Synopsis

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.
The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.

My thoughts

Okay, so I am 20 years behind everyone else in reading this – also I have never watched the TV show – and to be honest 20 years ago I would not have picked this up, let alone read it! Then I wasn’t really in to fantasy fiction with the exception of Terry Pratchett. But recently I decided to find out for myself what all the fuss was about, but rather than take the easy option and watch the show, I decided to read the book instead.

Although the book took me a while to get through, I actually enjoyed it. Obviously there is a lot going on, and there are so many characters, but each one is well written, whether they are likeable or not. I don’t know it is just me, but there didn’t (at the beginning) seem to be a clear definition of who the heroes were and who were the bad guys, obviously towards the end a clearer split is seen with the Starks being better than the Lannisters

Generally I just felt that these were people just trying to get along, with the only problem appear to be from across the sea, with Viserys Targaryen, his sister and the Dothraki.

It is a bog book and very complex and you do need to concentrate as a lot is going on constantly. I did enjoy the way that each chapter focused on the story of a particular character a this made it easier to keep track of who was who.

A great book and I will be reading A Clash of Kings soon.

I gave this 4 out of 5* on Goodreads