Way Too Late: A Song of Ice and Fire

Jason
Monday
11:17 pm

800 pages later…

Oh oh oh, new fun category for me to play around with and to give me justification for writing about something people have already been writing and talking about for many years, possibly even decades.

And for the inaugural Way Too Late, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

First thing you need to know is that I am probably close to the world’s slowest reader. It takes me forever. Even more if I am just not that interested in the book. This makes my book queue extra long. Well that and I tend to take like year long breaks from reading books. You should see how long it took me to read the piddly little books that make up The Chronicles of Prydain.

So currently on my nightstand is Martin’s A Game of Thrones. I am about 100 pages away from closing this one out and I still am not sure what to make of it. Honestly, I have read the book before though I remember basically nothing from it. I have a feeling that I am viewing the book in a much different light than the first time around also. But basically the biggest question I have is are all the good guys the bad guys and are all the bad guys even worse? And who is the actually protagonist of this story? Not necessarily bad questions to have, just intriguing.

I would say I enjoy fantasy writing. More so than science fiction. I am kind of a junkie on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. So when fans of the Wheel of Time series recommended that I read Martin’s Ice and Fire series, I had to give it a go.

So slowly but surely I have made my way through the first book. No magic and sorcery yet, but lots of swords and armor. A little hint of dragons and a lot of good swearing. And for as much as I would like to see wizards flipping fireballs from their fingertips, I have come to appreciate the political drama that Martin has presented. Grounded with some medieval relevance, mostly in the presented nobility and caste system, the maneuvering of House versus House, lord versus lord, and those sly ones who work behind the scenes are artfully spelled out on the page.

And for all the swords and gallantry of armored war, there is just something a little twisted in Martin’s writing. Twisted enough to keep my interest. Is the expected going to happen or is another little turn introduced for the journey. It draws me in a little more each time and I am looking forward to starting the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, sometime this decade. Too bad there are two more books after that, with a fifth book in series due soon.

Currently listening to: Modern Day Bojangles – Django Walker