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

Title: A Game of Thrones
Author: George R. R. Martin
Published: August 6th 1996
Series: A Song of Ice and Fire #1
read in: July 2015

adult • fiction • fantasy

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“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.

As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.

The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.

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I read this book halfway when I start watching the show so that I could finished them at the same time. But this review will only based on what I read on the book.

“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There’s no middle ground.”

First of all, this book is huge. It took me some time to finish this because building an epic fantasy world really need an extra amount of length, especially this book that have a massive characters inside. This book wasn’t made to be finished in a day or two and at certain times it felt boring. It was made to be read day after day so the story really sank in that when the drama and plot twist happen, it will have major impact on the reader. (At least that what I believe)

This book has an eclectic cast of characters that it took me some time to really get to know who is who. But around halfway, when I finally got the characters right, everything turned really enjoyable and amazing. The writer really put so many effort on each characters that they all have their unique ways to captivate me in the story. My favorite characters in this book are Cersei, Arya and Tyrion. I loved how Cersei is gripping-ly sneaky and unpredictable while Arya and Tyrion is more on the smart and enjoyable part. But I still thought each character is so good in their own way to build the story, even though at some point I hoped Sansa and Catelyn should’ve been smarter.

There were some brutality part in this book that isn’t appropriate for younger reader (that probably you’ve heard about that), so I categorize this book as an adult book. But if you are a YA reader and feel okay about them, then it’s no problem at all.

I have tried my best to avoid spoiler of any kind about this series and it was totally worth it. The plot twist was the best part of this book. It blew my mind again and again. So, I recommend you to avoid any kind of spoiler before walking into this giant beautiful nightmare.

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