A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Publisher: Harper Collins
Series: Song of Fire and Ice #1
Amazon: A Game of Thrones
Synopsis:Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne. 

Review: So on paper this book is my kind of book. It’s a book with it’s on extremely well developed world, that has the feel of a medieval setting, so it should have been right up my street but for me this epic novel didn’t live up to the hype.

I think almost everyone has heard of A Game of Thrones whether it was through the T.V series on HBO or these novels. I honestly thought I would love this book its sounded like it was going to suit my tastes down to a T but somehow it completely missed the mark for me.

I felt that there were at least two hundred pages that could have been cut from the book. Yes I know it’s the first one and that you need all these special little titbits to make sense of the universe. My problem is I've seen others do it better with novels that needed even more back-story than this one.

The beginning was good it was exciting and got me hooked but once the middle came along it felt like the book was deliberately trying to bore me. It almost made me miss the excellent ending, and I'm quite looking forward to reading the sequel at some point although I'm in no rush.

The way the book is written is interesting; its a slow process in the beginning, but once you get past what feels like ye olde English the language is quite fascinating. I love books that are written in this format so this is definitely a redeeming feature for me.

It probably partly my fault that I don't like this book I started reading it with a desperate need to like it and came out the other end hating it. I almost put to much pressure on the book to back up the hype and I should have learnt better by now.

All in this entire book is average for me. The beginning and the end were great but the middle certainly left something to desire and I found it near impossible to finish but I'm glad I did. Look forward to a hopefully better review of the sequel.

Stars

★★★