

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challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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dannilmp's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I put off reading these books for a long time as I didn't think they would be of any interest for me. Boy was I wrong. While the writing in A Game of Thrones may be misogynistic, uneccesarily violent and gory, involve far too may assult scenes of all kinds, I still enjoyed this novel and the setting of the world.

I think it's the otherworldy mysteries of Beyond the Wall and dragons and remnants of magic that mostly kept me interested in this book. Had it been just a plain world setting as the backdrop I would have put this book down long before the last pages. I enjoyed following through the different perspectives of all the characters and almost getting a dragon's eye view of the entire world rather than just one small section.

On the other hand, the writing is very dark at times, uneccesarily so and involves far more rape, murder and pillaging that I think is ever needed in any series. But it does convey such a sense of darkness to the world and ensures the reader is fully aware that this will not, in any way shape or form, be a happy world.

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vayalanay's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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cepbreed's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

After I finished Game of Thrones I had a conversation with my dad. I told him I loved the series so much and was considering reading the books because I was just that desperate for more content. He very matter of factly told me that reading the books was just "too nerdy." For context my dad is a classics professor who consumes books like he needs them to live, aka he's a nerd of all nerds. If he was telling me this then it genuinely would be too far to start reading, yet here I am not heading his warning and transforming into a total nerd. My new reborn nerd self is now the proud owner of the box set of all released books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

I think the person I was earlier this year would've hated this book so much. Thanks to Kristin Cashore's Graceling Realm series I've matured as a reader and sincerely become a fantasy fan. The slower pace, world building and detail intense writing is exactly what there is to love in the genre and George R. R. Martin is the master of all of those things. I get bored easily, yet even when reading chapter upon chapter of content I've already seen on the screen my attention is held. My biases created by the show definitely are following me into the reading and I find myself dreading certain POVs (...specifically Dany's I KNOW CONTROVERSIAL OPINION) and hanging onto every word of others (Sansa, I love her!), but this just goes to show how masterful Martin is at creating compelling characters people identify with and are passionate about. I just can't wait to get into the next book and start on Jaime and Brienne's interactions!!

Song:

The View Between Villages - Noah Kahan

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fifteenthjessica's review

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

So, this is my second time reading it. After feeling like Wizard of Earthsea was a drudge and a few dnfs, I thought I should reread something I liked, and picked Game of Thrones (first read in summer of 2013) because, for the better part of the year, my urge to write fan fic of it has returned. I spent about a month and a half on this.

I'm still invested in a lot of the characters, both ones who played a major role in this book and ones who don't play a major role or even appear until later, but reading it when you know a lot of the shocking moves,

Spoiler

like Bran's fall, the incest, the death of Eddard Stark,

wasn't as fun for me. George R. R. Martin's prose alternates between gorgeous descriptions and awkward or uncomfortable in ways that I don't think served Martin's goals.

Spoiler

Part of the reason I rooted for Viserys Targaryen's death was because I thought after he died, I'd hear less about 13-14 year old Daenerys Targaryen's breasts and nipples.

Dialogue can be iffy as well. Like, characters who probably haven't talked much all refer to the political games in King's Landing as "the game of thrones" which comes off as a heavy handed title drop. Between how long it took me to read this and Dreamsongs, volume 1 this year, the rest of his writing doesn't do as much for me as his characters.

I have heard a lot of people praise his world building, and as an aspiring writer/actual dungeon master who has dabbled in world building her own fantasy settings, Martin's quality is very inconsistent at best. Daenerys spends a lot of time with the Dothraki over the course of five hefty books, but the culture comes off as very one dimensional and most members of it are forgettable. I don't think I'm alone in remembering all Dothraki characters except Khal Drogo exclusively in terms of their relationship to Dany and maybe a name because they are very unimportant. Heck, there's a short paragraph in one of Dany's later chapters that feels like Martin is just dumping the personality of the youngest of her future bloodriders (Aggo? The three of them really blur together) on us in place of letting it unfold naturally as he interacts with Dany. The culture is mostly a combination of raiding and horses, almost to the point of impracticality (how many horses do they keep if they need them for transportation, fighting, clothing, and meat, plus burn horses in the funeral pyres of their leaders so they have a mount in the afterlife? There's a reason real world horseback nomadic cultures usually herd other animals). This is especially bad if you compare them to the equally raiding focused Ironborn, who in later novels are fleshed out through four point of view characters and with a number of memorable side characters that show that not everyone is raiding every waking hour of the day.

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z4k_cz's review

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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