A review by annacttn
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

4.0

This book makes for an incredibly tedious and long read because the “mystery” element of the plot—the interconnection of Jon Arryn’s death and Bran’s “accident”—isn’t a mystery to the reader. You read from the viewpoints of multiple different characters and can easily connect the different pieces of the Lannister conspiracy, but the characters are often half a continent’s distance apart and never interact, so it takes them 600 pages to put together what you’ve known from page 50. And it’s just badly paced, anyways: Daenerys chapters are interspersed once every 150+ pages of the book and are strung out months apart like pearls on a string. But her chapters and the young Stark kids + Jon make the most compelling and interesting reads, anyways.