The Nature of Things

For "Throwback Thursday," I'm continuing with the rerunning of my reviews of the books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I read beginning in December of 2011. This is number three in the series, A Storm of Swords . ~~~ Monday, December 26, 2011 A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R.R. Martin: A review This series just gets darker and darker. George R.R. Martin continues to show no compunction about killing off his characters. Of course, he's got about a million of them so there are plenty to spare! The clash of the kings continues in this volume. The five contenders for power in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros wage their wars across the face of the land and no one is safe or secure. Robb Stark still rules in the North and has not yet lost a battle. The execrable Joffrey Lannister still sits on the Iron Throne most recently occupied by his putative father, Robert Baratheon. Robert Baratheon's brother, Stannis, has ...

Five years ago, I first became aware of George R.R. Martin and his series of books, A Song of Ice and Fire . I came very late to the party, but it didn't take long for me to become an addict. In December of 2011, I embarked upon a project of reading and reviewing all the Martin books in the series, starting, of course, at the beginning. Here is my review of the first, A Game of Thrones . ~~~ Thursday, December 8, 2011 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1) by George R. R. Martin: A review I have freely admitted that before the HBO series "Game of Thrones," I was not familiar with George R. R. Martin's work. Truly, sometimes my ignorance is just breathtaking.  Once the television series began, I was quickly hooked. It was a rich and fascinating story of families, betrayal, loyalty, human perfidy and cruelty, heroic deeds, all laid over with a mysterious threat to the civilization of the seven kingdoms of Martin's world. The acting was good and the production...

George R.R. Martin's fans have been waiting impatiently since 2011 for the next entry in his fantastically successful Song of Ice and Fire saga. Of course, long-time Martin fans have grown accustomed to waiting. Maybe it is those newcomers among us (like me) who only discovered him after the start of the HBO series Game of Thrones who really haven't absorbed the lessons of the last seventeen years. As all true fans know, Song of Ice and Fire was conceived as a seven book saga. The first entry in the series, which was entitled Game of Thrones , was published in 1996. It took only two years for the next book, A Clash of Kings , to gestate. And then two more years for A Storm of Swords to reach the salivating fandom. But then things slowed down. The books got longer and (if possible) even more complicated and it took five years before A Feast for Crows saw the light of day.  But that was as nothing compared to the SIX YEARS that it took to produce A Dance with Dragons which ...

It was announced this week that George R.R. Martin has co-edited an anthology called Dangerous Women . Moreover, he contributed a novella to the collection called The Princess and the Queen . It is set in Westeros in the time of the Song of Ice and Fire and is about the origins of the war between the Targaryens that split the society apart and led to the ongoing conflicts of House against House that we read about in the first five novels in the series. All of which leads me to wonder just what a novella by Martin would look like. Would it be just 500 pages instead of 1000? Further, it makes me wonder, WTF, George? What the heck are you doing working on a novella and co-editing a freaking anthology when you should be working on that next book? Don't you know we are dying out here? We want to know if Jon is dead or alive. Will we finally find out who his mother (and maybe father because I still suspect it wasn't Ned) was? Has Daenerys Targaryen gotten her dragons under good enoug...

George R.R. Martin is back on his game with this fifth volume in his  A Song of Ice and Fire  saga. He wastes no time in bringing us up to date on the charismatic characters, such as Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister, who were missing from the fourth book, a pale effort compared to the previous three. This book follows those characters and then, in the final third of this very long tale, it brings together many of their stories with some of those that we came to know in the previous book. The paths of the stories converge and one begins to see the faint glimmer of an outline of how the saga may go from here on out. I believe there are at least two more volumes planned and  A Dance With Dragons  certainly leaves enough loose ends to fill them with their conclusions. We can only hope that we will not have to wait as long as fans of the series waited for this book (six years) before  The Winds of Winter , #6 of the "Songs" is delivered to us.  Jon Snow, the 998th ...

"A Lannister always pays his debts" is a refrain that we saw often repeated throughout the first three books of this series. But once Tyrion Lannister paid his debt owed to his father Lord Tywin near the end of  A Storm of Swords , he disappeared and he did not reappear at all in volume four. That is unfortunate since he is easily the most interesting character created by George R.R. Martin in this epic saga, but that's only part of the problem with  A Feast for Crows .  Also among the missing here are Jon Snow (except for a short bit at the beginning), Daenarys Targaryen, and most of the far-flung remaining Starks. Arya and Sansa do appear but they feel tangential.  In fact, most of the characters in this book, many of them new ones that we hadn't heard from before, seem tentative and incomplete. They are not people who engage our attention and sympathies.  And the blood! My god, the blood and gore! The incessant and incredible cruelties perpetrated on these ch...

This series just gets darker and darker. George R.R. Martin continues to show no compunction about killing off his characters. Of course, he's got about a million of them so there are plenty to spare!  The clash of the kings continues in this volume. The five contenders for power in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros wage their wars across the face of the land and no one is safe or secure.  Robb Stark still rules in the North and has not yet lost a battle.  The execrable Joffrey Lannister still sits on the Iron Throne most recently occupied by his putative father, Robert Baratheon.  Robert Baratheon's brother, Stannis, has been defeated and disgraced but still hangs on to his army and still plays the game of thrones. Meanwhile, Stannis' and Robert's other brother, Renly, is dead, possibly the victim of witchcraft.  And, across the sea, Daenerys of the House Targaryen, mistress of the only three dragons in the world, makes her way slowly westward, vowing to reclaim t...

Incest, fratricide, alchemy, the dead rising to walk and kill, cold hearts and cold steel and, of course, dragons -  A Clash of Kings  has all that. It also has strong characters and a fully realized mythical world that seems as real and as current as today's newspaper.  The land of Westeros is in turmoil. Even more turmoil than in  A Game of Thrones . In fact,  A Game of Thrones  seems almost tame by comparison. Yes, George R. R. Martin has definitely kicked it up a notch with this book.  The king who sat on the Iron Throne, Robert Baratheon, is dead, killed by a boar and by the perfidy of his queen, Cersei. His friend and ally, Eddard (Ned) Stark, the Hand of the King, is dead, killed by the newly installed King Joffrey, a cruel and obnoxious 13-year-old boy, son of Cersei and putative son of Robert. Ned was killed, as the previous Hand had also been killed, because he had uncovered a terrible secret about Cersei and her son.  Now the Stark fami...

I have freely admitted that before the HBO series "Game of Thrones," I was not familiar with George R. R. Martin's work. Truly, sometimes my ignorance is just breathtaking.  Once the television series began, I was quickly hooked. It was a rich and fascinating story of families, betrayal, loyalty, human perfidy and cruelty, heroic deeds, all laid over with a mysterious threat to the civilization of the seven kingdoms of Martin's world. The acting was good and the production values outstanding. It was, in short, a very good series. What of the books from which the tale came? I had to find out for myself.  What I have found in reading the first book of the  Song of Ice and Fire  series is that the television series was very true to the book. All the characters and all the action that were part of the series are there in the book. It is an amazing read.  Martin has created a mythical land that seems as though it might have been real in some dim and distant past, per...

I long ago fell under the spell of J.R.R. Tolkien and his hobbits and so I was a prime candidate to enjoy J.K. Rowling's world of wizardry when it came along a few years ago.  I have read and liked all of her books and most of the movies based on them and now, like millions of fans around the world, I'm ready for the final movie which opens today in the United States .  I won't be waiting in line at midnight tonight though.  I'm too much in need of my beauty sleep for that.  No, I'll wait a few days and hope the pandemonium dies down a bit. As a Tolkien and Rowling fan, you would think I would have heard of George R.R. Martin and his work, but I admit I had not until this year.  Then the HBO series "Game of Thrones" started.  My propensity to like fantasy kicked in, and I was quickly hooked. Martin had written four books in his series about the fantasy world of Westeros and the HBO series was based on the first.  After just one episode, HBO realized th...

Yes, I admit it. I am addicted. I'm not quite sure how it happened. I didn't intend it to happen. I only did it really to placate my daughter who insisted that I should. I didn't know what I was getting into. I had never even heard of George R. R. Martin before I started seeing ads for the HBO series based on his fantasy series of books about the continent of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms. But I watched the first episode of " Game of Thrones " when it started on HBO back in April, and now I am hooked. And how do I know that I am hooked? Because I am suffering withdrawal. The last show of the season aired on June 19 and yesterday at the time that the show would normally have been on, "True Blood" started its season. No more "Game of Thrones" until next spring. At 8:00 P.M. last night, I started suffering severe depression. How will I ever survive without my weekly fix? Admittedly, GOT does not fit the profile of my usual choice f...