Lord Lefford frowned. "I saw that great hairy one today, the one who insisted that he must have two battleaxes, the heavy black steel ones with twin crescent blades."
"Shagga likes to kill with either hand," Tyrion said as a trencher of steaming pork was laid in front of him.
"He still had that wood-axe of his strapped to his back."
"Shagga is of the opinion that three axes are even better than two."
-A Game of Thrones
First off, I've waited to two weeks to write this post, clearly a huge mistake just considering the scope of A Game of Thrones, which has enough characters to make Dickens look like a minimalist. But I'm not in possession of any wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey know-how, so I suppose I'll have to make do. Here goes.
Winter is coming. Not lovely, sit by the fire and enjoy a cup of cocoa while looking out on falling snow winter, but a far nastier sort. The sort of winter that might let all kinds of dread beasties out to play, creatures long believed to be stuff of legend. Winter--true winter, because it's already plenty cold up north--only comes every so often to the Seven Kingdoms, and in this case it's been nine long years since winter last fell. The longer the summer is, people know, the worse the winter--and in this case it's shaping up to be quite hellish indeed.
This is the point at which we meet our principal cast--quite a few of them, as I mentioned above. Chief among the players is Ned Stark, lord of the northern kingdom of Winterfell. Ned's chosen by his old friend, Robert Baratheon, the king, to serve as his most trusted advisor, and reluctantly--it's not a job you can really turn down--he heads south to a world of political intrigue.
But Ned is only one of eight characters whose viewpoint is presented in the novel. We also follow his wife, Catelyn, and four of his children--princess-in-training Sansa, rebellious Arya, young Bran, and his bastard son, Jon. Additionally, we spend time with Tyrion Lannister, the king's brother-in-law, a dwarf whose tongue gets him in trouble; and Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of the former king. It's a lot to keep track of at first, but once you've settled in to the rhythm of the novel (and have started remembering names), it's enjoyable to see the differing points of view. This is especially true of the last one hundred and fifty or so pages, at which point the book has built a tremendous momentum and a great deal of suspense can be wrung out of the limited information a character has and acts upon, compared with what we as omniscient readers know.
It took me a while to read this one, because it is rather long (800 densely packed pages in my mass market paperback edition) and it was a little slow before I got to know the characters. I did end up getting quite absorbed, though, and I would definitely be interested in the next book. I'm also very keen to see the HBO series, as I've sneaked a peek at the casting and it looks like they did an excellent job.
Up next: I'm terribly far behind, as I've already finished two other books. The first I need to come back and write about (hopefully soon) is The Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff.
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