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Hey everybody, DJRM here with something that I may or may not do again in the future. I am going to present you with a book review.

The HBO series Game of Thrones begins this Sunday. Last night I finished reading the book it is based on A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series.



I will do my best to keep this review as spoiler free as possible for those who have not yet read the book.

To begin with, I liked A Game of Thrones.  It kept me interested throughout.  I don't want to say it is a real page turner but it is a real page turner.  Seriously often over the last few days when I should have been getting to sleep, working on my own writing or making dinner I was instead reading this book.

There are some great characters in the world George RR Martin has crafted.  There are some great locations and landscapes that are grand in the tradition of fantasy and also surprisingly grounded in reality.  It is a great book.  If I am going to talk about anything really it will have to be the books flaws.

As I said there are many great and interesting characters in this world but there are also some annoying ones.  The Stark family are the main characters of the first book but at times I found them to be kind of irritating.  Except for Arya Stark.  Arya Stark was awesome.
I think if I say too much I might give something away so I will just say that at times lead character Ned Stark got on my nerves.  Its like I wanted to reach into the book and slap him and say "wake up you moron."
At times it seemed almost like the author was going out of his way to make Sansa Stark annoying.
The main bad guys of the story are the Lannister family but the only one whose point of view we ever see is the dwarf Tyrion Lannister.  He is an interesting character and he does have some of the best lines.  People talk about the shades of gray in the story but most of the Lannisters are presented as straight up villians with no real room to sympathize with any of them.

Before I read A Game of Thrones I heard a lot of talk about how they can't say too much because they don't want to spoil all the unexpected surprises.  There were plenty of unexpected turns in the story but I can't say I really found any of them that surprising.  A was able to predict almost every "shocking" reveal in the story long before it was spelled out on the page.  I think most people would be able to figure them out as well.  All the clues are there to be put together.

In closing I would like to say that A Game of Thrones is a good book and George R.R. Martin is a brilliant writer.  I think at some point I will pick up the next book A Clash of Kings.  Mostly because I want to know if any of the more assholish characters are ever going to get any comeuppance.