Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - A Game of Thrones

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,

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.

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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madzia's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.75

it is not that bad as i heard. It's amazing book, obviously with some guestionable scenes. What can i say more? I love some characters and hate the others. The world is stunning and all of the creatures, dragons (even if the appeared in the last chapter), direwolfs and everything else. The plot is that literally everyone eventually dies, but for sure i will read the rest of the books in the series

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priya_can_read's review

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

3.25

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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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mindaee's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I want to preface this review by saying I’ve seen the first season of the TV show before reading this book. However, I think the book is really good! Very good pace, at times uncomfortable- as expected when Dany is 13/14 years old and so forth- but overall had me wanting to know what happens next (even though I already knew all along!). I’m excited to move onto the next book.

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minzzi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

George RR Martin accomplished two very hard things with this book: Criating an entire world from scratch that is beliveble and making each character with a POV sound like their own person. Everytime there was a description of a place, person or cultural aspect, the picture of Westeros became more and more clear in my mind. Truly amazing worldbuilding.
Having said that, I also think that this book was a bit to long and certainly dragged at parts. There were whole chapters comprised of pages of nothing with one tidbit of important information throw in the middle, all POVs suffered from that problem.
I also found some of the charaters just plain annoying. Calelyn and Ned's poor decision making through out the whole story made me so mad. After a certain point, everything that happens of bad in this book can be traced back their shitty choices. And the more you learn about the other characters and how intelligent they are and how deep their scams go, the poor choices of those two only becomes more obvious and infuriating. Also, I didn't really care for Daenerys, mostly she just made me sad. I'm sure she will be one of the important figures in this series, but it's hard to read her story when all of it is just her being sexualy abused and beaten. News flash, being raped doesn't make anyone stronger or more powerful. And for all the people that said her relationship with Drogo was cute and romantic, please point me to what book you read, because clearly it wasn't this one.
On the other hand, I really liked Tyrion, Arya and Jon, they are my favorites for now. Specially the last two, who have the combination of smarts and stubborness that I like. Bran seems to be in the brink of some kinda of magical awakening and I'm all here for it. And, contrary to most of what I have seen online, I didn't dislike Sansa. Sure she has a lot o character development to make, but she is just a scared child that no one bothered to tell about the dangers of the real world.
When it comes to characters who didn't have a POV, I'm very interested in Varys, he seens to have big plans on the works behind everyone's backs. I also loved to hate the Lannisters, except Joffrey, he is just an asshole.

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thebibliobibuli's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

4.0

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