Reviews with content warning for Violence - A Clash of Kings

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

90 reviews

crystalstarrlight's review against another edition

4.0

Bullet Review:

Was that really 30 discs worth of a book?! I've gone through 9 disc books in more time!

Really enjoyed this, maybe more than the first one. Some really big plot twists in this one - more than one made me gasp and run for confirmation to Wiki.

Full review:

You know, there are three kinds of reviews I really hate to write:

1) I wanted to love the book SO MUCH (maybe because so many of my friends loved it), and I hated it.

2) I felt meh about the book. There wasn't really anything WRONG with the book, but there was also nothing really extraordinary to talk about.

3) I loved the book, but really, a review saying, "I love this and this and this and oh yeah, this was awesome too!" is exceptionally boring.

This review is Option 3.

A Game of Thrones was a great start to the series, but I'll admit, as I listened, I got lost a couple of times and wasn't 100% sold on its awesomeness. I held back that fifth star so that the series would have some room to sell me.

Which is exactly what "A Clash of Kings" did.

ACoK is exactly what every moviemaker attempts to do when creating a sequel - bigger, better, louder, faster, more awesome, scarier, whatever. ACoK takes new chance, goes to new places, pushes characters in new directions and throws the most INCREDIBLE plot twists and character changes at you.

I'd go into more detail about what I liked and why, but...spoilers. Seriously, people, this is good enough you shouldn't let yourself be spoiled and actually experience it by reading or listening.

I was going to end by talking about my favorite characters, but I realize that may have some spoilers too. So instead, here's a list of my favorite characters, and if you wanna talk about why they are my favorites, let's move it to the comments:

Favorite Characters

Daenerys Targaryen
Catelyn Stark
Tyrion Lannister (DUH!!!)
Sansa Stark
Cersei Lannister
Ned Stark
Asha Greyjoy
Khaal Drogo

Least Favorite Characters

Viserys Targaryen
Theon Greyjoy
Bran

The Song of Ice and Fire series is really endearing itself to me. I love its balance of fantasy and realism; I love how the characters are flawed, how so many women play such diverse and important roles, how you can never quite predict what will happen. I can't wait to start up on the HBO Season 2 and then proceed to book 3!

CONTENT NOTE: I get that some people may not like to read books with incest, rape, and graphic violence (along with CHARACTERS being sexist, racist, etc.). This book has all of these items and a bit more. So while I do heartily recommend, I also want to warn people that these items are present.

Content Warnings

onyxisalive's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

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

4.0

I really enjoyed reading this.
This book has changing POV's, but, surprisingly, they are all super engaging and fun to read - I love how much character progression we got to see with this one (especially the female characters), it is really awesome to see them starting to become more independent and mature.
I really like the characters they picked to be the POV characters. By doing it the way they did it really shows how big the world is - however, there are a few events in the books that I would have liked to see happen, but it makes sense why we did not.
At certain points the descriptions felt a little long, but it never got so bad that I stopped enjoying reading the book.

The sack of kings landing felt a lot more weighty in here compared to show which I really liked. The battle of the blackwater was really good, but there were points, in my opinion, that it dragged a little, but was overall very awesome to read.

The characters actions felt very consistent with everything we had seen of them in the book.

This book, despite all the action felt very character focused, much of the combat happens off screen despite being called a clash of kings. However, as a very character driven person I did not mind this, and as I was already attached to all the characters because of the show I really enjoyed this one. On the other hand, it would have been nice to see some more of the events happen on screen, but I did like that it focused more of the impact of the events on the characters rather than the events themselves, for me, it made it a much more engaging read.

All in all, I really enjoyed this. Never at any point did this book feel really boring, I was engaged the whole way through. I could see some people struggling with this due to how character focused it is, especially in the middle.

Content Warnings