I’m going to level with you, Shelf Lifers: I wasn’t immediately sucked into A Game of Thrones. I found the prologue perplexing, the shifting perspectives  difficult to follow, and — though I know this is a tiny quibble — the names a tiny bit irritating. (Why, George R.R. Martin, do you give your characters monikers that are thisclose to being regular, like “Eddard” and “Tommen”and “Joffrey”? Why not just call them “Edward” and “Thomas” and “Jeffrey,” especially since other characters are named things like “Robert” and “Jon”? Arrrg.)

I know that many people admire Martin’s prose for the way it zips along, managing to keep a huge, thick book relatively fast-paced. But for me, at the beginning, things were moving too fast. While I respected the fact that Martin’s sophisticated storytelling wasn’t trying to hold anybody’s hand, I would have appreciated a little more exposition. Alas, I found out too late that there’s an extremely helpful appendix in the back of the book that lists all the characters and their relationships to one another. If only I had read the comments you left on my first post more carefully!

Despite my initial ambivalence, I plodded onward, assuming (and hoping) that things would get better. And boy, am I glad I did. READ FULL STORY »