Series Storms Back To Original Strength
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
Never mind that the book is 973 pages. You won't be able to put it down until you've read it from cover to cover. Indeed, this not-insignificant fact put my husband in the doghouse on our 8th anniversary.This book arrived in the mail from Amazon two days before our anniversary--and our annual New Year's Eve Party. We had three solid days set aside for cleaning, baking, and cooking. And we needed every minute. Instead, my husband got swallowed up in A Storm of Swords until I finally hid the book and threatened to cancel our party.
The next week was my turn to get absorbed. I came down with the flu and spent three of the days lost in the fascinating world created by George R.R. Martin.
A Storm of Swords is the third book in what I originally thought was going to be a trilogy. From where this book ended, I'd say there will be a minimum of two more books and probably several more. I didn't want to read the first book, A Game of Thrones. It sat on our dresser for a year with my husband's highest recommendations. However, I had read the first chapter and been turned off by the violence. Once I did finally pick up and read the whole thing (again, it happened when I was sick and it was the only book within reach), I begrudgingly came to like it--indeed to be fascinated by it.
The second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, was disappointing. It was too much of a transition book with only a few interesting things to keep you reading through in hopes that there might be more.
However, once we start a series, we tend to plod on no matter how disappointed we become. A Storm of Swords was definitely a reward for that behavior. I'd judge this book to be the best in the series so far.
Overview
A Storm of Swords continues the tale of the Seven Kingdoms and the people who are struggling to rule it or just to live in it. It is a complex world with a conglomeration of many different cultures. It is a society that is medieval in technology and politics. There is some magic in the world, but until recently it had been dying out.In the North is a 700-foot tall wall that protects the Kingdoms from the Others and from supernatural beings such as wights. The Wall is guarded by the Watch, people who forsake their other lives and take a vow to spend their lives protecting the land and its people.
Why This Book Is So Good
A Storm of Swords narrates some real change and growth in the characters. It is fascinating to watch their struggles and the moral decisions they must make. The reader isn't safe in making any assumptions about the character or personality of the people in the book. Martin lets the environment and events change his characters in very believable ways. Too often the protagonists of a novel have a particular character and belief system that never change--even under the most adverse circumstances. While there is something to be said for steadfastness, Martin's style makes the book always interesting and unpredictable.It seems appropriate the colors of the family we most sympathize with is gray. Most of this world is gray. It isn't easy to clearly choose what is right and wrong. Even when the choice seems apparent, other factors intervene to make you think twice. In this book we start to sympathize with former villains and hate former heros.
A Storm of Swords is also filled with surprises. Martin doesn't ever let you rest easy. I joked to my husband that I'm not going to believe anything I read in the book because Martin constantly makes appearances be deceiving. If he doesn't cut up a body in front of you and dispose the remains, he may find a way to bring the person back. He started doing that in book two, though it seemed more forced in that book than it did in book three.
Martin keeps the surprises up to the very end. Both the final chapter and the epilogue had me gasping in surprise in the final paragraphs. Martin doesn't let anything in his world be sacred and is willing to twist beloved characters in any way that strikes his fancy.
I do wish that the Starks would have gotten a break in this book. Martin teases you occasionally that Bran and Jon might get one, but with all the twists and turns the book takes, you wonder whether it will last.
Perhaps one of my favorite story strands in this book was the one with Dany. After she spent all of book two tramping around the desert, her story is finally getting interesting again. I am once again able to empathize with her and cheer her actions. However, the end of her story leads me to believe that it will be several more books before she actually makes it over to King's Landing. Most of her would-be subjects don't even believe in her existence yet.
Religion plays an interesting role in this novel. You can draw parallels to Earth's evolution of religious thought. There are the old gods that are very much like the early forest and nature spirits. They were then supplanted by The Seven, deities that represent different aspects of the human condition (the mother, the crone, the warrior, the stranger, the maiden, etc.). Then there is the fire god whose worshipers talk about a dualism of good versus evil--very much like the Judeo-Christian concept of a God and a Satan.
What I Disliked
I like completeness in a series. As much as I may hate to see a story end, I still want it to do so. A definite beginning and end encourages order and organization. An open-ended series allows for too much sloppiness and a total disregard for tight story telling.There also continues to be problems with the chronology of the storylines. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character and not all of them take place consecutively. Martin makes a disclaimer about this in the introduction to the book, but I fear it is insufficient. From what I can tell, things don't always add up right and people get news of events elsewhere in the world that shouldn't be happening in their timeline yet. At least, it doesn't seem consistent.
While I at first liked the format of the chapters taking the perspectives of different characters, it makes it too tempting to skip ahead--especially when he ends a chapter on a cliff-hanger. I think perhaps he asks too much of his readers to expect them to be disciplined enough to only turn the pages in the order he has deemed when he chooses to use this format.
In the biography of Martin on this book's slipcover, it said that he was a television screenwriter. This explains a lot of his writing style. I can easily see this entire series being turned into a television series with weekly episodes ending on cliff-hangers.
There were a few strings left hanging in this book. Rickon receives only a brief mention by his brother. We have no clue what happened to him or where he ended up. I can understand that Martin doesn't want to write a string of chapters from the perspective of a three-year-old or his garrulous nurse, but there ought to have been some word to someone about his whereabouts. Or at least of his wolf. I also missed the perspective of Theon Greyjoy, though that at least was understandable and we did receive news of him. In general the total absence of any story directly from Theon or his family was disconcerting after hearing so much about them in the second book. We get second-hand news about his father and the movements of the armies in the North, but no direct exposure.
