On my second time through this book, I have lots and lots of thoughts. Be warned, this is not so much a review as a series of reactions, mostly broken up by character, so spoilers ahoy. Ye’ve been warned, matey. (I have no idea why I’m suddenly a pirate.) Back when I first read this book in 2011, I came to it fresh off my first re-read of the first four books, which I had devoured in the space of about a month. I was also super […]
Needs more maps, otherwise YUM.
First of all, I very much regret my decision not to buy a copy of this book. I waited FOREVER on my library’s wait-list for it, and then when I did finally get it and saw all the beautimous illustrations, I spent about thirty minutes just gazing at them all, and then I put the book down and cried piteously for a while. The illustrations are a huge draw, but also, the book is just fun. It is most definitely not for casual fans of […]
History is Written By the Literate: The World of Ice & Fire
Like many people today, I’m a big fan of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice & Fire” series. The books are both a delight and a terror as Martin builds a tremendously brutal, violent and uncaring landscape upon which he populates his characters. Like the best of the fantasy genre, a great deal of the work goes into building that landscape – the cities and nations of Westeros and Essos, the history that colors the various points of views and pressures that each of […]
Like sands in the hourglass, these are the Games of our Thrones …
Both book and television spoilers lurk within … A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in George R. R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire series, was published in 2011, after a five-year gap between it and the previous entry, A Feast for Crows. The series started with A Game of Thrones in 1996. The series has had an interesting evolution. Originally intended to be a trilogy, Martin soon realized that his fictional world of Westeros and beyond was expanding and would require first, four, than six, now […]
Poppin’ Up in Westeros
While there has been a lot of internet speculation (and outrage) over the latest Game of Thrones episode, “Breaker of Chains,” I have been preoccupied with a new acquisition, the Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros. Designed by renowned paper engineer Matthew Reinhart and illustrator Michael Komarck, the book is a blast, with not just the cool buildings that populate the fantasy series, but lots of fun pop-up surprises and pull-out guides to all of the warring houses from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and […]
No Way To Title This Without Spoilers
Oooooh boy. So this one took me awhile to get into again. I think a lot of people are big fans of how each book tends to start with this sort of long chapter that focuses on people we don’t know and won’t likely see again (or see much of any time soon). I … am not. I think in retrospect those chapters are an interesting way to set the tone of the book, but it also means that I’m going to really need to […]