A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5/5 cats
yup.
nerds, now i am among you.
this is going to be a review where i just prattle on and on about meee meee meee, because let’s face it – there are a million reviews of this puppy out there so i don’t have to worry about doing a disservice to the book. you’ll either read the book or you won’t. but you should: it’s got direwolves.
i wasn’t going to read this. after years of watching hordes of desperate sad-eyed nerds coming up to me, asking “any news on the george r.r. martin release??” (like the bn computer knows more, somehow, than the internet. it doesn’t) and i would have to tell them (not without some schadenfreude-glee) “nope – it has just been moved back another year!!” it gave me a solid sense of “there but for the grace…” like when you see a very young junkie and you congratulate yourself for dodging that particular bullet.
despite what i kept hearing about how awesome the books were, i just filed it away in the mental RA folder of “stuff nerds like” and figured one day i would read them, you know – for research, but not before they were all out – i wasn’t going to get sucked into the trap of so many before me – the waiting game of disappointment and having to reread the older books again and again to keep track of who was even alive at this point. “when you play the game of thrones, you play to become frustrated and impatient.”
i have seen it a hundred times.
so when the teevee show came out and people were drooling over how good it was, i paid them no mind. i pushed it two feet past the “someday” pile in my brain. because i am not one of those people who watch a movie before reading the book, am i??
but connor wore me down. he really wanted me to see it and he wanted to talk to me about it and his bearded little face was all lit from within with enthusiasm and i just couldn’t say no to him.
so i did it. i watched the teeveee. on demand – several episodes in a row, pissed off if i started to get too sleepy to make it through another episode.
so so good.
so now, i had to read it, right? i owe it to the gods of fine literature and all.
so i did, and god this book is fun.
i am glad they changed a few things for the filmed version – i’m not sure i would have been too comfortable watching a thirteen-year-old actress play daenerys.
in the same line of thought – natalie – i know you have not watched the show yet, but your crush on jon snow?? perfectly understandable to someone watching the show – he has that dark brooding thing i can see a girl going for, but if you have only read the books?? girl, your crush is on a fourteen-year-old boy. i have notified the authorities, you perv.
in the end, i am glad i watched the show first, if only so that i know how to pronounce the characters’ names. oh, you crazy high fantasy novels and your names…
alfonso won’t read this series because of the incest and because they never tell you where the soldiers pooped. i am not kidding. several people complain that the seasonal imbalance complicates the growing cycle and where is all their food coming from. this point i can understand – fantasy novels are supposed to care about developing a fully-realized world and all, and that is kind of a major detail, but it doesn’t bother me at all. i am no connoisseur of fantasy- i am a dilettante at best. so i don’t care where people are getting their food – i don’t care if the social hierarchy is a realistic one, given the particulars of this realm, i certainly don’t care where the soldiers are pooping. nor do i care in any novel where and when the characters poop. i just like this book’s quiet intrigues and betrayals. the diplomacy, the lack of hesitation when it is time for a character to be killed off. i love how there aren’t any “good guys” or “bad guys,” only “effective” and “ineffective” characters. every one of them does at least one thing that’ll make a reader go, “oh, bad move.” so he dropped a few details when it comes to agriculture – he spent all his energies into creating characters that i love reading about.there are facets to this thing – sides of the argument rarely seen in a straight-ahead rollicking plot-driven novel.
and i’m not really sure where the misogyny accusations come from. is it because women can’t really ascend to power except through marriage?? because i don’t think that was invented for this book – i am pretty sure that has happened, historically, in other places. and if it’s the looting and raping, well – that happens in war, too. wait, is it sansa?? yeah, she’s kind of a wash. but the girl wants what the girl wants. she’s at least more complicated than bella, right? there are plenty of good characters here that aren’t weak or power-mad, or just regular-mad… okay – there are a couple. but sheeeeit – all the characters here are pretty bad, on the moral spectrum, right? littlefinger is my very favorite, but i wouldn’t want to know him in my real life. i appreciate his devotion, though.
so i am super excited about clash of kings, both the book i will read and the show i will watch. swords and boobies and direwolves. i don’t even know how i am going to make it until then.
oh, because i was talking about boobies and HBO just there, connor was telling me this story about louis ck, and i loved it, and i found this quote. it is relevant!! hbo is nudity-crazy!! but he took care of their lust for flesh:
HBO was asking us why there was no nudity on the show, and what they really meant was, Why wasn’t Pamela Adlon, who played my wife, nude? When I hired Pam, I didn’t tell her she was going to be doing anything like that. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of show. So I said, “You know what, I’ll do it.” And I did that episode, and they were like, “O.K., we have plenty of nudity, thank you.”
hbo, thwarted!
look, dana, i read one of your books!!
and i have just discovered betterbooktitles.com!
