Review: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is the first in a series called the "Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin. Apart from the obvious rhyming name with J.R.R Tokien, the other thing that really drew me to this book was the immense hype over the book and the HBO TV series based on it.
A Game of Thrones begins with a prologue in which three men who have deserted the "Wall", cross paths with the "Other" and subsequently meet their death. Two of them are killed by the Other and the third person is beheaded by the central character Ned Stark at the beginning of the first chapter for deserting his post at the Wall.
And so we are introduced to the Starks, one of the important families in the series. Eddard (Ned) Stark is the Lord of Winterfell, who lives with his wife, Catelyn, and six children, one of which is his bastard son, Jon Snow.
I thought the book started off really well, with the Stark children finding six orphan 'direwolf' pups in the wild, and now each kid can have a pet direwolf that embodies his/her personality. Coincidentally, the direwolf is a sigil of the Stark dynasty. However, everything cannot remain cute and cozy forever and thus enter King Robert Baratheon and the Lannisters.

Ned's deep friendship with the King earns him a role as the new "Hand of the King", the previous Hand, Lord Jon Arryn (also the husband of Catelyn's sister Lysa) having died in mysterious circumstances. To keep his promise to his wife Catelyn, that he would investigate the death of Jon Arryn, Ned must travel south to the King's capital, only to get entangled in a deadly 'Game of Thrones'.

There are atleast three, at times four, parallel storylines in the first book, which are not brought together even at the end of this book and which is clearly the reason for so many subsequent books in the series.

Martin's style of writing each chapter from the third person point of view of a particular character was interesting and something I liked a lot. However, he does not do a lot of justice to most characters, except for Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark, all three of whom came the closest to being three dimensional characters. Ned Stark for one is portrayed as being too noble to the point of seeming dumb. Come-on fella, can you really not be more discreet when dealing with heartless, incestuous monsters of a character, who for all you know could be cold-blooded murderers? Why do you have to be as blatant as a Bond villain (haha that dialogue by Schmidt in New Girl cracks me up everytime!)?
Martin has a tendency to repeat a lot of sentences over and over again, which perhaps is the reason why this book is close to 800 pages. For example,"Winter is coming". Be prepared to hear this atleast a gazillion times. Aaaaaand, if Jon Snow was called a bastard one more time, I swear I'd have torn my hair out. Really, Martin, we got it after the first time you mentioned he wasn't Catelyn's son. You really didn't have to beat us over the head with it in every sentence his name was in.

Anywhoo...the bare skeleton of the story is this
1) The central family of Starks from Winterfell in the North are noblemen, whose patriarch, Ned is really close to the King.
2) The King is purportedly an usurper of the Throne (even though he is honorable, a broken-hearted lover and all that) and is married to a b!#*@ of a woman, Cersei, who belongs to the evil Lannister family.
3) The daughter of the ex-King, Daenerys is out to seek revenge and grows from a meek girl of thirteen at the beginning of the book, to a strong woman of...wait for it....FOURTEEN, by the end!
And somewhere along the border of the Seven Kingdoms is a Wall to keep the Others out.
At this level, the plot is extremely interesting. It is, however, unfortunately marred by Martin's writing. His description of sex is disturbing to the point of unnatural. Like a girl falling in love with her savage rapist of a husband, who can barely communicate with her or has any feelings for her in return. I do not shy away from books that describe violence or rape, and I guess Dany's case was very common in a medieval world as described by Martin, but beasts suckling on a human just crossed the line of 'ickyness' for me! This is perhaps one of the several instances where Martin lost complete control over his pen. And don't even get me started on the Dothrakis!

The characters are all either black or white, again except for Tyrion Lannister, who is so far my most favorite character. It just seems as if Martin tried really hard to give shades of gray to all the other characters.

My slight interest in the series remains due to the unfortunate turn of events at the end of the first book (and I commend Martin for giving such a sad fate to one of his central characters), the better defined characters of Tyrion, Arya and Jon (Jon, maybe not as much as the other two) and my curiosity to see if Martin explains the significance of direwolves.

People compare these books to the Lord of the Rings, but I'd rather not venture into a comparison. I have not read a lot of fantasy series, apart from Tolkien's and hence I might come off as very biased. I can see why the 'Game of Thrones' makes a grand TV series, but the story is not one of brave men and heroic deeds, it is one of crafty men and women indulging in medieval politics and a whole lot of sex, violence and drama. I really don't have a problem with the latter type, except for when it comes off as immature and extremely unnecessary at times. I believe this concept would have surpassed excellence in the hands of a more mature writer, but oh..that is again an "if only" question, and seldom are those ever answered.

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