That's all I have to say as I move closer to the end of
Game of Thrones. If not for those, I might never get any sleep, since all the rest of the characters are so interesting, and the action is getting so good that it's just about impossible to stop reading, even though I'm now maybe two hours past my bedtime.
If you haven't read the novel it gets my highest possible recommendation, but just for the sake of this blog post you need to know that the fantasy tale is told a chapter at a time, with each chapter presented from the POV of a different character. I've not counted them, but the fifty+ chapters in the first book are probably told from a dozen different POVs. Thus the overall story is related in piecemeal fashion, as seen by these different narrators and since they do not proceed in any order, and you never know whose chapter will be up next, there's always a small surprise waiting as you finish a chapter and turn the page.
I always find myself hoping for more from Daenerys, or Arya, or Jon, but I'll happily read a chapter about anyone... anyone save Sansa, whose name just appeared atop page 618 and set me free.
I'll read it eventualy, of course, and it's a measure of Martin's skill that he can move readers to so loathe a major character in his series when she never does anything really bad. She's just this innocent girl who wants everyone to get along and her prince to love her and so on and so forth, and it's not really her fault that she's such an idiot... but I feel no guilt at all about hating her anyway.
Also,
Game of Thrones is the only novel in the series that
I have thus far reviewed, and my review was written after I first read it, when I hadn't gotten that involved in the series. I'm not going to re-review it after this second read is finished, but I might at least throw in new (higher) scores for it, since I'm enjoying it enormously; far more than I did the first time, and the change is almost entirely due to me having read books 2 and 3, and now knowing enough to keep all of the characters and vast plot intrigues straight.
My initial review scores were as follows:
Game of Thrones, by George R R Martin
Plot: 6
Concept: 4
Writing Quality: 8
Characters: 7
Humor: 7
Page Turner: 5
Rereadability: 7
Overall: 7
I'm tempted to throw up a bunch of 9s and 10s, (especially for plot and characters and rereadability) since it's really that good, but I'm going to wait and get through books 2 and 3 before I write a review for either of them or adjust this first one.
Game of Thrones certainly deserves 9s and above compared to every other fantasy novel out there, but I suppose I've got to review it with some implied comparison to the other novels in the series, and since I haven't read them in two years, and haven't reviewed them ever, I need to refresh my memory. Plus, with books 4 and 5 coming out later this year, I wanted to reread them anyway, just for my own enjoyment.
I also brought book 2 along with me, and if dad had lain unconscious in the hospital a few days longer, I might be halfway through it by now, rather than still 300 pages from the end of book 1. Curse his speedy recovery!
