A Game of Thrones ... Book Review

Review – I finally was able to trudge through the first book of Game of Thrones. My wife picked up the box set of the first few books for me when the HBO show was announced and I've attempted to get into them several times unsuccessfully. Mostly this was because I had numerous other books I wanted to read in the ever growing Horus Heresy series as well as other Black Library publications. These type of books are fast reads for me that get to the action quick for the most part. With the change in book format I've had a significant gap in Black Library reading as I refused to buy the oversized books since they won't match the rest of the collection I already own. Apparently new books with be released in standard size 6-8 months after the oversized trade version, so hopefully in July I'll have more Black Library material to read.

So after several attempts I was finally able to connect well enough with A Song of Fire and Ice to grind through all 800+ pages. I don't mean to make it sound like this wasn't a good book, as the overall story was really great and full of surprises. For Father's Day my wife and kids gave me the first season DVD set, so now that I've read the book I can watch the series (finally ... its been hard holding back as I hear the show is very good.)

My primary issue with the book is the excessive amount of detail, I didn't feel like it added much to the characters and really slowed the whole thing down to a crawl. I'm starting the second book and so far it seems to have the same issue which I'm guessing just comes down to Martin's writing style. Hopefully I'll be able to read this in one sitting without having to continually come back to it.