Page Count: 79,095
Expected Completion Date: Feb. 6th, 2095
Book Page Count: 215
Title: Game of Thrones
Author: George Martin
Who would have thought that Pride and Prejudice could be so good! The Game of Thrones is really just Pride and Prejudice, minus the bad, and adding so many qualities that P&P utterly lacked. The book had an epic quality, nearly 700 pages of intense drama, suspense, character development, love, hate, action, blood, sorrow...and the list goes on.
So what does Game of Thrones have in common with P&P. To start with the intricacies of the character interactions. Development of relationships was incredible in this book, making it almost like a soap opera drama. Conversations were intense, the list of relationships was immense, the interconnectedness of the characters were mind boggling (there are diagrams online showing familiar relationships of the series, look it up if you don't believe me). A majority of the book was dedicated to developing these connections, exploring the feelings of the characters in regards to each other and their feelings about their own actions. This aspect of the book reminded me a lot of P&P -- which you'd think would be a terrible thing for me as I hated P&P but, what P&P lacked to "bring it all together", Game of Thrones not only brought to the table, but excelled in doing so.
What Mr. Martin was able to add was a level of action that would appeal to men and women equally. P&P was a long drawn out conversation between women talking about petty aspects of life, Game of Thrones was a long drawn out interaction based on a mix of mundane details of life as well as the difficult decisions which we would expect faced leaders, kings, etc... during the distant past of our civilization. Treachery wasn't a matter of back stabbing a friend for a lover, but instead a matter of killing a king in order to gain power, revenge was a matter of family pride as well as national pride, character development was a matter of children becoming military leaders, siblings learning to deal with immense pain, evil falling alongside of good.
Game of Thrones went one step further by bringing a level of fantasy into the novel that combined with the length and nature of the book (which truly made it epic) reminded me of Tolkien -- and that's a tremendous author to be compared to. The fantasy nature was done incredibly well, it wasn't the focus of the novel yet it played a pivotal role, especially as the book came to a conclusion and prepared for the next book in the series. Character development was the focus, but dragons and magic were included, and not just for a pretty addition but instead for an addition to developing characters. Furthermore, similar to Tolkien I had an incredibly hard time getting into the book for the first 100 pages or so, but, once I dedicated myself to the read, it had a payoff unlike most books which I have read.
Tolkien meets P&P = a damn good read.
Who would have thought that Pride and Prejudice could be so good! The Game of Thrones is really just Pride and Prejudice, minus the bad, and adding so many qualities that P&P utterly lacked. The book had an epic quality, nearly 700 pages of intense drama, suspense, character development, love, hate, action, blood, sorrow...and the list goes on.
So what does Game of Thrones have in common with P&P. To start with the intricacies of the character interactions. Development of relationships was incredible in this book, making it almost like a soap opera drama. Conversations were intense, the list of relationships was immense, the interconnectedness of the characters were mind boggling (there are diagrams online showing familiar relationships of the series, look it up if you don't believe me). A majority of the book was dedicated to developing these connections, exploring the feelings of the characters in regards to each other and their feelings about their own actions. This aspect of the book reminded me a lot of P&P -- which you'd think would be a terrible thing for me as I hated P&P but, what P&P lacked to "bring it all together", Game of Thrones not only brought to the table, but excelled in doing so.
What Mr. Martin was able to add was a level of action that would appeal to men and women equally. P&P was a long drawn out conversation between women talking about petty aspects of life, Game of Thrones was a long drawn out interaction based on a mix of mundane details of life as well as the difficult decisions which we would expect faced leaders, kings, etc... during the distant past of our civilization. Treachery wasn't a matter of back stabbing a friend for a lover, but instead a matter of killing a king in order to gain power, revenge was a matter of family pride as well as national pride, character development was a matter of children becoming military leaders, siblings learning to deal with immense pain, evil falling alongside of good.
Game of Thrones went one step further by bringing a level of fantasy into the novel that combined with the length and nature of the book (which truly made it epic) reminded me of Tolkien -- and that's a tremendous author to be compared to. The fantasy nature was done incredibly well, it wasn't the focus of the novel yet it played a pivotal role, especially as the book came to a conclusion and prepared for the next book in the series. Character development was the focus, but dragons and magic were included, and not just for a pretty addition but instead for an addition to developing characters. Furthermore, similar to Tolkien I had an incredibly hard time getting into the book for the first 100 pages or so, but, once I dedicated myself to the read, it had a payoff unlike most books which I have read.
Tolkien meets P&P = a damn good read.
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