A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
1.5 starsI have a lot of things to say about this before I lost into madness.
Before I read, I could imagined myself being a fangirl of this popular high fantasy fiction. I imagined myself indulged into the medieval world with conflict, political intrigue, the battle, the wars. Thrilled with some characters while they faced obstacle, heartbreaking when they were in agony, shocking with an unexpected plot twist. But when I read pass 200 pages, I have realized that my dream might not come true.
Setting in medieval world, the mindset of society tends to be patriachist, sexist with no offense. I didn't object sexist or mysogamy. Yet the way writer portray sex, rape, pornography and marriage is ridiculous. It was strange that those lordlings fathered a lot of bastards, talk about sex explicitly, objectified woman, the society still valued monogamy. In the meanwhile, a 13-year-old girl, being abused and molested by her brother all the time, unrealistically learned to love her husband by having many many sex. Other than that there are some other things that keep bugged me. The Dothraki, yes, they're savage nomad who herding and warring on the grassland where its location is not so far from the sea. And the land that has climate change drastically, there are no description mentioned about how its people could survived.
World-building in AGoT contains an immerse of historical background and legends which might fascinated many viewers, it lacks in terms of economic, agricultural, political science in aspects of kingdom governing which always fascinated me. That's not make the story a good political intrigue, just lordling quarreled to each other for the hollowed throne.
Characterization felt flat and unrealistic for me. Eddard Stark is an honorable fool who held only honor and the right things without practical means. He always do stupid things that I can't even convinced myself that he was a lord who ruled the land. Catelyn is inconsistency, sometimes too aggressive, sometimes too passive, she just act by situation not by motivation; if she is to keep her family safe, she shouldn't capture Tyrion from the start. Sansa is unbelievably stupid and air-headed and not even a good girl. Arya is good, yet she is too tomboyish without proper reasons and denied every aspect of being a woman. Robert is a stupid selfish tyrant who would bring a downfall to the dynasty if this is another book. Joffrey is a mad king with childish behavior. There're only very few character who make sense or do sensible things, Tyrion and his father Tywin and some lord of the Night's Watches. Lord Tywin didn't appear until the very late of the book and the Night's Watches barely have their scene.
The pacing keep disrupted me all the time, it might give me less troubles if I can read this continuously for hours. But the reality, I have always read every books on subway/metro/underground (whatever). I could have a lot of time in my office to digest each chapter and see how repetitive, how tedious it is.
The structure of more than 70% of chapters is something like this: Started of slowly (by waking character up from their slumber/ write about environment around where they were/ Some daily routine which not affect the whole story) => Build up some situation a bit => there're something interesting in the next scene (some puzzle/ a bit of conflict) => End the chapter before that thing resolve. After half of this book, I started to getting annoyed.
Descriptive prose is very purple without purpose, its too greasy consumed like pouring oil on cheese. Purple prose is ok if the things you describe have meaning to the story. But the writer describe every armour that every knights wear, every clothes each lordling wear every chapter, that was beyond overwritten and needed to be cut down.
Plot-line didn't progress much until a half of the book. However, because main players in the main stage is either stupid or always do insane things, it didn't drive political intrigue but only drive a madness. My ideal of political intrigue is that every main player is quite smarts to nearly genius, always makes a smart move. The book only provide this only when the Stark and the Tully battled against the Lannister in Riverrun, but those happened only in few chapters.
And I don't like how the writer tends to avoid showing us battle scenes directly. There're only two of battle scenes show to us and the scheme in those battles is rather simple. Other than that, he wrote between the war scene to briefly told us about what happened in each battles instead.
I still hesitated to continued its sequels. Since one folly has gone, Renly and Stannis might have potential to be good players in this game of power and Tyrion was going to take control King's Landing. If there are more battle, wiser political conflict of wise players, less Sansa's stupid thought and less annoyed act from Catelyn and her sister, also less wasted pages and paragraphs, I might considered read the next book.
