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

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.

Shona's review 5 of 5 stars

I have had this series of books on my kindle for a very long time and yet I have only now started reading them. I'm not usually swayed by the size of a book, but the books in this series are so large that I was intimidated by its sheer number of pages. I longed to read them, but I did wonder how long it would take me to read the series in its entirety and my poor book loving brain reminded me of the many books I could read instead of this one.. but I just couldn't put it off any longer. In the end I decided to compromise and watch the tv series instead, two episodes in and I was loving what I was seeing so I had to read the book too. The tv show has stuck oh so very close to the book, sure it has omitted some things, but this just makes reading the book a far richer experience.

The book is told from multiple points of view eight to be precise (Ned Stark, Catelyn Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Bran Stark, Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen), allowing us the readers to see far more than I would have thought possible. Never before have a I seen a book written with so many 'main' characters. You would be forgiven for thinking this would make the book too busy, or that the characters would be flat and lifeless but you would be wrong. These characters fill the pages with the weight of their presence. And this is just a small number of the characters you will find within its pages, This book is filled with a slew of characters and martin not only manages to do them (and us) justice, he has successfully built a wonderful (if violent) world for them to live in.

Something to be aware of going into this series. it isn't a series where each book is a conclusion of a story, this is one long story told over several books.