A Song of Ice and Fire #2

I have finished reading 4th book of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Impressions?

Too long. It is my main impression.
Many things that happen are just fillers, like 'this character would be useful in the next book, so he has to do something in this one. Many characters feel like fillers too.
Many things happen erradically.
Many choices characters make are at least illogical.

Also characters' images change from book to book, and change too drastically. People change, oh yeah.
But after Cersei is portrayed as ambitious and vile b#tch in first book you do not expect her to switch to stupid and shortsighted b#tch in fourth... And so on.


After you've read second book you begin to notice that story goes like this: 'slow slow slow slow slow slow ka-boom slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow ka-boom slow slow slow'. So you have to read tons of pages of fillers to reach something meaningful. And when you reach that meaningful, everything goes upside down.

Characters that move the story change in each book, but imho in fourth author had the worst combination. Cersei, Brienne, Samwell, Arya, Jaime, Sansa. Choose one that's the most interesting, heh? Or rather choose one that's the least irritating. My choice would be... Jaime. Arya's story could be interesting, if she wasn't just a filler for future use.

So overall A Song of Ice and Fire gets 6/10.
I thought it'd be better. And now having read these 7000 pages I get to think that maybe movie adaptation wasn't bad at all. It was shorter :)

A Song of Ice and Fire

Recently (in a week or so) I've been reading George R. R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire'.

By now I finished reading 1st book and read about 2/3 of 2nd. 

Still I have no idea why I keep reading it.

I hate to spoil your fun if you're planning to watch 'Game of thrones' TV series, but seriously... in TV adaptation there's almost nothing but boobs. Oh yeah! They occasionally show cocks too... Thus the rating yeah?

The book itself started to get on my nerves after I ruled out their little secret of 1st book (prince's) and read why Kingslayer is STILL alive. Or rather ... *why* king Robert's court is like it is. 

That was almost enough to make me stop reading.

I hate stories for children. 

I bore with it and waited for interesting parts to begin, because less than half heroes had interest for me. I bore with twisted balance between historically correct medieval world and 'magic'. I bore with children, yes, with children, who were either too old or too young for their young age. Meaning I didn't buy children's parts of the story. Except for Arya maybe. And Jon is not a child in a full sense of this word.

...but... 1st book lacks common sense more than anything.

I often had an impression that author sat in his chair and thought: 'we need an unexpected twist here, so he/she will do the least likely thing now'. There're times when you read something you didn't expect and think 'yes, I see it happening', though not in this case. Some events were planned as story turning milestones and have no logical connection whatsoever to other actions of heroes. Or so it seemed to me.

Well, that pretty much spoils it all. They story turns and twists, but I lost most of the interest in how it all ends in the first half of the book.

So I persisted on reading it only because we started watching Game of thrones and it had even worse storyline. I think scenarios for TV series were made by someone who never read the book. They took main event of each one chapter and filmed it, leaving most of the book behind the scenes. Motivations, secondary events that led to main events, etc. Also since series are low budget they cut out most interesting scenery.

And characters... became paper dolls that speak. 

Therefore an answer I posed to myself at the top of this post is... I'm reading it because I'm bored and I have to fill my head with something.

I can't cook all my free time.

Also... it is kinda educating to read something you don't like, but you know that it has commercial success. Makes one think.

Oh yeah... I laughed at a miss in first episodes of Game of thrones. When Jon speaks to Jaime near blacksmith's anvil he starts his speech with one beard and finishes with another one... makes one wonder who's filming it.