A Game of Thrones

I just finished the first book in George R.R Martin’s A song of ice and fire series and I absolutely love it.  However it is a very strange read.  There’s no main character, there’s no hero, there’s very little magic.  He breaks all the conventions of fantasy writing and yet he uses this to his advantage in advancing the plot.

I think he’s a fantastic writer, he makes you care for every one of his POV characters even when some are just terrible humans being.  He also deals with very immoral behaviour but it’s always in a context where it can be understood.  Nonetheless I think we shouldn’t forget that it is immoral, and in some instances just plain sick.

For example I was very disturbed with the “sex” scene between Deanerys and Kahl Drogo. I know in the tv-show she’s looks to be in her late teens but in the books she’s 13 years old.  I would not call this a ‘sex” scene and I don’t think anybody else should, this was rape.  She was sold to him like a slave.  She didn’t know him.  And at the beginning she’s crying and miserable.  I hate the fact that he made it seem that as soon as she felt pleasure she lost all her fears and worries.  Also need I repeat: she was thirteen years old.  Anyway you look at it this relationship is pretty sick.

However it was in a context where it could be undersood not only culturally but personally.  All Danny ever wanted was somewhere safe, and she had already been abused so much by her brother that Drogo seemed like the better man.  I like that there’s this kind of explanation and it does add credibility to the era.

Overall I was extremely pleased with how he wrote women.  I think many fantasy writers struggle with where to put them or how to make them act, you know that cliche balance between girly and tough but with Martin every woman felt like a rounded out individual.  He didn’t go for stereotypes, he wrote people, as multi-dymentional as their male counterparts.

But what I found most impressive of all is how Martin built the world.  Because he has so many POV characters spread out across so many places you really get a wider sense of the geography, politics, and culture than you do in say Lord of the Rings. Add this to his elusions to history, mythology and religion and you are left with the most complex fantasy lore’s I’ve ever read.