This book came to my radar when I read an article about the
uproar of the series fans over the long wait between books four and five in the
series. Apparently they are
worried that Martin is getting on in years and may kick it before he is able to
finish telling his story - Aren’t people lovely? Since it is fantasy I asked my brother if he had read them, he said that he had never even heard of them. I dropped it. A few weeks later Peter called in a frenzy – "These are
AMAZING!!!" I think he was already
on the third book and he didn’t stop until he read them all. That was last summer, and he has been
on me to read them ever since.
I kept putting it off because it just so doesn’t seem like
my thing. I am not big on fantasy,
I need to start another series like I need a hole in my head, and it just
seemed like a bunch of dudes and their horses and their swords and… ugh.
I was enthralled early on. This is not really fantasy at all, it is more like alternate
history and for some reason I really liked reading about all these different ruling
families and how some had become more powerful while others had been
destroyed. I liked that the point
of view changed just because it kept things feeling fresh, and I liked that the
bad guys are far more interesting than the good. Plus, I have to give any story
whose twists make me gasp aloud its due.
I
wasn’t meant to like this book, but I did, and I find it hard to explain why
except that sometimes timing is everything. This past week was one that I needed an escape from and Game
of Thrones fit the bill perfectly.
I didn’t want to deal with anything that felt familiar to my own life. I wanted to get away. I did, and I found myself wanting to
stay in the book as much as possible.
It isn’t a great book, it doesn’t ask a lot of you as a reader, but it
is certainly a yarn and I know exactly where to go the next time I need another
escape – I can’t imagine it will be very long.
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