My life in books

Early this year, Morgan told me she was trying to finish a lot of books she had started but not finished. But there were still several half-read books on her ipad, and I found seven partially completed reviews, which I am cleaning up and posting here. I suspect most of the reviews were started before she decided she needed to focus more on reading than on doing write ups of what she had read.

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I’m rather at a loss as to how to describe George R. R. Martin’s latest Song of Ice and Fire offering, Fire and Blood. It’s not a novel. It reads more like a history book than anything else, but every element of the history - countries, towns, people, events, dates, is completely invented. The closest thing I can think of in SF terms are the tedious Dune prequels of Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert, which consist most of chunks of Frank Herbert’s notes with occasional badly written bits of something approaching narrative (I read the first handful of them, strictly for Herbert’s notes).

But Fire and Blood has a certain charm. Setting out to mimic a popular history book, it doesn’t try to be or do anything else. It does try to be a good popular history book. Which actually makes it readable, and interesting, if you like history books, which I do.

G. R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
G. R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
G. R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

Of course I'd heard of Martin's voluminous epic, collectively known as The Song of Ice and Fire, long before last year. And from time to time I'd thought about checking out the first volume, just to see if it was worth all the fuss, But I had previously been gravely disappointed by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which became quite unreadable - for me, at least - after the first couple of volumes, and to which ASoIaF had been frequently compared.

But then the news came out that a TV series was being made of the epic, and I decided to read the first volume to see if the series might interest me.

Well... the first volume was better than I'd feared, and I did find myself identifying quite strongly with some of the main characters, so despite the unrelieved grimmness and the somewhat disorienting choice of an ever increasing number of POVs, I kept on reading. I've invested enough in this that I will likely continue reading to the end - I really do want to know what happens to Arya and Daenerys - but I can't quite shower it with the praise that so many others have. It seems that when it comes to multi-volume epics with casts of seemingly thousands, in which each volume is pushing 800 pages, I still prefer Michelle West and Kate Elliott over Martin (with honourable mention to Katharine Kerr, whose Deverry series has several volumes that are rather less than 800 pages, but makes up for that by having 15 volumes in the series).