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A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (Read in 2014)

Published by marco on

Updated by marco on

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I’m happy for you.

Citations

Apologies if there are transcription errors. I had to type it out all citations longhand.[1]

This is the first in the epic A Song of Ice and Fire. It spans hundreds of characters and dozens of tribes and lands and civilizations. The span and breadth of it are breathtaking as is the execution. Martin’s writing style is perfectly suited to this genre. Though I’d heard that some of his prose was a bit long-winded, focused too much on loving and languorous descriptions of food, I found it to be quite tightly written and easy reading. In fairness, I read this book after having read a lot of nineteenth-century literature, so perhaps I was better prepared than most.

Choice passages:

“'Oh, my sweet summer child,‘ Old Nan said quietly, ‘what do you knows of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.’”
Page 224

And then there’s Varys, who is wonderfully eloquent and comes at everything sidewise:

“Ned had to know the rest. ‘Who gave him the poison?’

“‘Some dear sweet friend who often shared meat and mead with him, no doubt. Oh but which one? There were may such. Lord Arryn was a kindly, trusting man.’ The eunuch sighed. ‘There was one boy. All he was, he owed to Jon Arryn, but when the widow fled to the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in King’s Landing and prospered. It always gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the world.‘ The whip was in his voice again, every word a stroke. ‘He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his bright new armor, with those crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before you could talk to him …’”

Page 298

Vary is very carefully telling Ned who he thinks poisoned the previous Hand. He is also subtly telling him that whoever put him up to the poisoning also had him taken care of afterward, at the tourney, in order to cover their own tracks. It had already been noted that the knight’s gorget was improperly tied (likely not an accident but again a small favor paid for with Lannister gold) and Sandor Clegane (the Hound) had also already noted that his brother Gregor (the Mountain) had killed the other knight on purpose, him having been unlikely not to notice a loosely tied gorget, especially when his mistress the Queen had likely let him know to look for it.

Here’s another example from later in the book:

“[Ned speaking]’Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?’

“‘Peace,’ Varys replied without hesitation. ‘If there was one soul in King’s Landing who was truly desperate to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me.‘ He signed. ‘For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of Joffrey’s birth?;

“‘The madness of mercy,’ Ned admitted.

“‘Ah,’ said Varys. ‘To be sure. You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life.’ He glanced around the cell. ‘When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why.’”

Page 571

With Ned’s admission, we see him for noble but possibly foolish, possibly stupid, but almost certainly naive person he is. How could he think that Cersei needed mercy? That she wouldn’t use it to her own ends? It is to Varys’s credit that he even kept talking to a man so unschooled in, well, in human nature.

That Ned could so completely misread the queen and underestimate her is what I see as Martin’s way of saying that this is a book about women, rather than men. Though there are many whores and serving wenches in this book, the strong women are very strong—Catlin Stark, Danaerys Targaryan, Cersei Lannister. Ned is strong and just and loyal and noble, but his stupidity and utter failure to be able to read people and his inability to even suspect motives and goals that he himself could never have did untold damage. He was easily manipulated and thrown by the wayside by people ostensibly his inferior in every way—except for the ability to take an opportunity when it presents itself.

And Cersei’s behavior can be interpreted as strength—she knows it’s a man’s world but she basically enslaves her son so that she can rule from behind the throne—or weakness—she babies her son almost as much as Lady Lysa Arryn of the Eyrie, ruining a potentially great man. Melisandre is also quite powerful and holds sway over a king. The classic scrappy and self-reliant character is Arya; the cripple is Bran.

“The Western Market was a great square of beaten earth surrounded by warrens of mud-baked brick, animal pens, whitewashed drinking halls. Hummocks rose from the ground like the backs of great suberranean beasts breaking the surface, yawning black mouths leading down to cool and cavernou storerooms below. The interior of the square was a maze of stalls and crookback aisles, shaded by awnings of woven grass.”
Page 530

This is just a sample passage, but the scenery and locations are all described in this exquisite detail, with quite a light touch and flair for simile and metaphor.

Another one struck me from the end of the book, where a few words sufficed to put you there, in the woods, in the market, on the battlefield. Not to get too hyperbolic, but Martin’s descriptions of troop movements, battles and the sheer confusion of war are easily the equal of Tolstoy’s from War and Peace. I was impressed with Tolstoy’s ability to evoke a scene vividly but am equally impressed by Martin’s similar ability—I never felt lost and only occasionally consulted the map to straighten myself out on a point of geography. To be clear, Tolstoy’s battles were almost universally portrayed as pointless and wasteful of human life and endeavor, whereas Martin allows himself the conceit that war can accomplish worthwhile deeds. One was a historian; the other is a fantasist.

It’s a matter of taste and what for some is lovely, descriptive writing is, for others, boring and superfluous detail. The balance is hard to get right and 5% one way or another can lead to ruinous and embarrassing passages rather than praiseworthy prose. Your mileage may vary, but I quite like it, is what I’m trying to say.

“The woods were full of whispers.

“Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.”

Page 625

And Martin’s feel for dialogue and roguish, fun characters is a welcome relief from all of the gallant tedium of the Tolkien books. Don’t get me wrong, I really, really liked reading those. I’ve read them twice, in fact. No one would ever, ever, ever accuse Tolkien of being funny, though. Those books are unbroken tedium, whether fleeing from the shadow, mourning past woes or those to come or sitting through solemn and deep ceremonies. Nobody ever really got blasted or laid.

Here is a conversation between Bronn (a sellsword and one of the best characters) and Tyrion Lannister (another of the great characters). In this passage, Martin fills in more tantalizing detail about how awesome Bronn is while Tyrion questions him about the whore he’d procured for him.

“Bronn was seated cross-legged under a chestnut tree, near where they’d tied the horses. He was honing the edge of his sword, wide awake; the sellsword did not seem to sleep like other men. ‘Where did you find her?’ Tyrion asked him as he pissed.

“‘I took her from a knight. The man was loath to give her up, but your name changed his thinking somewhat…that, and my dirk at his throat.’

“‘Splendid,’ Tyrion said dryly, shaking off the last drops. ‘I seem to recall saying find me a whore, not make me an enemy.’

“‘The pretty ones were all claimed,’ Bronn said. ‘I’ll be pleased to take her back if you’d prefer a toothless drab.‘

“Tyrion limped closer to where he sat. ‘My lord father would call that insolence, and send you to the mines for impertinence.’

“‘Good for me you’re not your father,‘ Bronn repied. ‘I saw one with boils all over her nose. Would you like her?’

“‘What, and break your heart?’ Tyrion shot back. ‘I shall keep Shae. Did you perchance note the name of this knight you took her from? I’d rather not have him beside me in the battle.‘

“Bronn rose, cat-quick and cat-graceful, turnin his sword in his hand. ‘You’ll have me beside you in the battle, dwarf.‘

“Tyrion nodded. The night air was warm on his bare skin. ‘See that I survive this battle, and you can name your reward.’

“Bronn tossed the longsword from his right hand to his left, and tried a cut. ‘Who’d want to kill the likes of you?’

“‘My lord father, for one. He’s put me in the van[guard].‘

“‘I’d do the same. A small man with a big shield. You’ll give the archers fits.‘

“‘I find you oddly cheering,’ Tyrion said. ‘I must be mad.’

“Bronn sheathed his sword. ‘Beyond a doubt.’”

Page 613–614

From this passage alone, you realize what a great job they’ve done with the casting and scripting for the TV show. I read all of Tyrion’s dialogue in Peter Dinklage’s voice. And Jerome Flynn’s Bronn is indelibly burned into my brain.


[1] While the modern age saw fit to allow me to borrow books from a library halfway around the world and whisk them to my electronic book for a period of fourteen days, before the bits once again evaporated into the aether—no small stress that, to be sure, especially with an 800-page tome—it did not see fit to provide the content to me in a format from which I was deemed worthy of being able to copy content that I found interesting. Presumably, this is to prevent wholesale copying of copyrighted good, but this is, quite frankly, a ridiculous situation to in which to find ourselves in the year of 2014. Here we sit, atop a pile of information and accumulated wisdom, culture and knowledge—all potentially available at a moment’s notice—and the paramount purpose is preëmptively assume that all consumers of this content are going to criminally benefit themselves, leaving the true generators of content to starve, despite their glorious contributions to humanity. The gods know our typing and spelling skills have only gotten worse—why make us waste so much time?