George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has received and maintained much acclaim in the past decade as being an outstanding series. I found the novel’s complexity and it’s many threads of narrative to be the most important theme, and Martin’s aversion to allowing any one character to become singular in their intentions something rewardable on the part of the author.
Each chapter of the novel focuses on a different character in the third person. Martin gives us in the space of what I guess to be about six months the lives of him many and varied characters to observe, love, hate, understand and mourn. He is unbiased in the people he chooses to examine. There are some who may seem to be goodies, and some seem baddies yet as we understand their motives to make the choices they do the story quickly becomes complicated. It forces you and I, the readers, to wonder ‘who exactly am I supposed to be rooting for?’ And this is a good thing. Morally, Martin forces us to examine the world in full colour. For example, the family of Starks are the traditional protagonists it would seem, but Martin shows them no mercy, and the heroism and honor of the family is often harshly rewarded. He is not at all afraid to kill off very likable and important characters. In contrast one of the characters we read about, the imp Tyrion Lannister, who comes from a particularly nasty family it would seem proves himself and his family, who are the enemies of the Starks, to be very irregular in the typical epic fantasy sense. They display many bonds and strengths the Stark have none of. These families encompass a large cast in them selves, yet Martin also holds many other characters important, such as the queen Daenerys from across the sea who is has hatched three dragon children at a great price, and seeks to invade the Seven Kingdoms, or Greyjoy, a young man full of hidden bitterness who was the ward of the Starks, and betrays them. All in all Martin pulls of a complex, twisted narrative which is slightly (post)modern in it’s approach to storytelling, and much more so than the much fantasy I have encountered previously.
Another thing that is vastly enjoyable about Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is the complexity and depth of the thing he has created. The heraldry system in itself is a complex piece of work, the politics within the Seven Kingdoms are complex and somewhat realistic, the battles and sword fights intense. Yet what I enjoyed most in this regard is the telling of Daenerys’ tale. Her desperate search for power and alliances, for safety of her dragons and for achievement of her goals to become a world power lead her to many strange places indeed.
On the walls of Quarth, men beat gongs to herald her coming, while others blew curious horns that encircled their bodies like great bronze snakes. A column of camelry emerged from the city as her honour guards. The riders wore scaled copper armor and snouted helms with copper tusks and long black silk plumes, and sat high on saddles inlaid with rubies and garnets, Their camels were dressed in blankets of a hundred different hues. (…)
Three thick walls encircled Quarth, elaborately carved. The outer was red sandstone, thirty feet high and decorated with animals: snakes slithering, kites flying, fish swimming, intermingled with wolves of the red waste and striped zorses and monstrous elephants. (…)
All the great of Quarth will come to see my dragons, she thought.
The diversity and exoticism in her part of the tale left my mouth watering for more.
Fans have been drooling for years now for the next installment, and it is hoped George will finish it this year. I find it hard to be as full of excitement as these individuals as I, recently completing the second part of the epic called A Clash of Kings, found the story to me mentally draining. I will wait a few months before starting on the third book, A Storm of Swords.
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