I’m hammering through this Game of Thrones quintuplet thing. It’s good stuff and I think I’ll stick with it, but I’ve had my fill for this year. After book one I was really anticipating this book. But my anticipation for the next book has waned a little. I kind of got stuck at times during this follow-up effort, for a couple of reasons, but I’ll stick with it for at least another book.
At about 50%, things started to turn really supernatural and it frustrated me. A primary character was killed by a ghostly intruder and a main character started having visions and believing that dreams of others may be prophecies. In fact, there were a lot of dream sequences, which got pretty laborious. I started to tune them out, actually just glossing over them.
However, I’m still excited about the story. The characters are deep and complicated and the intrigue is well-played and expansive. It spans a lot of characters and a multitude of story lines, which keeps things moving despite an often sloth-like pace brought about by the dream sequences and the constant description of every bit character in the scene. There’s so much stuff going on that I’ve often had to turn to some fan sites to catch up on things. The Kindle does a poor job of portraying maps and makes it difficult to flip back through pages for reference purposes. I actually found it easier to go to a fan website to look at maps and refresh my memory on characters.
The political intrigue is one of the coolest parts of this book. The machinations of gaining and losing power in the relatively familiar political hierarchy is thoughtfully done by Martin. It adds a lot to the drama and makes for some good family carnage, which I love.
For the little sci-fi/fantasy/horror that I read, this is going to fix me up for at least next year. It’s becoming quite the pop-culture phenomenon and will get another boost of excitement next year when season two begins airing on HBO.