A Game of Thrones

This is a difficult book for me to review, because like many I have come to this after the television adaptation. Therefore my reading experience is quite a bit different than others.

I was such a big fan of the television adaptation (well, except the boring final series) so in many respects it was like meeting old friends. The adaptation was very faithful to the book and even though it is a number of years since I saw it upon reading this everything felt, very, very familiar. I really enjoyed reading the book and revisiting and remembering the characters and the main story. I do recall readers mentioning to me that they needed to use the appendices at the back to keep track of everyone and everything. I guess the advantage of reading late is that it was much easier to get into the characters and the story. Indeed, I felt the prior knowledge allowed me to pick up some of the nuance that I may have missed when viewing (or perhaps wasn't there at all).

The downside of course is that I knew absolutely everything that was going to happen in the book. In a story of backstabbing intrigue, knowing who and when people are going to be turning on each other really did dampen my enjoyment of the book. Obviously that's not the fault of the author but very little gave me the dramatic goosebumps that I suspect I would have felt if I had read it decades ago. I will say that the story is brilliant, it develops at it's own pace and yet, despite being a big book never felt ponderous.

The strength of the book is of course the characterisation and the moral shades of grey that many of the characters live in. I also think Martin is quite easy to read and one is drawn into the world well. Of course, I remembered my favourites and cheered their successes and felt their pain when things didn't go well.

Of course, this is part of a genre that kind of spawned 'grimdark' and I do generally enjoy books in this genre but some of the elements can be quite challenging and unsettling for some readers. A number of the characters were 'aged up' for the television adaptation and sexual violence as a war crime and child rape are plot devices which will disturb some readers (and 'this is how it was in a made up fantasy world' doesn't mean people won't be distressed by it or wish to challenge it as a plot device).

Recommended, but probably only if you have a time machine