maza's Full Review: George Martin - A Storm of Swords
A Storm of Sword's is George R.R. Martin 3rd instalment in his critically acclaimed saga 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. I am anxiously waiting for the next volume to get published (the author's official site says it's November 2005) so I wanted to get more people interested in Martin's work. I chose to review the 3rd volume because it's the one I read most recently.
In short, the book is just great. Really great. But it's definitely not short. In fact it's huge. However at no point in the book did I feel that it was excessively dragged out. I read it in a single breath (one of those month-long breaths, you know) and enjoyed it all the way.
In Storm of Swords, nations continue to war each other and a number of kings, queens and other protagonists are killed and as a result the contenders for the Iron Throne get reduced in an alarmingly fast rate. There are very few chapters, if any at all, that you just want to read through to get to the next one. There are plenty of sudden turns in both physical and metaphorical sense that will keep you glued to even the seemingly minor plotlines. However, if you hoped that this book would bring some resolution as was promised, you hoped wrong. This series can go on easily for any number of instalments. While some mysteries have been revealed and some plotlines solved by the end of Storm of Swords, the story is largely ongoing.
Martin gives us some more background on the history of Westeros and other places out of the mouths of several characters, yet it does not seem like a narrative in quotation marks they it does in Terry Brooks' books. Don't expect Jordan- style detail, though. Martin's characters are fascinating and have a lot more than one layer to them. If you thought you knew exactly who they are, you are like to be wrong.
Some of the complaints about this series included too much brutality and language as well as too many children involved as major characters. The language is still there, there's plenty of brutality, and there's any number of scenes that I wouldn't recommend to read while eating. Something like "yellow stinking pus and blood oozing from the wound" is quite commonplace in Martin’s world. Not as much violence and rape toward women as compared to the previous instalment, but some, nonetheless. Although there's a few instances where such circumstances allow some of the male characters to display their chivalry and (attempt to) save the woman. Sometimes coming from a person you would least expect to do something of a sort. Children will play a significant part, still. And they will act quite adultishly, to the extent that it will seem out of place when they display their child side. And children will witness things they shouldn't and do such things themselves, too. Generally, as the series progresses, the price of human life keeps plummeting.
Most of our old friends and foes are active in this book and there are a few new ones. More of the southern Westeros Lords will be introduced and some are generally likable. The overall mood of the book is quite grim and pretty much all the characters get in deep trouble, sometimes without a light at the end of the tunnel. As much so that at 2/3 of the book I began to fear that the ending won't be happy. It isn't, but it's not as bad as I feared. People will get captured, tortured, killed, be accused of crimes they didn't commit, people will be betrayed, people will do stupid things, people will ruin plans and screw up. And if you think that the good guys will make through all of that victoriously... think again. But, perhaps, the main attraction of this book and this series as a whole is that it's sometimes hard to distinguish who's good and who is bad. In truth, nobody is either. And some villains you have come to hate over the course of the previous two books will suddenly show a better side to them. You will be surprised. And some of the supposedly good guys will do deeds that will hardly be something to be proud of. And that will tear at their hearts.
One might think that all this brutality and treachery would repulse the reader, but I, for one, found it quite realistic. There's so much drama and suffering that it makes you really feel for the characters and with them. You will be stricken when the unfortunate happens and you will laugh when Tyrion rebukes another dwarf joke. He is good with that. In fact, Tyrion is so strong and cunning inside that it's hard to not to forget that he's a crippled dwarf.
Geographically, the places of action will be the same, more or less. We'll be visiting the East with Daenerys chapters and we even get a map of that part of the world. We'll learn more about the Beyond the Wall world, again, supplied with a more detailed map.
The dire wolves will be involved and we'll come to know a bit more about how special they are to the Stark kids. Sam Tarly will get an unlikely nickname for a craven and Jon will have several opportunities to turn his life completely around. We'll learn what valar morghulis means but now we have to puzzle out another similar expression.
If you want to know more, read the book. You won't regret it and I would say that this is as good as any of the previous two books. Storm of Swords has everything you came to expect from George R.R. Martin. Complex and intricate plot, a plethora of colorful and likeable characters and villains, realistic battles where even the main characters may (and do) die. This brings up the 'death ratio' of the series, which is extremely high. As in the previous books and unlike other fantasy books, the characters are not 'immortals' and death lurks around the corner. The series is scheduled to be seven books long. Three of them have been published so far. 'A Game of Thrones', 'A Class of Kings', 'A Storm of Swords'. Martin has almost finished the next book of the series named 'A Feast of Crows' and the next books will probably be named 'Dance of the Dragons' and 'Wolves of Winterfell'. A excellent short stories based on the same universe but about 100 years earlier has published and can be found in the 'Legends' anthology series, that includes short stories from writers such as George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodking and others. This particular story called 'Hedge Knight' and a comic version exists, drawn by legendary artist Mark Millar (OK he is not 'Jack Kirby' legendary yet).
Here is the third volume in George R. R. Martin's magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings . As a whole, this ...More at HotBookSale
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