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Originally Posted by Werthead This may surprise some given my current GRRM uberfan status, but I must confess whilst reading A Game of Thrones I didn't immediately click with the book. I liked it, but I didn't think it anything above the ordinary. Even Event Beta (you'll know it when you get to it; Event Alpha is obviously Bran's defenestration scene) didn't shock me the way it did most people, as I could sense that GRRM was leading up to it.
However, the end of AGoT was really impressive and powerful. And A Clash of Kings just picked that up and rolled with it, piling revelation on top of revelation and picking up the pace massively. When we got to the end of the book and GRRM gave us the Best Battle Sequence/Siege in Epic Fantasy History, I knew then that this series was something special. And that's even before we get to the Best Swordfight in Epic Fantasy History in A Storm of Swords. |
I was much the same at the start. A friend of mine had urged me to read AGOT, and at first it failed to stir me up much. Undead in the prologue, yeah whatever. Noble Ned likes to behead men himself, that's nice. Jon's a sullen bastard, oh that's original. Flashbacks to a dying girl talking to her brother, well I'm sure it means something, if I keep reading.
But as the story went on, and the plot lines intersected and overlapped, I gradually noticed myself becoming absorbed in the book. I also noticed that the novel began to emerge taller than the medievalist fantasy framework.
Then came the big plot twists. And they all made perfect, organic sense. When Ned got shortened, I was appalled--but grateful.
As for Clash, Swords, Feast--they're brilliant, and more so, on repeated readings. I've read the series four times and I'm still discovering new connections, and becoming aware of new avenues. It's a very good series.
ASOIAF is very much a product of its times: it's full of the moral relativism, narrative deconstruction, and attention to social issues (e.g. incest, child abuse). It will be interesting to see how it is regarded in twenty or thirty years (if it's not proscribed by the Future History neocon religious junta that Heinlein has predicted will rule us!)