Every Sword Red
Cole Gaynor
A Storm of Swords
George R. R. Martin
A continent torn into bits by war, scorched by the brutal raging of five kings. Deception, intrigue, a constant battle for supremacy and above all, the overwhelming threats of invaders, betrayal, and a cold death at the hands of your enemies. A Storm of Swords, the third of George R. R. Martin’s epic A Song Of Ice And Fire series is a rollercoaster of the entangling and captivating plot throwing the reader around at every turn. He continues to throw a stupendous amount of raw information at the reader in a somehow barely palatable form, but the story is always more than enough action and surprise for the reader.
Even in comparison to the previous books, A Storm Of Swords is insane. It has more of the unforeseen plot elements that marked the series than its two predecessors and changes the course of the story more than anything before it. Almost any element of the story would be considered a spoiler in a review due to the nature and magnitude of the book’s plot, but it diverges so much that the author had to split the next book into two, so to speak. In an author’s note after the book, Martin wrote that “I wrote lots about [other characters]. Pages and pages. Chapters and more chapters. I was still writing when it dawned on me that the book had become too big to publish in a single volume… and I wasn’t close to finished yet. To tell all of the story I wanted to tell, I was going to have to cut the book in two.” This sums up about how the story goes: a shattering into hundreds more possible stories, only a few of which can be told in-depth, as Martin’s wish was to do in the series. This lead to the book's impressive and intimidating volume. The book leaves no character safe; even the most invincible seeming characters are stripped of any plot armor they might have had in another book. This brutality that seems to make the book so believable is epitomized in a single quote: “Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died” (Martin 330). Martin shows through many, many deaths that no matter a character’s virtue to the story, they will not be saved by anything that would stretch the book. From the beginning to the end, the reader almost gets tired of all of the action and tension. Herein, to me, lies the book’s biggest issue.
While the book overall was a great read for me, some may have serious complaints about the book. The book, despite being the condensed half of Martin’s planned book, is over 1000 pages long. Many might be intimidated by the length of the book, as is to be expected. However, the book’s constant action and revolution of the plot can leave the reader tired sometimes while sometimes leaving them bored of the more mundane chapters in comparison. Right after some chapters, I felt like I couldn’t wait to hear more about the repercussions of something but was given a chapter mostly consisting of a few characters traveling. While still a well-written chapter and up to the standards of any book worth reading, the sudden changes in tension were hard to stay content with. On the other hand, I sometimes felt like I couldn’t handle any more characters dying off or armies clashing without losing some of the facts or just not enjoying it. This, of course, is bound to happen in a book of this scale and time frame, but I felt like it was one of the more difficult aspects of the book to handle. The book also had less frequent adult content than the ones before it, which I consider a welcome change; it makes the book easier to read and understand without that element. Aside from that, by this point in the series I have a better grasp on the workings of Westeros, the continent on which most of A Song Of Ice And Fire takes place, so I could handle more knowledge without being left in the dark about who was related to who, who was allied to who, and where the balance of power lay. However, I was still introduced to more areas and characters. Most of Dorne was left unmentioned in the first two books, but Dorne played a big role in A Storm Of Swords and likely will in the next book, A Feast For Crows. This keeps the book exciting and lets the reader keep learning about the world of Westeros. The book is so in depth and realistic that, minus the dragons, it sounds like a history book written in perspective. And like history at times, huge events can seem to spontaneously emerge without one having any knowledge of its causes or even its existence. As written by Martin, “With scarcely a moment’s respite, they began to play a very different sort of song” (Martin 701). This quote essentially describes the whole book: a change of everything that was known into a shattered mess of betrayal.
As with the rest of the series, the book is only for those who want a long, in-depth and often complex series. Each book takes a couple of months to read, and each chapter is fairly advanced writing. This is not a casual book at all, but it does what it does extraordinarily well. Of all medieval fantasy books, this series is my number one for an in-depth, well-created world. I have not found a single contradiction in its pages and I haven’t heard of any from any other source. Considering most people know about and watch the TV show, I would consider that means it has no contradictions whatsoever, an impressive feat for a series of this type and scale. This series doesn’t seem to be lacking for anything; whenever there is an issue, it’s often too much of something.
With the constant change and shock this book brings, I would absolutely recommend it, but only under the right circumstances. In my opinion, this is another great book in the series by George R.R. Martin and remains true to the genre and style of the series that by this point I have come to love. Although most are dead after the third installment, the characters are still as developed as the rest of the series. I suppose that’s some time Martin ended up wasting. When a book's greatest problem is that all of the detail can't be appreciated all at once, however, that book is exactly what I'm looking for, and something I would certainly recommend.
A Storm of Swords
George R. R. Martin
Even in comparison to the previous books, A Storm Of Swords is insane. It has more of the unforeseen plot elements that marked the series than its two predecessors and changes the course of the story more than anything before it. Almost any element of the story would be considered a spoiler in a review due to the nature and magnitude of the book’s plot, but it diverges so much that the author had to split the next book into two, so to speak. In an author’s note after the book, Martin wrote that “I wrote lots about [other characters]. Pages and pages. Chapters and more chapters. I was still writing when it dawned on me that the book had become too big to publish in a single volume… and I wasn’t close to finished yet. To tell all of the story I wanted to tell, I was going to have to cut the book in two.” This sums up about how the story goes: a shattering into hundreds more possible stories, only a few of which can be told in-depth, as Martin’s wish was to do in the series. This lead to the book's impressive and intimidating volume. The book leaves no character safe; even the most invincible seeming characters are stripped of any plot armor they might have had in another book. This brutality that seems to make the book so believable is epitomized in a single quote: “Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died” (Martin 330). Martin shows through many, many deaths that no matter a character’s virtue to the story, they will not be saved by anything that would stretch the book. From the beginning to the end, the reader almost gets tired of all of the action and tension. Herein, to me, lies the book’s biggest issue.
While the book overall was a great read for me, some may have serious complaints about the book. The book, despite being the condensed half of Martin’s planned book, is over 1000 pages long. Many might be intimidated by the length of the book, as is to be expected. However, the book’s constant action and revolution of the plot can leave the reader tired sometimes while sometimes leaving them bored of the more mundane chapters in comparison. Right after some chapters, I felt like I couldn’t wait to hear more about the repercussions of something but was given a chapter mostly consisting of a few characters traveling. While still a well-written chapter and up to the standards of any book worth reading, the sudden changes in tension were hard to stay content with. On the other hand, I sometimes felt like I couldn’t handle any more characters dying off or armies clashing without losing some of the facts or just not enjoying it. This, of course, is bound to happen in a book of this scale and time frame, but I felt like it was one of the more difficult aspects of the book to handle. The book also had less frequent adult content than the ones before it, which I consider a welcome change; it makes the book easier to read and understand without that element. Aside from that, by this point in the series I have a better grasp on the workings of Westeros, the continent on which most of A Song Of Ice And Fire takes place, so I could handle more knowledge without being left in the dark about who was related to who, who was allied to who, and where the balance of power lay. However, I was still introduced to more areas and characters. Most of Dorne was left unmentioned in the first two books, but Dorne played a big role in A Storm Of Swords and likely will in the next book, A Feast For Crows. This keeps the book exciting and lets the reader keep learning about the world of Westeros. The book is so in depth and realistic that, minus the dragons, it sounds like a history book written in perspective. And like history at times, huge events can seem to spontaneously emerge without one having any knowledge of its causes or even its existence. As written by Martin, “With scarcely a moment’s respite, they began to play a very different sort of song” (Martin 701). This quote essentially describes the whole book: a change of everything that was known into a shattered mess of betrayal.
As with the rest of the series, the book is only for those who want a long, in-depth and often complex series. Each book takes a couple of months to read, and each chapter is fairly advanced writing. This is not a casual book at all, but it does what it does extraordinarily well. Of all medieval fantasy books, this series is my number one for an in-depth, well-created world. I have not found a single contradiction in its pages and I haven’t heard of any from any other source. Considering most people know about and watch the TV show, I would consider that means it has no contradictions whatsoever, an impressive feat for a series of this type and scale. This series doesn’t seem to be lacking for anything; whenever there is an issue, it’s often too much of something.
With the constant change and shock this book brings, I would absolutely recommend it, but only under the right circumstances. In my opinion, this is another great book in the series by George R.R. Martin and remains true to the genre and style of the series that by this point I have come to love. Although most are dead after the third installment, the characters are still as developed as the rest of the series. I suppose that’s some time Martin ended up wasting. When a book's greatest problem is that all of the detail can't be appreciated all at once, however, that book is exactly what I'm looking for, and something I would certainly recommend.
Comments
Post a Comment