When I visited Hadrian's Wall in the Spring of 2007, I saw a UNESCO World Heritage Site that hinted at civilizations, feuds, and bodies long disintegrated, as had the once foreboding wall. As exciting as it was to explore the history of Hadrian's Wall, I saw this:
My own picture. My caption at the time:
"the actual wall of roman awesomeness that doesn't go much
of anywhere anymore but is still completely frikkin' cool."
Enough of that . . . Here's what G.R.R. Martin saw:
. . . a 700-plus foot wall made of ice, meant to discourage unwanted tourists, such as undead White Walkers with frosty blue eyes, and the "children"--a people of long forgotten magic--who watch through the blood-red eyes of the white weirwood trees.
And this must be how G.R.R. Martin imagines his toilet.
Martin's ability to dream on a grandiose scale is what makes some compare him to Tolkien; his ability to cruelly obliterate hope is what makes the reader realize that this is not another Tolkien novel. The environment may be a fantasy, but the characters are all too realistic, leading Anne McCaffrey to describe Game of Thrones as a "fantasticorical" (and other readers to try and force the two words together in less fantasticorical ways).
Among the 2,529 customer reviews on Amazon.com (not counting the 4,000+ "likes" for some of the reviews) and the 4,908 reviews on Barnes and Noble, one can find the enraged, embittered, offended, disgusted leavings of readers who were looking for Frodo and Richard Rahl, only to find the gross, disappointing, conniving, broken, and utterly human characters true fans have come to love.
"Love" is a light word in this case. For what Twihards have in volume and soprano range, Game of Thrones fans have in sheer devotion, following Martin's five-book series over fifteen years. Thank goodness Stephanie Meyers didn't force her adolescent following to wait six years for Breaking Dawn, which is the length of time Martin spent writing book five, Dance with Dragons.
The release of Dance with Dragons coincided with the start of the HBO TV series, the re-release of the board game, the creation of the role playing video game, and the emergence of fans old and new on a Martin-esque scale (as evidenced in part by the 274 patrons still in line to read the first book on AACPL's e-book waiting list). Moreover, 2011 experienced the thorough integration of Game of Thrones into modern culture's most precious commodity, social media: the ability to make, remake, comment, like, and share. If you haven't seen the Game of Thrones characters as presidential candidates on Facebook yet, here is your link out of the stone age: Click here to rejoin society.
If you are one of those 274 people on the waitlist for GoT (or another rare being who has avoided the book as of yet), here are a few spoiler-free details to summarize what you're up for:
1. You should know that there's lots of sex, nudity, violence, drinking, swearing, and other things gory, vulgar, and grim.
2. Your moral compass will flip out, as will your expectations. As Lev Grossman says in his review, "The only way to tell the heroes from the villains is that the hero is the guy with the knife in his back."
3. You will have to work hard for a book that is not nice, fun, or uplifting. If you aren't in the mood for ploughing through a dense thicket of words that leave you disheartened and frustrated and dismally awaiting the sixth book, there is plenty of enjoyable book candy out there. Go pick up a Xanth novel. Or a Harry Potter.
By the way, I did not read every single one of those 7,437 reviews mentioned above. I will leave that for you, voracious reader, if you are one of the deprived souls suffering from both the end of HBO's Game of Thrones season and the seemingly endless wait for the sixth book, The Winds of Winter. If you fit this description, you are likely reading this review solely in a vain attempt to quell your vampiric thirst for more Martin. I likely know who you are.
In the meantime, the rest of us bookworms will just have to suffer through more of this.
If you liked Game of Thrones, I recommend:
- Shakespeare's Macbeth
- Lost or The Sopranos (TV)
- Historical documentaries, biographies, and autobiographies (like the U.S., France, and Great Britain between 1900 and 1939. Or Ghengis Khan.)
- The game Risk
Enjoyable trivia:
On Tuesday, July 10, 2012, an exact word search in the New York Times Book Review for "Game of Thrones" returns Nuns Behaving Badly, apparently listed under Children's Books, about nuns who train as assassins. Review by Jessica Bruder, published April 6, 2012. Gotta love web searches.
Sources:
Grossman, Lev. G.R.R. Martin's Complex Epic for an Ambivalent Age
NPR Staff. Author George R.R. Martin 'Playing For Keeps'
Jennings, Dana. In a Fantasyland of Liars, Trust No One, and Keep Your Dragon Close.
Amazon: Game of Thrones (book)
B&N: Game of Thrones (book)
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