Rating: 9/10
Books Like This: Throne of Glass, Dune, Priory of the Orange Tree
For People Who Like: High Fantasy, Drama, Political Intrigue, Multiple Storylines, Complex Characters
Synopsis:
Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.
Review:
Oh my lord, was this book long. This is one of the only times in the past couple years when I've really been getting into reading that I've had to assign myself pages to finish and due dates to finish them by. The description in this book was beautiful but also could be wildly boring and seem to drag on for pages upon pages. I also watched the show before trying to read the book and it's hard to tell if this helped me or impeded me in my endeavor to read this book. On one hand the only motivation I had to read this book was to get it done and read about dragons and all of the other interesting plot points that I saw in the show; on the other hand, I knew everything that was going to happen in this book because I finished the first season of the show.
This book has some of the most interesting and well - developed characters I've ever read. Though, that should be taken with a grain of salt because I don't read high fantasy often. It is a rotating third-person point of view which visits a multitude of characters in every chapter. The problem with this sort of narration is that there will always be a point of view that you like more than the others and for me that was Daenerys's point of view. I'm a sucker for a romance story and even though this was a problematic marriage (to say the least) it still brought some light to the darkness that was the length of this book.
The Stark storyline was interesting, but it didn't really grip my attention until it really started to ramp up at the end when SPOILER a Stark was murdered by The Boy King. The last hundred and fifty pages of the book almost ALMOST made reading the whole thing worth it. I was crying, I was laughing (in relief), I was crying again, I was screaming.
I will probably continue this series, there will probably be a wait between each book. I don't think I would finish the next book if I read it too close to the last one. Though, I am interesting in seeing what happens with Arya, Jon, Daenerys and Sansa's stories. Overall, if you're looking to get into high fantasy like I was, you just have to leap in headfirst and read as much as you can to get yourself invested. I wish you luck.
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