A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones

George R R Martin

For your sanity and mine I'm going to yank the synopsis from goodreads. It's better for both of us. I promise.

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective wall. To the south, the King's powers are failing, and his enemies are emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the King's new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but also the kingdom itself. A heroic fantasy of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and evildoers who come together in a time of grim omens. The first volume in George Martin's series

There's a lot of hype around Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series right now, what with the HBO show and the release of Dances with Dragon's you've probably been hard pressed to avoid these books. Since you can find a galoption (I am making up numbers! yay creativity!) of reviews all over the interweb and I haven't even started a Clash of Kings yet I am just going to point out a few of my favorite things from A Game of Thrones.

The Stark's - They're your typical principled hero's and that is a very rare characteristic to have in this book. Eddard and his children all have distinct personalities, and most of them are POV characters. My favorite is a toss up between the bastard Jon Snow and Arya. Plus their motto's is "Winter is Coming" and for some reason I think that is really awesome.

Westero - Fantasy worlds are important. Well, they're important in fantasy novels. I don't think they're very important in non fiction or poetry.  Westero is perfectly dissected into parts that are recognizable and things that are fanciful. Plus there are large wolves and dragons. That's kind of awesome.

The Narration - A Game of Thrones is told from the perspective of eight different characters (plus one prologue). It's fascinating to get inside so many heads and hear so many different sides to the same situation. It's also a huge plus to have so much variety in a 800+ page book.

There's More to Look Forward To - While the series is still in progress, there are five of the seven books published and waiting patiently on my kindle. As soon as I finish The Night Circus I'm going to start A Clash of Kings.