Quantcast
Channel: John Black » Television
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

George R.R. Martin – Game of Thrones

0
0

It’s quite hard to remember what I knew of Games of Thrones back before the television series had such a big impression on me. I know that I had heard of the A Song Of Fire And Ice book series – that Game of Thrones was the first volume of, and that it was long way from a knock-off Tolkien fantasy, being in part inspired by The War Of The Roses and a lot more realistic, gritty and ‘adult’ – ie there was plenty of sex and violence.

I’ve not a huge fantasy fan and I’ve not really read any of the big modern series in the genre (well unless you count Harry Potter). I had a go with Steven Erikson’s first Malazan book, and whilst thinking it was okay, I hadn’t been sufficiently enchanted to read on. I’d glanced at the Wheel Of Time but quickly realized it wasn’t for me, plus I’d heard the books in that series got a lot worse as they went along. But when the television series for Game of Thrones came around, and after being intrigued by the trailers and the opening minutes of the first episode that had been put up online, I thought I would give it a go in that medium. And, like just about everyone else who watched it, I was pretty much blown away. The only slight negative was coping vast cast of characters. I distinctly remember audibly growing at the scene where they find the pups of a dead dire wolf and it’s all ‘there’s seven pups here for the seven children’ and I’m thinking ‘Oh no, that’s seven more characters I’ve got to keep track of!’ But after a couple of episodes, and with the use of some online ‘Who’s who’ charts that problem went away. The novel has even more characters but Martin does a pretty good job of helping you keep up and it’s never really been a problem there either.

The television series had great acting, direction and production design but it was clear it was drawing on good source material given the fantastic characters and story so, although it took me a while to get around to actually start reading them, it definitely made me want to check out the actual books. I have read Martin before. I’d enjoyed the shared-world anthology superhero series Wild Cards, that Martin had edited and contributed to, when the first few books in the series were published in the UK. Wild Cards had plenty of sex and violence too, more so than all but the darkest comics series, so I was prepared for it in Game of Thrones. Interestingly it turns out there’s actually less sex and violence, well sex anyway, in the novel than the television series. That apart, I was quite surprised by how faithful to the book the television series was. In fact it’s almost a scene for scene recreation. Some of the big action scenes have been trimmed, but that is only to be expected.

There’s a heck of a lot of plot and back story in Game of Thrones but we basically have three interwoven tales. The Hand Of The King has died and King Robert goes north to asked his old friend Ned Stark to come back to the capital to take over the role. Intrigue ensues when it becomes clear that The Hand died under suspicious circumstances after uncovering some secret that others would definitely want to keep hidden… Meanwhile Viserys Targaryen and his sister Daenerys, the survivors of the previous regime that Robert displaced in a war before the events of the novel, have fled to another continent. Here Viserys tries to raise an army by marrying off his sister to the leader of a Mongol style horde. She receives three ancient dragon eggs as part of her dowry… Finally we have Ned Stark’s bastard son Jon Snow heading off to try and create a life for himself with the Black Watch who guard the vast wall that protects the northern end of the Kingdom. ‘Winter is coming’ is the Stark motto, a deep winter that will last many years, and there are fears that it’s imminent arrival will be bring down all sorts of nasty creatures, living and undead, from the Northern wastes…

Game of Thrones is long but it’s split up into a number of short chapters from several different points of view and it easy to chug through it. Martin’s prose, whilst not exactly hugely literally, is very readable, and he does a good job with cliff-hangers and other tricks to keep you going. He’s especially good with characterisation and the main characters are exceptionally vividly drawn with the clichés of typical fantasy avoided. Although there are obvious good guys and bad guys, the latter have clearly drawn motivations so you often feel some sympathy for them and the heroes often make mistakes or are too realistically headstrong for their own good.

I’ll definitely be reading to the end of the series so far written (though I’ll probably alternate with other novels between each part).Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my dignity and not start whinging about when the next book is coming once I’ve caught up. After all there’s a new series of the televsion version coming soon and I’ve been hearing good words about Joe Abercrombie… I think there might be significantly more fantasy in my future than there has been in the past. Winter Is Coming…

Amazon UK
Amazon US

Share


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images