A Game of Thrones

By George R. R. Martin

Andrew Roberts

Recently I had the pleasure of reading the first installment of George R. R. Martin’s series   A Song of Ice and Fire.  I enjoyed A Game of Thrones greatly, and will read it again, along with the other books in the series.  A Game of Thrones was written in 1996, and won the 2004 Locus Award as well as being nominated for the 2004 Nebula Award and the 2004 World Fantasy Award.  There are five books currently in the series, with twi more to be written, A Game of Thrones being the first, and then A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons.  The Winds of Winter, the sixth book, is currently being written.  A Game of Thrones is the base of the first season of HBO’s TV series Game of Thrones, the other books being the bases for the other series.

A Game of Thrones is not a simple book.  It consists of three separate plot lines that do not interact in the book itself, but it can be foreseen that they will affect each other greatly in future books.

The first plot line includes most of the main characters save two.  There are eight Great Houses in a kingdom called the Seven Kingdoms (which is kind of ironic, because there are actually eight) or Westeros.  The story focuses on House Stark, which rule one of the seven parts of this kingdom.  They rule the northern part of the kingdom, and are constantly warning that winter is coming (their slogan is, in fact, that).  After some character development, the King comes to Winterfell, where the Stark family resides.  The King wants Lord Eddard Stark, head of the family and also a friend of King Robert (who is from another of the houses: House Baratheon) to be his new Hand.  The Hand is the second-in-command to the king, and handles matters of money and organization and such (there is a saying: “The King drinks, the Hand buys the wine”).  The King’s previous Hand was mysteriously murdered, and Eddard decides to go to King’s Landing, the capital, to become the Hand and also to find out what exactly happened.  He leaves his son Robb in charge at Winterfell along with his wife.  Just before he leaves, his son Bran falls off the castle roof while climbing.  His wife, Catelyn, learns that he did not in fact fall; he was pushed.  While visiting her son in bed, she is attacked by an assassin with a knife she finds belongs to Tyrion Lannister, a member of House Lannister, which is always vying for power and is feared by many.  Lysa arrests Tyrion Lannister, and in retaliations his brother Jamie attacks Eddard in King’s Landing and kills his guards.  A Civil War erupts.

The second plot line follows Jon Snow, bastard son of Lord Eddard Stark.  Jon, being a bastard, has never fit in, and decides to ‘take the black’, or go to serve on the Wall, a monstrous wall built over centuries to protect the Seven Kingdoms from threats in the north.  He goes to the Wall, and shortly after he arrives his uncle Benjen Stark goest on a scouting trip beyond the wall and never comes back.  The Others (the name for the creatures beyond the wall) are stronger in winter, and winter is coming.
The third and final plot is one that tells the tale of Daenerys Targaryen, the daughter of a king King Robert unseated.  Her and her brother Viserys go out of the Seven Kingdoms to a land to the west where the Dothraki live.  Viserys weds Daenerys to Khal Drogo, in return for an army that he will use to take back the Seven Kingdoms.  That army is never given, and Viserys dies  soon after.  Daenerys becomes pregnant, and Khal Drogo promises his future son the Seven Kingdoms for his rule.

The book does not follow one specific person, so there is not an obvious favorite for the reader.  I personally liked Arya Stark, Jon Snow, Catelyn Stark, and Tyrion Lannister.  Arya is a rebel; she refuses to be made into the stereotypical “lady”, unlike her sister, Sansa, who is very ladylike, but also sides with the enemy because she loves a prince.  Arya does not care what people think she should be, but does what she wants.  She gets trained to fight with a sword her half-brother Jon gives her.  Jon is the bastard of Lord Eddard Stark and another, unknown woman.  He ‘takes the black’, or joins the Night’s Watch, a group of people who defend the kingdom from almost mythical monsters in the far north.  He has, being a bastard, always struggled to fit in, but he does so at the Night Watch.  He earns his peers’ and his superiors’ respect, and, though he struggles, finally finds a home.  Catelyn works behind the scenes to carry messages and to generally assist in ways that others cannot.  She is also a comfort to others and, though discouraged by things such as lying friends and ignorant sisters, is a strong person assisting her son in doing what he needs to do (which is something I will not spoil).

One thing that reoccurs (but is perhaps not the best of messages) is Eddard’s want to do the noble thing, but then that noble decision turns out bad for him.  The message I got from that is this: while the noble thing is seems right, it will not necessarily benefit you or the people around you.  You must not let nobility get in the way of the right choice.

In this story, there are many examples of kids taking the responsibility of adults; Robb becomes Lord when Eddard becomes Hand, among other examples.  I cannot relate to this, and hope not to have that much responsibility ever on me at that age.  I can imagine the feeling of this, and do not think I want it.

I love this book.  I will most definitely read the next books.  A Game of Thrones was a thrilling tale of politics, treachery, and war.  I loved the plot twists and the cliff-hangers and the action.  There is one significant problem I had with the book: there are several vivid descriptions of sexual activity.  While George R. R. Martin could have gone into much more detail, he still passed the line.  I ended up skipping parts where this happened simply because I did not want this in my mind.  When I finished the book, I went back to one occasion and read it for the specific purpose of getting a taste for what the author was trying to convey.  While these incidences do provide a sense of realism, there is no real need for any of them.  The TV show stays true to the book, and visual images are much worse than mental ones.  That is what I would change in this book - I would take these incidences out.

I would most certainly recommend this book to others, but not anyone below high school, because of the things I described in the last paragraph.  This also has a high reading level and is a little slow in the beginning, and weaker readers may find it less enjoyable because of that.  But overall, this is a series I will follow until it ends.

In my creative portion, I changed some of the House Sigils to better reflect the characters of those houses.  You can see it by clicking on the PDF below.