A Song of Ice and Fire: A book of too many characters
Read January 15, 2024 → October 7, 2024
⭐⭐⭐
I had decided to first watch the TV show and then start reading the books, to make myself more familiar with the characters. Still, there are so many different characters with so many stories in this book, that it just became a little difficult to read.
The first book in this series is called A Game of Thrones. It took me a little while to get into the story, because the first season is a very direct adaptation. Therefore, having seen the show, I knew every little thing that was going to happen. While this could be fine, the amount of information shared by George R. R. Martin is so much. He writes down every single detail about every single character, so it felt a bit tedious to get through.
I had the same issue in the second book, with the problem that some characters really annoyed me. Catelyn and Theon in particular were horrible characters. Whenever I came across one of their chapters, I genuinely did not want to continue reading. On top of that, A Clash of Kings works toward a battle. The tension of that is really fascinating to read, but the battle itself was quite disappointing. For me, the problem was the point of view. The Battle of the Balckwater is told from Davos’s perspective and while he is one of my favourite characters, he is not the right person to tell this battle. He cares more about the ships than the people on them, so there was little talk about the actual fighting.
A Storm of Swords was the longest book and therefore took me the most time to read. It did not help that I kept forgetting the characters, who was on whose side and what had happened before, but the overall storyline was quite interesting. The further I got into the book, the more the characters felt familiar to me, so that made reading a lot easier. However, the book is again so much and that just makes it difficult to read. And then once the story hit one of the most important events in the whole story, it was told from Catelyn’s point of view. I generally already dislike her character and she also seemed a little insane towards the end, so it just becomes unclear what exactly is happening and what she is perhaps imagining.
I then was quite excited to start the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, because I felt like I finally understood what was happening. I knew the characters and knew their relationships to the others. However, George R. R. Martin of course could not let that happen. He added many characters and also decided that names aren’t that important. Chapters were suddenly named after the people the characters were posing as, or would just be called “Knight” or things like that. As you can probably understand, this did not make it easier to read for me. It also felt like this book was leading up to something great, but without anything significant actually happening.
The same goes for A Dance with Dragons. It tells the story of A Feast for Crows, but from the perspective of the characters that were not in the fourth book. While I understand the idea, I would have rather had all the chapters mixed and in chronological order. This approach just made it confusing to read. It became unclear to me what happened when and which characters were interacting.
While I might sound very negative, there were also some positive aspects. What I liked most, especially with the last two books, is that there are very big differences with the TV show. There are so many more characters in the book, which did not make it easy to read, but they were so interesting and important to the story. There was Quentyn Martell, who wanted to ask Daenerys for her hand because of a pact made long ago between their families. There was also Aegon Targaryen, who was allegedly killed by Gregor Clegane, but is actually alive. He tries to find Daenerys to marry her, so they can claim the Iron Throne together. However, when he cannot reach her, he decides to go to Westeros to try and conquer the land on its own, as advised by Tyrion Lannister.
In my opinion, three stars is not a negative review, especially in this case. The rating is mainly based on my own reading experience. I felt like there was too much happening, it became confusing. However, if you like a very intricate world with all the background information you could ever wish for, I’m sure these are books for you. Unfortunately, it is just not really my taste, but I am happy to have read them. It is a very intriguing read and I understand why people rate it highly.
