Book review: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Something of a prequel to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place in his fictional world of Westeros about 100 years before the events of A Game of Thrones, and collects three novellas Martin had previously published separately about Dunk and Egg. The former is a hedge knight - a wandering knight who doesn't owe allegiance to any particular house or lord - and the latter his 11-year-old squire, but secretly a prince of the ruling Targaryen family. Compared to the intrigues of the main novels these prequels are pretty straightforward - Dunk earns his spurs at a tournament, helps an elderly knight fend off his aggressive neighbour, and then gets caught up in a political plot at another tournament - and not quite as full of gratuitous sex and violence (I mean, loads of people die, several horses come to a sticky end and someone's brains fall out, but I did say this was in comparison to A Song of Ice and Fire.) It's kind of like a violent fairytale, enjoyable but Martin's claim in the epilogue that many more Dunk and Egg stories will follow might be a bit optimistic, given the speed at which he writes.

Book review: A Dance with Dragons II: After the Feast

It's taken me nine months - admittedly including taking breaks to read things that aren't A Song of Ice and Fire - but I've finally got to the end of the 5 volumes published so far. I did kind of expect George R.R. Martin to announce that The Winds of Winter would suddenly be available today and I'd be behind again, but I'm all caught up now with the second half of A Dance with Dragons. I can certainly see why people complain about the action stalling quite a lot, and by this stage there's too many characters to keep track of some of the time, but there are some significant developments going on. Although there's still two novels to go, finally the Epilogue of After the Feast has a bit of a twist with the return of a major character who's been gone for a long time, and which suggests that the story is getting ready to start wrapping itself up - although in a typically messy way, I'm sure.

I've still been enjoying the ride, or I wouldn't have read all the books more or less continuously, but I'm looking forward to getting back to reading something different as well.

Book review: A Dance with Dragons I: Dreams and Dust

Well I've been reading them on and off since last October but I'm now almost up to date with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice books, at least those published so far. But not quite, as A Dance with Dragons is another one of those so long it had to be split into two parts. Reading them more or less continuously has meant individual installments haven't always stood out, and I do sometimes wish the story would move on a bit quicker. But Dreams and Dust does have one interesting development in that Melisandre has become a POV character; there's only been one chapter from her perspective so far but it's a bit of a twist to have one of the most mysterious and scary characters become the nearest thing to a narrator the books have. Already we see a bit more insecurity from her once we're in her head, but there'll need to be a lot more twists in the rest of the story if I'm going to sympathise with her. After all, she's still a religious loony whose default response to any problem is "let's burn someone alive!"

Book review: A Feast for Crows

Now this is just a wild stab in the dark here, but I think George R.R. Martin might have a thing for women with big dark nipples.

I wonder if the "generic landscape" covers for A Song of Ice and Fire have gone down like a cup of cold sick because I was browsing in Waterstones the other day and they all seemed to have vanished, with the old covers back. At least using the Giant's Causeway for A Feast for Crows is on-theme for the book, as a lot of it starts to concentrate on what's going at the Iron Islands.

As well as this shift of focus this is a particularly female-led instalment, with only two main male point-of-view characters (Jaime and Samwell) and the women really starting to take power for themselves - Cersei doing so increasingly dementedly, which is always fun. And there's a lot of Brienne of Tarth, so I was always going to like this one.

As I understand it the next season of the TV show will mix this book and the following one, but as that's another two-volume mammoth (as well as being the last of the books so far published) I'm going to take another break for something a bit different before tackling A Dance With Dragons.

Book review: A Storm of Swords II: Blood and Gold

As I suspected when I read the first volume, A Storm of Swords volume II, Blood and Gold, does indeed contain a lot more action, including both the red and purple weddings. As someone who started with the Game of Thrones TV series first and then went back to the books, what's most exciting here for me is getting to parts that haven't turned up on TV yet. I'm ploughing straight on with the next one now, the only worrying thing being that I've been getting through these books a lot quicker than I expected, and there's only two more published novels (albeit another one of those is so long as to have been split into two volumes) left. Then I have to join everyone else who's grumbling to George R. R. Martin to get books 6 and 7 finished.

Book review: A Storm of Swords I: Steel and Snow

After a break I'm back to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, hoping to get ahead of the Game of Thrones TV series. I've still got a way to go though, and the third novel A Storm of Swords is the first that was so long it got split into two volumes. The first half, Steel and Snow, comes in the wake of all the big battles at the end of A Clash of Kings, so rather than a huge amount of action there's a lot of politics and scheming. So I can see why the TV series didn't follow the same order but personally I enjoy reading about intrigues more than I do descriptions of action sequences, so I really liked this installment. I'm going straight on to the second half for the consequences of everything set up in this one.

Book review: A Clash of Kings

I have to say, these new paperback covers for George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, with the generic landscape photos, are a bit dull; but the one for the second book, A Clash of Kings, is also a bit of a mismatched one, as the desert it shows is obviously meant to link to Daenerys' story, but she doesn't actually appear in this part of the story much, with only four or five chapters from her POV.

What's actually going on in this novel is a fight for the throne that she's not quite ready to join yet, as Robb Stark and both Stannis and Renly Baratheon all stake their claim to the throne that Joffrey, not actually the dead king Robert's son, is falsely sitting on.

Again I enjoyed reading the story I'd seen on TV, as well as seeing those areas where the two versions started to diverge, the TV version understandably having simplified certain elements. The next installment is one of those so long it got split into two volumes, so I'm taking a break now to read other things, but I'll probably be heading back to Westeros in the new year.

Book review: A Game of Thrones

Having, slightly late to the party, got completely wrapped up in the TV version of Game of Thrones, I figured I'd read George R.R. Martin's original A Song of Ice and Fire books to get caught up and maybe even get ahead of the TV series. I'd wanted to read them for a while but the length put me off, as I only really get time to read on buses and trains and it takes me ages to get through even a shorter book, but as it turns out I finished A Game of Thrones in just under a month.

Having some familiarity with the universe and the story obviously helped (it also meant I chuckled every time Jon Snow is described as being close to tears, because I thought "yes, that's the facial expression he can do.") But Martin's prose is also very easy to get on with, detailed without being boring. For anyone who's avoided it so far, it's a fantasy novel but the magical elements are kept very much in the background, the main sweep of the story starting with a murder mystery of sorts, the "Hand of the King" of Westeros having met with a suspicious end. The new Hand, Ned Stark, investigates and discovers that his predecessor might have come across a secret that puts the whole line of succession in question, meaning by the end of the book there's numerous claims on the throne, but only after a lot more backstabbing (metaphorical and literal) and intrigue have gone on.

I don't think I'll read the rest of the series so far in one go (five books published so far, seven if you count the fact that two of them have been split into two volumes each) because I like to mix my reading up a bit, but I am going straight on to A Clash of Kings because I'm happily back in the Ice and Fire universe for now. I'd heard this first book was the one the TV series stuck to most closely, and it is indeed pretty much identical to the first season; I'm interested to see how the two versions diverge a bit more from now on.