It's taken me awhile to get into Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, but I'm glad that I finally did. This story is rich and complex, the characters, while not necessarily likable, are enthralling, and the world building creates a perfect atmosphere for an epic struggle. This is a story built upon a long history of fantasy writing, and it uses the well loved ideas of the White Knight, the Dragonlord, the lost/mistaken child, the Hunt and many others and weaves them into a new story that is at once part of the canon and unique.
Narrated by a host of characters, it is almost as if you are standing in the center of the story while all of the different perspectives and actions unfurl around you. Having seen a few episodes of the tv series before reading the book I felt this even more strongly. Martin doesn't pull punches, if you can expect the worst, that's probably what's going to happen. In this way I found this book very similar to C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy. I had to put the book down several times because I felt that I knew where the story was heading and couldn't actually deal with what was happening. Yet, the chapters flip between characters so often that the events you dread are prolonged until they almost sneak up on you.
The one downside to this book, that I found, was that the world of the Seven Kingdoms is very detailed, very complex and very large. So many different factions throw their lot in with this family or that family, that in order to remember who is fighting for which side, Martin has some of his characters list off tons of names and sigils that are hard to remember in the long run. Thankfully my copy included a handy list of the big families and their retainers, however annoying it is to keep flipping to the end of the book to go "ah yes, the man with the Purple Unicorn as his house symbol (who I probably will never see again) is fighting for this person."
The one thing that I really like in book is the strength Martin gives his female characters. Yes, I bet there are people out there who would heartily disagree with me, but I think that while a lot of the women exist within stereotypical female fantasy roles, they can scheme, they can influence, and they have opinions, feelings, and actions that aren't just relegated to the background. This doesn't mean they are role models, in fact some of them are just plain despicable, but I appreciate that the women have just as much right to entangling alliances, war plans, and vengeance as the men in their lives.
I would recommend this book to anyone with a taste for high fantasy, because it is a shining example of the genre, but would hesitate to recommend to anyone who is sensitive about character death or becomes attached to characters too easily. This isn't a romance, and it doesn't have a lot of happy endings. "When you play the game of thrones, you either win or you die" sums the whole series up in one succinct sentence.
