Game of Thrones: First Impressions

While on a trip upstate this week, I decided to pick up the Game Of Thrones four book box set, so I’d be guaranteed plenty to read on the car ride back home. Boy did I not know what I was getting myself into.

Coming fresh off of having read the Harry Potter series in its entirety, I was looking for a good followup. Considering all the press Game Of Thrones has been getting lately because of how well the HBO series has been received, it seemed like a likely next step. However, this was more of a ten foot leap than a single step on the fantasy scale.

I’m now about two hundred pages into the first book of the Song Of Fire And Ice series, and one things for certain. This isn’t Harry Potter. Not that I really expected it to be, but after the leisurely readability of Harry Potter, this series is quite a tough contender. 

The thing that initially threw me off about these books is that each chapter jumps to being in the perspective of a different character, so it’s hard to say who the real protagonist is, or if anyone is really even a “good guy” or a “bad guy.” At first, I found it kind of hard to tell what was even really going on, because as soon as I got a grip of who I was reading about, the book would whisk me away to meet a new character. After the first hundred pages though, the introductions slowed down and I found I could really get into this approach. The bite sized chunks you get from each of the likely dozen main characters this book has to offer really paints a picture of the way the world works. Plus, since a few of the characters seem to be working against each other even from the onset, it seems like the book is quickly moving to blur the already vague line of who I should be rooting for and who I should be rooting against. 

This is an approach that takes what would otherwise be a pretty middling jaunt in high fantasy to the next level. I’ll admit, I have some bones to pick with the fantasy genre. At times, it’s my favorite thing to read, but often it feels like I’m reading a Dungeons And Dragons campaign or some slightly above average Lord Of The Rings fan fiction. So far, George R. R. Martin has managed to completely crush the perception that I’m reading “just another fantasy novel.” The themes are often times incredibly adult, and though the pace is quite slow and drawling due to the epic nature of the thing, there’s a looming tension present in just about every chapter.

I’ve got to credit Martin on how well he’s able to keep all these characters straight. Each chapter is written in limited third person, and Martin can capably capture the mind of a hardened war hero in one chapter, and then immediately transition into the mind of one of his children in the next. It’s rare to see such a consistent style in a one character narrative, not to mention one where the author keeps switching characters every chapter. 

All in all, Game Of Thrones so far is an epic undertaking, and while at first it seemed like more than I could manage, the more than capable style and the treasure trove of interesting characters and themes makes me want to take the journey, even if it remains to be seen whether I can actually grasp the sheer size of the world and its roster of characters.