I’ve never gotten the GoT bug, and it’s partly out of a sense of stubbornness, almost a pride that I haven’t succumbed. LOL. But after reading this, I will probably get the book and give it a go.
Originally shared by Old School 4 Life™
On this day:
At 6th August of 1996, “A Game of Thrones,” an epic fantasy novel by George R.R. Martin, is released. The book was the first in Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, about feuding medieval noble families on an imaginary continent called Westeros. Although not initially a best-seller, “A Game of Thrones” gained a loyal following, and the “Song of Ice and Fire” series eventually became a huge hit, selling millions of books.
There is much in George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ that follows the conventions of the fantasy genre, sometimes quite narrowly. But Martin also offers much that is novel, as well as some twists on familiar cliches, and his work stands head and shoulders above the mass of multi-volume fantasy series.
Martin’s epic is set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, on a world in which summers can last a decade or more, and winters nearly a century. Eddard Stark is lord of the Keep of Winterfell, who finds himself hosting a surprise visit from his old friend and king of all the realm, Robert Baratheon. Eddard once aided Robert in an uprising against the ruling Targaryens, and only he seems aware just how dangerous Robert’s queen, Cersei Lannister, and indeed the entire Lannister House, really is.
Cersei has designs upon the throne for her snot of a son, Joffrey, and will evidently stop at nothing to achieve her ends. King Robert asks Eddard to take the position of King’s Hand, sort of like his prime minister as the previous hand, Jon Arryn, has met with an untimely death. Eddard accepts only out of duty, for his wife Catelyn has told him that her sister, Arryn’s widow, is convinced Queen Cersei is behind his poisoning. Robert, though he dislikes his wife, remains blissfully ignorant of the extent of her intrigues.
Eddard’s appointment begins under a cloud. One of his youngest sons, Bran, nearly dies in a horrible fall that leaves him paralyzed and comatose, and which we know was no accident. Bran has inadvertently stumbled upon one of Cersei’s darkest secrets, and nearly pays with his life.
After Eddard is miles away from Winterfell, at court in King’s Landing, Bran awakens from his stupor, and though he cannot remember what it was he saw, Catelyn and the eldest Stark son, Robb, are now convinced that the Lannisters are up to absolutely no good. Catelyn hurries off to King’s Landing to warn her husband, leaving Robb in charge of Winterfell, a 15-year-old boy suddenly thrust into the position of Lord.
It is easy to forget just how hard it is in a novel to create a living, breathing, fully three-dimensional character until you see it done by a genuinely gifted talent. Among the more memorable players in this game are Tyrion Lannister, the black sheep of the Lannister clan, stunted by dwarfism.
At first the one member of Cersei’s family remotely sympathetic to the Starks, he finds himself swept up in the growing turmoil between the two families until all of his skills at conniving must be brought to bear simply to stay alive. Jon Snow, a bastard son of Eddard’s, rejected by Catelyn, joins the Night’s Watch, a legion whose duty it is to guard an immense wall far to the north, beyond which lies a fearsome supernatural threat to the Seven Kingdoms.
And in a fascinating subplot, we meet princess Daenerys Targaryen, one of the last surviving heirs to that unseated regime. Living in exile in a land far across the ocean (the book doesn’t even provide a map to it) and having been wedded to a savage but noble warlord, she dreams of returning to her homeland one day and seeing the Targaryen name and its power restored.
Dazzling in the scope of its legendry and in its heartfelt humanity, ‘A Game of Thrones’ signals the onset of perhaps the most significant work of fantasy since Bilbo found the One Ring. True, that is a claim that critics and readers have made time and time again about virtually every fantasy saga to see print, but until now, in all honesty, it’s been hyperbole. With ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, it may well be true. This is one that will go beyond the status of bestseller into honest-to-goodness classic.
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