Okay, so I admit it, I’m an addict. I’m addicted to games, chocolate, cake, movies, dvd box sets, twitter and reading, amongst other things. But especially reading. If I could only keep one addiction, I’d keep the books. If I could do a dark Willow and suck all the ink off the pages of a library, I would. If I could jack into a book, Johnny Mnemonic style and experience the world and stories in a teeth grinding explosion of knowledge, I’d stick in the gum shield and say “Hit me.” I think I’d even give up memory space, but only if I got to choose what went...
But with books, and especially with a series, it’s an ongoing relationship, a symbiotic merging of reader and word and that is something worth investing time in. These are literary love affairs with book and reader spending all available time delighting in each others company. And okay, I’ll admit in this area I am a repeat offender; Robin Hobb and I were very intense, as were me and J.K. Rowling, Ursula Le Guin, Garth Nix, Patrick Ness, Brent Weeks and Pamela Freeman. And I’m not even faithful to a genre - I’ve been enthralled by fantasy, horror, teen fiction, graphic novels, crime fiction and general fiction too; Lee Child, John Connolly, Manda Scott, Alice Hoffman, Neil Gaiman, Carla Speed McNeil, Joe Hill and Stephen King have all spent a lot of quality time with me too.
But my newest addiction, my latest literary affair is all HBO’s fault, curse them for their excellent casting and succinct adaptations... I have become obsessed with George R.R. Martin’s Song Of Ice and Fire series and this is despite a rocky start. You see, everyone talking about dwarfs and oral sex on Twitter didn’t really tempt me with the show. It took my husband watching the first two episodes and telling me that I was going to love it to get me to sample Game of Thrones. And for the last seven weeks it’s been hard to get a word out of me or my nose out of the books. So now I’m now half way through Dance Of Dragons, the new HB and fifth book in the seven book series, and I’m concerned about the withdrawal I’m going to go through when I reach the end in about a weeks time.
A wise person might have attempted to pace themselves, drag the five books out for as long as they can in the knowledge that there may well be four to six years before book six. But attempting to stretch out a series over the course of years in order to elongate the reading experience? Forget it! I’m going read through the lot of them at break neck speed, enjoying them all to the fullest and then dealing with the grief and frustration at the end. And at the end, when my heart’s breaking because it doesn’t call or email, I’ll only have myself to blame.
I know they’ll be other series, other authors, other obsessions, but none will be exactly the same. It’s like with Harry Potter; there may be other series which are as financially successful, or as imagination grabbing, as inventive and creative, but there will never be another Harry Potter... Although my heart sinks to say it.
I have never read anything quite like George R.R. Martin’s Song Of Ice and Fire, the amount of detail, the size of the world, the depth of the characters, all comes close to the hugeness of Lord Of The Rings and the wizarding world of Harry Potter. This is a fantasy series where one map isn’t enough - literally! Some of the books even have four... And anyone who knows me knows how important I consider maps to be within a fantasy title. A map in a fantasy book means the author knows the shape of the world and has considered its extremities. A map means an author knows where they are and where they are taking you, and a fantasy book should take you somewhere right? “The road goes ever on and on”...
A Song Of Ice and Fire takes you from one end of a believable if realistically dangerous world to the other. And even better, it takes you a chapter at a time, by the hand of a different character and you walk the world with them, regardless of whether you like them or not. And some of them you really don’t like at all. But make no preconceptions about rugged knights and damsels in distress, in this series no one is what they seem and even if they are, there’s a real chance that they won’t be by the end of the book. This series is full of characters that other authors would consider background; there’re children as complicated and intricate as their adult counterparts; women and mothers braver than Kings; animals who have more honor than half the kingdom and Lords who should be ruling who would never presume to do anything other than their duty...
Martin has a huge cast of characters and all of them are vibrant and fully fleshed, many of the central characters are female or children and all of them grow, adapt and develop. As they experience the successes and pitfalls of the Game of Thrones, these characters are changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Characters you hated for their vanity and greed have to deal with failure, loss and injury, have to learn how shallow their world was. Characters you absolutely love to hate and eagerly await their downfall, you end up just loving. Characters change, people change. And these are as close to people as you’re ever going to find in a book.
If that isn’t enough to get you reading this series, then the story should be. If you take a step back and viewed the whole picture, the plot for the series could probably be summed up in a sentence - a world of characters bicker and fight for dominance and power only to ultimately have to face a foe who could decimate them all... But this doesn’t do the detail, the motivations, the writing, the intensity of each page any justice at all. This is a book where every fight, every argument, every battle, every kiss, every lie, every decision feels important and potentially life changing for these incredible, lovable, hateful characters. Where a person can change as subtly, unknowingly and as dramatically as the seasons - and if you’ve read the books or seen the first series, you know just how important the seasons are. This is a book where you start off loving a few key characters only to find yourself overwhelmed with emotion at the success or suffering of someone you had considered inconsequential or loathsome. Yes, I’m talking about you, Jaime Lannister...
This is an incredible series and I don’t know what I’m going to do in a weeks time, when I finish A Dance With Dragons... Other than wear black and ashes, wail and mourn during the years between book five and six. I would take the Black to read book six early, I would lose fingers or limbs... But not eyes, I need them to read. Well, at least one anyway...
I have never read anything quite like George R.R. Martin’s Song Of Ice and Fire, the amount of detail, the size of the world, the depth of the characters, all comes close to the hugeness of Lord Of The Rings and the wizarding world of Harry Potter. This is a fantasy series where one map isn’t enough - literally! Some of the books even have four... And anyone who knows me knows how important I consider maps to be within a fantasy title. A map in a fantasy book means the author knows the shape of the world and has considered its extremities. A map means an author knows where they are and where they are taking you, and a fantasy book should take you somewhere right? “The road goes ever on and on”...
A Song Of Ice and Fire takes you from one end of a believable if realistically dangerous world to the other. And even better, it takes you a chapter at a time, by the hand of a different character and you walk the world with them, regardless of whether you like them or not. And some of them you really don’t like at all. But make no preconceptions about rugged knights and damsels in distress, in this series no one is what they seem and even if they are, there’s a real chance that they won’t be by the end of the book. This series is full of characters that other authors would consider background; there’re children as complicated and intricate as their adult counterparts; women and mothers braver than Kings; animals who have more honor than half the kingdom and Lords who should be ruling who would never presume to do anything other than their duty...
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| Jamie Lannister, how I hated you at the start... |
Martin has a huge cast of characters and all of them are vibrant and fully fleshed, many of the central characters are female or children and all of them grow, adapt and develop. As they experience the successes and pitfalls of the Game of Thrones, these characters are changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Characters you hated for their vanity and greed have to deal with failure, loss and injury, have to learn how shallow their world was. Characters you absolutely love to hate and eagerly await their downfall, you end up just loving. Characters change, people change. And these are as close to people as you’re ever going to find in a book.
If that isn’t enough to get you reading this series, then the story should be. If you take a step back and viewed the whole picture, the plot for the series could probably be summed up in a sentence - a world of characters bicker and fight for dominance and power only to ultimately have to face a foe who could decimate them all... But this doesn’t do the detail, the motivations, the writing, the intensity of each page any justice at all. This is a book where every fight, every argument, every battle, every kiss, every lie, every decision feels important and potentially life changing for these incredible, lovable, hateful characters. Where a person can change as subtly, unknowingly and as dramatically as the seasons - and if you’ve read the books or seen the first series, you know just how important the seasons are. This is a book where you start off loving a few key characters only to find yourself overwhelmed with emotion at the success or suffering of someone you had considered inconsequential or loathsome. Yes, I’m talking about you, Jaime Lannister...
This is an incredible series and I don’t know what I’m going to do in a weeks time, when I finish A Dance With Dragons... Other than wear black and ashes, wail and mourn during the years between book five and six. I would take the Black to read book six early, I would lose fingers or limbs... But not eyes, I need them to read. Well, at least one anyway...
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| Two of my favourite characters, Jon Snow and his dire wolf Ghost... |
