A Love Letter to the Kingslayer

I suppose Circe was your “always”.  That unconditional force that turned the tide and plowed the harvest. After all, what is a sword without a wielder, a Knight without a Lord? She ruled you – and you loved her for it.

But I am sure that on dark nights when you were made to stand outside her bedchamber and hear Robert belittle all you adore, you must have thought: where would I be without you?

If your Queen had never been, what would have become of you, my love?

You would have Casterly Rock.  You would have sons that could call you father, and a proper wife too.  Though I think any woman would do.  Wench or whore, it matters not, she would be better to you than your Queen ever was.

You would never have worn a white cloak – and never earned the name of so much dishonor.  Kingslayer no more, my love.  Instead you would be called fair Lord Jamie of Casterly Rock.

But your Queen was born, and she made you her creature, her sword, her knight.  You belonged to her.  You love her.  And you, you would do anything for love, wouldn’t you?

I wonder…. was it because she was beautiful? Was it because you saw yourself in her? Or did you just fall because destiny would have it be so?  Does it matter? In the end you had your sister and in doing so you took her schemes, her suspicions and her sins as your own.

Did you have any doubts, my love? And if you did how did you keep your fidelity intact? I think Tyrion had the right of it – you loved her to blindness, to madness.  Oh, the things you have done for love.  You gave Circe your life, your prospects, your children.  You gave her your honor to wear as a dubious crown.  Do you regret it, my love? Do you wish to turn back the years and free yourself from her?

Who are you, my love? And who will you be tomorrow?

I call you Kingslayer now – but what will happen in the morning? What will happen when you face your Queen again? Might you earn a new name for yourself, my love?

I ask you this – what is more honorable?  To take revenge on your tormentor? Or to stand behind her because you vowed to do so.

We Do Not Sow

Of all the fantastic location is Westeros and beyond, it has been the Iron Islands that most captivate me.  Probably because it combines my two favored geographical features – mountainous terrain, and a misty sea.  Likewise I am usually fond of the Greyjoys.  I might not want to see them rule the continent, but they are my favored family.  I like all of them, the clever, and the stupid, the humorous, and the wicked.  It was an immense pleasure to learn so much about them this last book.

I always like Theon.  I liked his mocking smile, I liked his leering ways, and daft misconceptions.  He is the kind of character I always fall for. A boy with big dreams, bad intentions and worse luck.  He kind of reminds me of a more developed version of Draco Malfoy or Zuko from Avatar.  He is the perfect example of someone who is not evil, but who has inadvertently created evil.  And of course it all went so terribly wrong, which makes it all the more amusing.  I think Theon is one of the most fascinating of all Martin’s characters.  And I think this last book put his erratic behavior in proportion by fleshing out his family.

His sister Asha is much easier to respect.  She is more stable than Theon, and much more realistic in terms of her goals, plus she understands her people which is very important.  But I think what I liked most about her was how comfortable she was with her own sexuality. We have seen time and time again that the most powerful women in Martin’s world depend a great deal on their sexual charms to maintain their positions.  Circe sleeps with men for favors and false loyalties. Arianne made Arys fall in love with her to make her plans pan out. Daenerys was sold for the sake of a crown and she continues to manipulate men (such as Joras or Xora) so that she may keep it.  But Asha treats sex much more causality.  Yes, I’m sure she does it to raise her own popularity, but for her it’s not shameful.  It doesn’t have to be hidden.  She seems complete comfortable in her own skin, and as a modern reader I find that very empowering.

And then there are their Uncles, of which only Rodrick Harlaw hasn’t managed to spike my interest.  The three Greyjoys I liked very much.  Aeron Greyjoy’s opening chapter titled “Phrophet” was absolute gorgeous. I loved the sea, and the bleakness, as well as the sheer intensity of his fervent religiosity.  Even to a none-believer, or perhaps especially to a none-believer it came across as very powerful, almost frightening.  But it was his other two brothers who I liked the best.

I really like how Martin set up the conflict between them – the aggression, the distance, and yet there is something else there.  I guess it could be called a “blood-tie” but I don’t think that’s quite it.  I think that despite all the tension between them they still admire each other as men.  Euron knows what a good captain Victarion is.  He understand that his younger brother is able, and capable, and fierce.  That he is in short a great leader among the Ironborn if only because of his naval strength.  And in his own way Victarion acknowledges his elder brother’s power even as he resents him for it.  He cannot fail to see that Victarion is enigmatic, he is charismatic, and he is a lot cleverer, even as he is mad.  Their connection, and their history is so interesting that I cannot wait to find out what happens between the Ironborn, and our Dragon Queen….

I think Martin has achieved a lot with the Iron Islands in this book.  Not only did he add a threat to Circe, and the Tyrells, but at the same time he also put another claimant for the Iron Throne forward.  I also think the way he has quietly created the culture and religion of the Iron Islands is impeccable.  I have a feeling that just like Theon failed in his conquest of the North, his Uncles will fail in the conquest of Daenerys Targaryan, however I look forward to their imminent defeat with relish.  In Martin’s world I have often found that losing battles, and suffering humiliations makes the characters much more interesting.  Because it forces them to change, to grow stronger.  Isn’t that how it’s been for Sansa, and Jamie, and Tyrion?

For the Iron Throne

During a Game of Thrones it was easy to look out at Westeroes and only see the Grey of Stark and the Crimson of Lannister.  I know a lot of the other houses were mentioned but for the most part they were background players. The only other house that had a significant role in the book were the Targaryans all the way across the narrow sea.  However, with each additional volume Martin has broadened the horizons.  In a Clash of Kings he introduced the Baratheon and the Greyjoy.  In a Storm of Swords it was the Tyrell and the Frey. And in a Feast for Crows it was Martell.

At the beginning of the story the Starks are the clear heroes. They are just, they are good, and their motives make sense to us.  For them it was never about greed, or glory.  They were just protecting themselves.  However, with half of House Stark dead most of us have had to seek our heroes elsewhere.  It would be almost impossible for a Stark to win the Iron Throne, the only one who is even a remote possibility would be Sansa, and lets face it she is nobody’s idea of a good ruler.  She just doesn’t have the strength.

With the Starks defeated readers are forced to look at the other houses and find other characters that appeal to them.  I think the house that you support says a lot about you as a person, much more so than the Hogwarts Houses.  This reflects not only who you are, but what you think good is, what you think justice is.  Who you support for the Iron Throne shows if you believe in destiny, if you believe that good triumphs over evil.  It shows whether you hold faith in gods, and whether you will stand for corruption.  It is a big question if it’s considered properly.

I think if you ask  people the most popular answer among them would be Tyrion, because it is clear that he is the most capable.  He is a good, smart, fair man, who has shown us again and again that despite the odds he can be efficient.  But the problem is that Tyrion’s chances of ruling are worse much worse than his lady wife’s.  Tyrion doesn’t have anybody’s support, not even the other Lannisters.  There is no feasible way for him to be King.

So it’s not just a matter of who would be best for the Kingdom.  It’s also a practical issue. Who is good enough to win the Iron throne in the first place?  I don’t ask this question to try to guess what Martin is going to do.  I ask it because the answers people give show a lot about who they are and what they respect.

Who do I want on the Iron Throne?

I have been a stringent support of Stannis Baratheon since his introduction.  I think he is the best candidate.  He is just, he is strong, he is smart, and next to his Red Woman he is quite powerful.  He was the only man to stand with the North.  He was the only person to listen to the Night’s Watch warnings.  I don’t think his chances are good – but out of all the characters vying for the throne at the moment I feel like he is by far the best.  I’m not sure there are many who share my opinion.  Stannis both as a character and as a person doesn’t inspire love or compassion in the same way that Danerys does.  He has none of Circe’s charisma.  He has not had as many victories as Robb Stark.  His lands have been taken from him.  His wife is mad.  His daughter is sick. His mistress is dangerous. And he has no heir.

However, I admire his sense of justice.  I am intrigued by his relationship with Melissandra.  I love his harshness.  And I want to believe in the power of R’hollor.  Also – and let’s not forget this – with no Targaryan present in Westeroes, he is the rightful ruler and I guess that means something to me.

To Dorne

It’s strange to think that in the context of thousands and thousands of pages “less may be more”, and yet in regards to the land of Dorne Martin knew that it must be so.   Dorne had been referenced from the very first book by numerous characters.   It was a far away land, of heat, and sand.  The last Kingdom to fall to the Targaryans Kings.  The homeland of the doomed Princess Elia Martell, who one may describe as the ultimate of the many victims that surrounded the events of Robert’s Rebellion.

Last book Dorne was vaguely introduced through a minor character by the name of Oberyn Martelll.  He was a famed fighter, and the younger brother of Elia.  His presence in the book is mostly background, until he finds the opportunity to avenge the rape and murder of his sister.  His fight with the Mountain was one of the most thrilling, and bleak events in a Storm of Swords, as Oberyn (more commonly referred to as the “Red Viper”) is killed, resulting in Tyrion’s own death sentence.

Although his death was certainly tragic, the reader had not been made to care a great deal about him.  Our attention was on Tyrion’s fate.  What would happen in Dorne was not our concern.  A Feast for Crows remedies this fault. At long last we see the Southern promise-land in one of the most spectacular and surprising of all of Martin’s story lines.  He manages to tell a story of love, duty, betrayal, and sullen regret in four brief chapters.  He introduces an entire society and simultaneously makes you understand two of its most powerful political figures: Prince Doran (elder brother to Elia and Oberyn) and his daughter Arianne, who is just as willful as she is beautiful.

This story line is peculiar for many reasons, particularly the fact that Martin choose to tell this story in four chapters narrated by three different people.  Thus the reader achieves a wider understanding of the circumstances because as we have learned through out the previous three installments (particularly with the POV of Sansa, Theon, and Circe) someone’s opinion can not always be trusted.  And yet by splintering this small story with so many voices it achieved little continuity and created many questions.  The story line literally opens up a new world of possibilities for Westeroes, for Danny, for the Martells, but at the same time I have to wonder, when the hell is Martin going to have the time or the space to elaborate on it.  I don’t think there will be any Dornish chapters next book, and I don’t want this fantastic story thread just to hang over me like a leering promise.

I know it’s not my place to think about such things.  Writing is best left to the writer, but I can’t help feeling that Martin is overstretching himself.  Even if there is no limit to his abilities as a story teller, there is a limit to the number of pages his books can be both, practically and economically.  And to be a bit crueler there is also a limit to the number of years he has to tell this story.

And yet even though this plot has me rather concerned I must say it was a joy to read.  I loved Arianne’s POV.  I loved her vigor,  her selfishness, her total misunderstanding of her father.  She felt exceptionally real – I could picture her eyes, her smile, her utter confidence of being.  And I love how there is no tragedy to her.  This girl will go on – being stuck in a tower will not end her being.  She will fight another day, I don’t doubt it for a second.

On a slightly different note I also greatly enjoyed the chapter POV by Arys Oakheart because it was one of the cherished few moment of tenderness in a Song of Ice and Fire.  It had all the nice things I have come to appreciate for their rarity, love, and sex, and want.  But at the same time all of those were skillfully mingled with Arianne’s ambitions.  Even through Ary’s blind lust for her you could taste the subtleties of her manipulations like honey.  It was a wondrous thing to behold and it’s end was in perfect Martin fashion, grandiose, heroic, and yet ultimately futile.

I think these four chapters alone are a fantastic representation of Martin’s ability as a writer.  They have that familial intimacy of a short-story, and yet they are just one little cog in the masterpiece of A Feast for Crows.

The Reawakening

Between school work and fiction writing I have devoted no time to this blog.  But now my semester is running to an end, and I am finally finding the hours to do things I really love. Including continuing the George R.R Martin’s series, a Song of Ice and Fire.

I started the books in late August of 2013.  It was the first fantasy novel I’d read in a long time, and to this day it remains the only “adult” fantasy I’ve ever gotten into.  I loved it from the very first chapter, and it only got better from there.  I remember the fanatical rush of adrenaline with which I swifted through the first novel, A Game of Thrones, the entire book only took me a few days.  However, I made the decision not to continue reading the series till my school year ended.  I didn’t pick up the 2^nd and 3^rd volumes until Spring of 2014.  Again, as soon as I opened up the first page I found myself transfigured.  I dreamt of castles, and dragons, and green flames, I obsessed with battles, and debated destiny.  And I went through the rollercoaster of emotions that Martin creates for his readers.  I fell in love.  I cried.  I felt fear, and pain, and fury.  I felt devastation, betrayal.  And right along-side of that I prized the blood of the victories, the glory of political intrigue, the sweet success of each enemy slain, and each delicious revenge.

I read both books in such quick succession that even now it’s difficult for me to remember them as separate works.  I confuse the time-lines, the POV characters, the heartbreaks.  It’s hard for me to remember even how one book ended and the other began.  Everything was one beautiful and horrible blur.  After I finished I felt emotionally wrecked.  My two favored characters were dead, and ever faithful I took the time to mourn them.  For the next ten months I busied myself with other things, and although occasionally I would turn back to the book and re-read my favored chapter or two, I knew I wasn’t ready to pick up the fourth volume.  The more time passed the more amazing I found the books.  While I was cooking, or waiting for the bus, or trying to go to sleep I would remember with peculiar vibrancy Martin’s narrative.  I would think of Arrya with her changing names, and her lithe strength.  I would remember Sansa’s snow castle, and the flutter of Littlefinger’s kiss.  I would think about Catelyn’s last words, picturing her pale face as she fell with thunderous heartbreak.  I would remember Jamie and Brienne’s quick banter, him with his empty insults, and her quietly growing attached to his wit.  But most of all I would think of Jon and Ygritte.  The cold, and the stars, and Ghost’s shadow over them.  I would think of their climb up the wall, against the bitter wind, and the kisses in the cave they should have never left.  I thought of them again and again.  It takes a good writer to can make you fall in love with a character, but it takes a great writer to make you fall in love with a couple.  I always liked Jon, but it was only through Ygritte’s eyes, and her funny accent that I really felt I knew him.  And I fell in love with his love for her.  I loved everything about them, and my decision to take some time before reading the fourth book was directly linked to their romantic demise.

However, a couple of weeks ago classes were suspected in my University due to a union strike, which created the perfect opportunity for me to finally embark on A Feast for Crows. Now this time I made the conscious decision not to speed-read the book.  I didn’t want to finish it in a couple of days.  Instead I took my time, I read every word carefully, I studied the maps, I looked up character I’d forgotten, and some ten days later I finished this mammoth 650 page work.

Reading it opened me up to the amazing world Martin has created.  More than ever before I got a sense of the depth in his mythology, of the sharp contrasts in his cultures, of the numerous faiths in his world.  A Song Ice and Fire isn’t one story, it doesn’t have one beginning, one ending, one hero.  It has a thousand threads coiled around these continents, these cities, these characters, and as a reader you get the immense pleasure of choosing your own beginning, your own path, your own heroes.  In that sense it is a creation like no other.  Martin’s narrative is not just beautiful, or successful, it achieves a multiplicity, a complexity, that few other writers have ever managed to articulate.  He is a master of the craft, and for my part even finding the words to describe his books is a constant challenge.

There are so many stories in A Feast for Crows, that I don’t feel I can address them all in one post.  I have so much passion for these books that I think I could continuously praise them till the end of time.  I am so happy I read this book slowly, cherishing every sentence, and every POV.  I want to review it in the same fashion.  So, my next few posts will likely be devoted to this one subjected, because few things have ever impacted me so much.

The True Born SlytherClaw

I remember the first time my mom read me Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone as one of the most beautiful moments of my childhood.  We were lying down on my bunk bed, I was wearing Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas and as soon as we got to the Chapter about how evil the Dursleys were I began to sob.  What can you expect from me, I was seven!

Since that very moment Harry Potter has been part of my identity.  Harry’s journeys are as real to me as any I have gone through myself. I know this might sound crazy, but I also know that there are people who feel the same, so we can all be crazy together.  However as the fandom progressed, as everyone at school and among my friends read the books we all began identifying with smaller aspects.  We all loved the Harry Potter books, but there were the Draco fans, there were the Hermione fans, there were the people that lived for the Quidditch matches, and those that loved the magical creature.  Me, what I most identified with was Ravenclaw House.

At first like any other kid (and Harry himself) I thought: I’m not good enough to get into these houses.  I’m not clever, I’m not hard working, I’m not smart and I sure as hell am not brave.  But then something wonderful happened, at some point in the books someone said that to be a Ravenclaw you don’t necessarily have to be brilliant, you can just cherish knowledge above everything else.  It’s not necessarily about being smart, Hermione is smart, it’s about caring for information, for history, for logic more than for adventure, or gratification.  That was the moment I realized that I was a Ravenclaw.

For years I never once doubted it.  If it ever came up in conversation, I would say it off-hand, of course I’m a Ravenclaw! And it made sense to me. I love reading.  I love History, philosophy, mythology.  What could be more ravenclaw than this? And then Pottermore came around…. and J.K herself decided that I wasn’t a Ravenclaw at all.  I was a Slytherin.

I remember the moment of shock. Of utter, utter surprise.  I always considered Slytherin my back up house, and some of my favoured characters (like Bellatrix) are Slytherins but I just never expected it of myself.  Am I villainous? Am I uncaring? Am I selfish? I know none of those are the official traits of Slytherins but they are the ones that showed up the most.  But reflecting on my personality I couldn’t see myself as any of them.

For a while there I was a closet Slytherin.  I didn’t admit it to myself.  I said J.K was wrong (which in my mind is kind of like damning god must be to an Evangelist).  I pushed it out of my mind. I was a Ravenclaw.  I was a Ravenclaw!!!! For now and forever. J.K and Pottermore had made some kind of mistake.

But then I really started thinking about it.  I know I’m not selfish, and I really don’t think I am villainous, but I can be pretty sneaky, and as much I say I’m not, I am ambitious.  I hate being ambitious more than anything in the world. Being ambitious but not having any courage is just about the worst combination of character traits in my eyes.  It means that I have all this longing to do things, but none of the guts to pull through with it.  It’s a miserable position really.  But I try.

My ambitions comes through in my fiction writing. In my ideas of the future. In my crazy plans that will never come to.  It comes through when I purchase twenty books in a month and honestly expect myself to read them all. It comes through when I meticulously research obscure material for my classes to enhance my required readings. The truth is that I am only ambitious about one thing: Knowledge.

And that’s what makes me the perfect Slytherclaw.

 

The Lovely Bones

Following my recent trek for tragedy (Starting with The Fault in our stars, and continuing with the Book Thief) I’ve just finished the award-winning book about a 14 year old girl sent to heaven after being raped and killed by a neighbour.

In some ways the book is exactly what I expected. A sudden crime, and then a long-drawn passage of sensibility and heart break. But to be honest I guess I expected a little more Hollywood. More details to the crime. More time on the murder. However the book is actually quite tactful. It’s really about the “afterwards.”

The reality that Alice Sebold describes for the Salmon family hits close to home. It feels real, and felt. It is a topic I have found myself thinking on more and more these days. What happens after tragedy? I think she provides a very truthful answer, we disintegrate. We are forced to find new realities, every one of us.

And so she writes it. Lindsey found Hal. Ruth and Ray found each other. Abigail left to live as an childless version of herself. Grandma Lynn became a care giver. But of course the real tragedy is her beloved father, Jack, who’s new reality is trying to pretend the old one still exists. He is the one that held on. And he is the only one who didn’t by the end of the book find some sort of closure for Sussie.

But I think this too is realistic, because after every tragedy there must always be someone who simply can’t recover. Someone who is left pinning, not only after his dead daughter, but the life, the perfect life that existed for his family at that time.

It is an insanely powerful book, and as I have said already it treats loss and pain with more honestly that I would have expected. To me this already makes it worthy of all the awards and notoriety it received. However I must add that in terms of writing there was very little that impressed me. After the sheer artistry of Zusak it’s efforts at poetry resonate as hollow. I am not saying the book is badly written, not at all, but it simply cannot stack up to the Book Thief, in a simple phrase this book does not manage to convert calamity to beauty, whereas the Book Thief did so with majestic simplicity.

The Book Thief

Much like the Fault in Our Stars, Markus Zusak’s masterpiece and I were thrown together. We encountered each other in a room where he was the only book, and I was badly needing to read. All I knew beforehand was that it had something to do with the Holocaust and that it had an impressive reputation.

Shuffling back to my cousin’s empty room I began to read. I don’t think I was even done the first page before I considered myself captured by it. I give praise to lots of novels. I enjoy lots of stories. I love a million different pieces of literature, however I can say with absolute certainty that this is one of the finest books I have ever read.

This is the sort of book that should have been impossible to write. Much like To Kill a Mockingbird, the premise sounds like it could never work. The trial of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a small town in the 1930’s told through the eyes of a six years old girl. A novel about a young girl in Germany during WWII narrated by a constant visiter in her life: death.

The very notion of the novel is incredibly innovative. It stirred something in me. It made me smile. It made me think: here is someone pushing all the buttons. To have the audacity to write from death’s perspective is insane, and yet he does so masterfully. This book is written with the talent of a poet, the heart of a child, and the coldness of his narrater. This is a book to tare you to pieces. I don’t think there could ever be anything sadder.

However at the same time it’s treatment of death is almost humours. It is not inevitable, it is not heart-breaking, in fact if anything it is mundane. It is part of the narrator’s job description, and it is the shade through which the story is told. This alone would make a terrific novel, this idea of death, this poetry of prose, this impossible premises but added to all this is an indescribable loveliness.

Somehow Zusak makes you fall in love with Germany during WWII. He makes you fall in love with a little girl greedily hanging on to the mystic of literacy, and her adoptive father, the sweetest man alive playing an accordion and trading cigarets for books. He makes you fall in love with a constantly hungry boy who only wants a kiss out of life, and a grim woman who curses every other word but has a good heart. He makes you fall in love with a suspicious young man, who dreams of boxing Hitler and takes hours painstakingly illustrating books for a little girl’s pleasure. He makes you fall in love with their necessity, with their hunger, with their want for candy, with their fear of change, and most of all their distance to everything we think and hear about Germany during this time.

This book is a perfect reminder that wars and bombs are completely out of control of normal people. Sometimes (even as a History student) that’s hard to remember.

Honestly, I don’t think I can be objective about this book. I don’t even think I can properly describe how much it affected me. All I can really say is that surprising as it may sound this is the most beautiful book I have ever encountered. I think everyone should read it, at least once.

The Fault in Our Stars

Usually I am not one to pick up books that are so obviously fated to have sad endings. I enjoy tragedy but as a process of story telling, not a promise fulfilled. However as I ran out of books of my own, and my Aunt’s family doesn’t have many we were sort of stuck together. There was very little surprising about the book. He mixes a carefully plotted romance, with adolescent insecurities and a proportional sense of doom. However, I enjoyed it very much. The characters were sharp. The chapters went by quickly and it introduces you to a different reality – which is the art of a certain type of novel.

He gives us a little slice of the horrors of Cancer. And Cancer as experienced by adolescents. Cancer as a Community. Cancer as a Killer that depletes from said community with an unflinchable consistency. It is heart breaking and I think it has the consequence of gratefulness for the reader. You know at the end of it all, with all our problems and all our shit, most of us at least have our Health, and reading this book you are reminded of how important that is. What could be worse than constantly being unable to breath? Than loosing a leg? Than going blind? Than feeling ‘it’ slowly take things away from you, and then leave, allowing hope to come, and then ‘it’ returning to take something else. I think the only word that covers that is: devastating.

However a good novel has balance, and the Fault in Our Stars certainly does. You see something pure. Something exiting. You get to see Hazel live the love she never thought Cancer would let her have. And that’s a beautiful thing. The book had some very real moments. It incorporated humor masterfully and although it was overwhelming you never became overwhelmed. Hazel was too clear-eyed to allow that to happen to her reader. She begins already knowing that endings come suddenly, and that her ending is coming soon.

What was less easy to anticipate was Gus’s death, but again Cancer takes what it wants, when it wants. It wasn’t a shock, it was a fantastic twist to the story. A novel-maker’s trick. Using the word trick sounds inappropriate in the context, what I really mean is that without this twist, the story would have been too conventional to become a best seller.

I don’t plan to see the movie until I get back home again, but I am curious to see if it will come across as multi-dimensional as the book. I think this is an easy story to butcher, however a certain sense of optimism tells me that it won’t disappoint. Something about Shailene Woodley’s smile in the trailer won me over. She somehow perfectly captures Hazel’s warmth without (in my mind) looking anything like her.

Of Love and Humor

Since my last post talking about the Song and of Ice and Fire, I have finished the second and third volume, and I have to say the story is getting better and better. Martin is not only a very talented story teller but he has a way of making you care, care deeply about characters that you hated previously. 

For example at the start of book three I loathed Jamie with a passion for what he did to Bran.  And I could imagine him, cocky, handsome and talented, but when Jamie’s POV started it was different.  The first thing that came across is that he had an excellent sense of humor. Jamie is freaking hilarious, even funnier than Tyrion and grudgingly through every chapter you get to love him, genuinely love him.  I mean it.  In book 3 I went from hating Jamie to treasuring him, as both a remarkably fresh perspective and a lovely human being, even if he was blind and damaged.  I guess this comes from Martin paring him off with Brienne.  That was simply genius. 

You know a lot of the blood, and death can be anticipated but those rare moments of love and kindness, they just always take me by surprise.  And if something shocked me more than my affection for Jamie, it was Jon.  Now for both of the first books I thought Jon’s story line was a little boring.  I always liked Jon, but he was out in the cold, surrounded by a bunch of dudes who’s names I found it really hard to remember.  But Ygritte, she changed everything.  From her first appearance I knew she would be amazing, and she was.  I liked her very much in book 2 but it was in A Storm of Sword that she really came to herself.  She was funny, she was tough, she was loving, and she was enigmatic.  I liked that she was the one pushing Jon to have intercourse and not the other way around.  I liked how she talked.   I liked that she wasn’t beautiful, and to be honest I liked that she died.  Yes, it ripped my heart out but at the same time I do think it was necessary, especially in keeping with Martin’s style. 

Nevertheless her contributions of love, and sex, and laughs were what made the third volume so superior to the other two.  I know a lot of dark things happen.  I know that it is constantly crammed with pain and loss, but the love that Ygritte brought somehow balanced it out for me.  It reminded me that even in this hellish word, pure things can exist.  And I think it’s the first real love story the book series has had (unless you count Circe and Jamie, which I don’t because their not really seen together, or Caitlyn and Ned who again suffer from the same problem) and it makes me yearn for another one.   I think love is necessary to achieve the full-world spectrum that Martin is going for, so I hope he embraces it in following books.