Mystery Review: 'The Dark Shepherds' by Ian Kennedy Martin

So - there's an alcoholic ex-cop, half Welsh and half Irish and a quarter Corsican (I may have got this slightly wrong), and there's a murderer, with multiple identities, always on the run. And yes, the murderer is a main character, who gets his own point of view. And there's a murder in Paris and another one at a vineyard, seemingly not connected, and it's all very complicated and written in a style which is perhaps meant to be ironic noir, or stylishly gritty, or possibly satirical, I can't really be sure. Basically, I found it very hard to follow, and wasn't interested in the characters either, so I'm abandoning ship. The author has a distinguished career behind him as a screenwriter of cop shows, so possibly things perk up later on. One star for a DNF.

Review: 'A Dance With Dragons' by George R R Martin

And so book 5 of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' arrives, with 2 more projected at some unspecified time in the future. Since the last two books took 5 and 6 years apiece, no one is holding their breath. Was it worth the wait? The good news is that this is better than ' A Feast For Crows', much better, in fact. Some, at least, of the many sprawling plotlines weave in and out in a much more satisfying way, the most important new characters are introduced in a less contrived manner, and there is both more backstory and more action. It feels like a denser read, for sure, with a lot less fluff and filler.

The bad news (there had to be some, didn't there?) is that there are still many characters and plotlines left adrift from the rest of the story - notably Bran, Arya and Sansa (missing altogether from this book). There are still too many disparate plotlines altogether, and way, way too many characters. Some might see it as adding richness and depth, but I regard it as a pointless distraction to introduce a raft of characters for a chapter or two, only for them to disappear, sometimes for ever. And even if we need to meet yet another minor lord, surely we don't also need to know the names of his entire family, his maester, his knights, his bannermen, his guards, his sword and all the other paraphernalia. It's extraneous bloat.

There is still a great deal of ambling around the countryside, Brienne-style, but it leads to a lot of extra information and anyway, ambling north of the wall or around the free cities is a great deal more interesting than around the small-holdings of Westeros. And ambling anywhere with Tyrion is always fun.

I have never been a great fan of the practice of jumping from one character's point of view to another, chapter by chapter. At its best, in 'Clash of Kings' and at times here, the plot flows seamlessly from one chapter to the next. At its worst, in 'Feast for Crows' and occasionally here, the cuts are abrupt and jarring. And frankly, the technique of ending a chapter on a near-death moment gets tired very quickly. It's a cheap trick, and not even very effective.

Martin's magic has always been a bit of a muddle of dreams, prophecies, blood magic, shadow killers, seers and several kinds of undead, but previously it has been sparing enough that I can just go with the flow. But now it's much more in your face, and it's becoming increasing a plot device, to the point of deus ex machina. The ability of the red priests and priestesses to see the future in the flames is particularly 'convenient' from a plot point of view, and feels like a cheat. And although some of the special effects are clearly non-magical, there is enough magical capability that it feels as if any difficult situation, no matter how dire, could be resolving instantaneously by a wave of Melisandre's hand. However, I'm reserving judgment until I see the final destination.

The characters, as always, are wonderful. Even the new ones, like Quentyn Martell, are finely drawn so that they have our sympathy. And Martin's ability to make us like even the most hated characters is legendary (if annoying). He's already done it with Jaime, now we sympathise with Cersei and even Theon, who seemed entirely beyond redemption. The writing, too, is well up to Martin's usual standard. His prose is clear and straightforward, his descriptions are vivid, and as for his dialogues, no one does it better. But when did he get so repetitive? If I had a gold dragon for every time I read 'much and more' or 'words are wind', I could probably buy out the Lannisters. And the overused archaic terms, like 'leal' and 'mine own', are simply jarring in language that is otherwise straightforwardly modern.

But what about the story? True, it's absorbing, and it flows along pretty well. There are some great moments with the dragons, there are some genuinely moving episodes, especially Bran and Theon, there's a lot of humour and even the slower parts are entertaining (a great improvement on Feast). I wasn't counting, but my impression was that the death and dismemberment count was lower, at least among significant characters (a lot of the unwashed masses died horribly, but that's par for the course).

But then it ends, and virtually nothing is resolved. People move about, things happen and then it just stops in mid-stream, and we get another multi-year wait until the next episode. It may be churlish in book five of seven to grumble that there is no resolution, but a book that's sold as a single entity should at least have a discernable structure in its own right, even if it also aims to advance the larger plot and set the pieces in position for the next stage. Each of the earlier books had a simple theme - book 1 was about the naive Ned Stark at court, book 2 the defence of King's Landing, book 3 the aftermath of war, book 4 - well, book 4 was free-form plot-drift, and it has to be said, this book tends that way as well. Meereen would make a good central focus, if only it came to some kind of conclusion. The theme of the difficulty of ruling pervades the book, but that's tired - we've seen the same idea worked out already with Ned, Tyrion and Robb. More progress is made, but it is simply a few steps along the way towards the ultimate ending, with no coherent story of its own.

It's not that it's bad - it's actually good, entertaining stuff, with very few dull chapters, the new point of view characters are a positive addition, there is a lot of meaty background detail and a fair amount of action. But in the end, my reaction is - that was good, but so what? There was no emotional resolution here at all. And it's so painfully slow, and the vast size of it only underscores that. Feast and Dance together would have made one terrific book, if the author could have brought himself to prune it down to - oh, about a fifth of the size. At this rate, it's hard to see how the overall story can be completed in just two more books. And Westeros is still a depressingly awful place. I would love to give this four stars, but the rather incoherent use of magic, the dangling plot-threads and the sheer bloat drag it down to three. [First written July 2011]

Review: 'A Feast For Crows' by George R R Martin

Well, here we are with book 4 of 7 (at least) and suddenly we have an acute case of mid-series sag. Martin had originally planned to skip 5 years at this point to have his younger characters grow into their roles, but decided instead that he just had to describe the intervening years in detail to avoid flashbacks, and then further decided that there was too much for just one book. So this part of the story has been divided into two, this being the first half, and 'A Dance With Dragons' will be the second.

The unfortunate effect of this is that some of the most interesting characters (Jon, Bran, Tyrion, Daenerys) are not in this book at all. We get Arya, Sansa, Samwell and Jaime, plus new POV characters Cersei and Brienne, and a whole raft of walk-on parts for minor characters - the prophet, the kraken's daughter, the drowned man and so on. We also lose the whole of northern Westeros and most of Essos, and instead focus on the Iron Islands and Dorne, as well as King's Landing, with a little action in the central riverlands.

It is not that these places or the new characters are without interest. The problem is that we are already emotionally invested in the people and places we have been introduced to before, and have no need for any more. Much as I like the idea of Arianne and her sand snake cousins, for instance, I don't feel they have any relevance at this point in the series. The whole plot line involving Myrcella could have been summarised in a single chapter (well, a single paragraph, actually), seen perhaps from Cersei's POV, and would have spared us another twenty or more meaningless characters. Samwell's plotline seems to involve a lot of seasickness and a minute amount of revelation. In the Iron Islands, Theon was the only marginally interesting character, his plot relevance was limited to destroying Winterfell, and beyond that - well, who cares? And much as I like Brienne, she seems to have taken on Arya's role of ambling round and about, going nowhere in particular very slowly.

The only two characters whose chapters are interesting are Jaime and Cersei, and even here we have a whole new raft of minor (and probably irrelevant) characters to deal with. But the political fallout from the removal of both Tywin and Tyrion, and the unexpected quarrel between Jaime and Cersei, leaving Cersei in undisputed control, is fascinating. After a Samwell chapter which had so little meat it could be summarised in a handful of words, we get a Cersei chapter stuffed so full that it's hard to take it all in.

Apart from this, we get a lot of nothing very much, liberally sprinkled with references to events and people that may (or may not) have cropped up before, with minimal explanation. Sometimes I looked them up, sometimes I just couldn't be bothered, sometimes these cryptic references turn out to have spawned a vast array of theories (which are quite fun). The book itself is less fun, however. It seemed quite incredible how often we bumped into remnants of the Brave Companions or the Brotherhood Without Banners, and inevitably there are deaths and maimings - even poor Myrcella isn't spared. It's a wonder anyone is left alive in Westeros. It's a wonder anyone cares.

It is not just that nothing very much (or very exciting, anyway) happens, but the tone of this book is troublingly different from its predecessors. The absence of many well-loved characters and the introduction of numerous people we know little to nothing about removes much of the emotional pull from even quite powerful episodes. This is compounded in the Dorne and Greyjoy stories by the use of multiple POV characters. And there is noticeable inertia throughout the book. Sansa has always been a passive character, but now she is required to sublimate her whole personality. Arya, who was always proactive and downright feisty, is here forced into a submissive, obedient role. In the Dorne episodes, we are introduced to two wonderfully active characters, Obara and Nymeria Sands, only to have them promptly locked away. Doran Martell is literally immobile, and Areo Hotah is defined by his own immobility. Arianne spends almost an entire chapter locked into a single room. Other characters who are actually moving around (Jaime, Brienne and Samwell, for instance) do so at a very slow pace, with little action. The one battle that sounded interesting (Dragonstone) is only reported second hand. Even the chapters are longer than in previous books (15 pages against 10-12). All of this combines to make the book feel incredibly slow.

Pacing isn't the only problem here. Given that we are now half way through the series (we hope!), it's reasonable to ask what the story is actually about. In brief, there are three major problems on the horizon: the coming winter, the threat of the Others in the north, and the likely invasion of Daenerys and her dragons from the east. All of these were set out right from book 1. However, books 2-4 have been absorbed by the bloody civil war in Westeros, and it's hard to see any (plot) purpose other than to weaken the continent. What is worse, not one of the three main storylines has been addressed at all in this book, which focuses solely on the (hopefully) final throes of the war. So it's easy to feel that very little is accomplished here, although Westeros finally learns of the dragons, and towards the end of the book we see the beginnings of movements in support of Daenerys, thus laying the groundwork for the next book.

Martin's writing is as wonderful as ever, and his major characters are just as fascinating, but it's time to cut to the chase. The original idea of skipping 5 years, and showing the necessary events in between in flashback was a good one, and should have been pursued. Perhaps then we would have been spared a great deal of what feels suspiciously like filler (and brilliantly written filler is still filler).[First written March 2011]

Review: 'A Storm of Swords' by George R R Martin

This is the third book in the sequence, and most other epic fantasies would be winding up at this point. Martin, however, is just getting into his stride. The story picks up exactly where the second book ('A Clash of Kings') left off, with the battle for Kings Landing over, but skirmishes and settling of scores going on up and down the Seven Kingdoms. The Stark children are separated and scattered about, and the Dragon Queen across the sea is still looking for her army to help her recover her realm.

Having greatly enjoyed both the first two, it was rather a surprise to find myself reluctant to start this one. As with the first book, the Prologue is vastly uninteresting, being focused on a character we've never seen before and are very likely not going to see again, and being stuffed full of meaningless names. The author would do much better with a 'less is more' approach - unless a character has some plot relevance, or at least a few lines of dialogue, don't bother with the name.

This book is less successful at reminding the reader of events in the previous books. I read them both carefully, and looked up numerous references online as I read, but I still struggled to understand parts of the first few chapters. Considering the size of the books, surely a few words could be spared to remind us why the Martells might want vengeance against Gregor Clegane, for instance. A single line about Elia and her children would be enough. To be fair, we are given the whole backstory later, but it is still frustrating to have to interpret these cryptic references.

But within a few chapters, the author has got into his stride and the story begins to roll along quite merrily. There are plenty of exciting things happening to all the characters, with loads of dramatic tension and, as before, it's exceptionally well written. And yet... somehow I feel as if very little progress is being made. The characters all seem to be floundering along much as they did in the previous book. Arya is still trying to get home, Sansa is still waiting for something to happen to her, Robb is still bogged down in the war, Daenerys is still trying to raise an army... Even when they have a clear focus, they don't seem to be getting anywhere. Perhaps there are just too many characters following too many disparate plotlines.

And Martin introduces new point of view characters in this book, such as Jaime Lannister and Samwell Tarly. Jaime's chapters, to my astonishment, manage to turn him from an out and out villain into something resembling a sympathetic character, which I would have thought impossible. I had to keep reminded myself of some of his more extreme actions in the first book. He has a sharp sense of humour, too, not unlike Tyrion. Samwell's chapters, on the other hand, read more like necessity at first - the author needed to show some essential action and all his previous characters were tied up elsewhere. Later, he does get some action of his own.

There is an interesting twist to the plotlines developing in the war zone (essentially the middle part of Westeros). In the aftermath of the major battles, several groups have actually switched allegiance, leading to some interesting meetings where characters surrender themselves with relief to a familiar face, only to find themselves captive. While this makes for great drama, it does make it even more difficult for the reader to work out who is who, and what side they are on.

Westeros is still a brutal and unforgiving place, where people do terrible things without (apparent) retribution, but in this book there are glimmerings of more charitable acts too, and a few of the more evil characters do get what was coming to them (hurray!). There are moments of altruistic kindness and sheer heroism and even of a sense of honour, something sadly lacking in much of the first two books. Nevertheless, there are very few truly good or totally bad characters.

The magic becomes increasingly overt, and we are even treated to a deus ex machina - a situation seemingly impossible to escape from, where a previously unknown (character? thing?) arrives out of the blue to rescue our hapless victims. Martin's use of magic is more grounded than in many books (no schools of sorcery or wizards drawing down thunderbolts - yet), but it still fulfils the conventional role in a fantasy book: it is either a plot device to get a character from A to B or convey information (via prophecy, or dreams, or 'I saw it in the flames', or some such), or as a get-out-of-jail-free card to miraculously rescue characters from tricky situations. Neither is very satisfying.

The direwolves and dragons, and whatever magical properties they possess, are fairly acceptable, since they were flagged up almost from the first line of the first book, and therefore seem to be an integral and organic part of the story world. But Melisandre's shadows seem just too convenient, and now we have Coldhands, and a strange dwarf woman, and Jojen's green dreams as well. Bleh.

We are beginning to get some of the backstory now, especially about the Robert/Rhaegar/Lyanna triangle and Jon's parentage and why Jaime killed mad king Aerys. There is also more about the three religions in Westeros, and we see more of Essos as well, which is in many ways a more interesting continent. But the book is somehow less focused than either of the previous two. Yes, there are four weddings and more funerals than you can shake a spear at, and plenty of dramatic action, but it feels like a long-drawn-out tidying up exercise. Book 1 had a clear story arc in the rise and fall of Eddard Stark, but books 2 and 3 feel like they are telling the same story - the settling of the succession after king Robert's death - but painfully slowly. It would have been an improvement, I think, to cut away two thirds of the lesser characters and simplify the war into one cohesive book.

Nevertheless, the writing is still stunning, and the characters leap off the page in fully three-dimensional and vivid life. A little larger than life, admittedly, but then the story is about kingdoms and wars and not the daily grind, so perhaps that's understandable. My only real complaints are the depressingly miserable Westeros life, the overly conventional use of magic and (most of all) the vast unstoppable sprawl. The fairly tight story of 'A Game of Thrones' has burst its banks and spilled out in all directions, and it is no wonder that the next two books took 5 and 6 years respectively. 'A Feast of Crows' was less well regarded than the first three books, and 'A Dance With Dragons' will determine once and for all whether Martin has got things under control or whether the plot has got away from him. Four stars. [First written in March 2011]

Review: 'A Clash of Kings' by George R R Martin

This is the second book of the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series, which will ultimately be seven books in length (at least). The book picks up exactly where 'A Game of Thrones' ended - the king is dead, there are several warring claimants to the throne, the Stark family (through whose eyes much of the first book's story was told) is scattered. This book follows the fortunes of the war, although very little of it is seen first-hand. Generally, the characters hear about battles, sieges and the like, or come across ravaged castles and fields, but apart from a few skirmishes there is relatively little fighting, apart from one big battle at the end.

It is a curious thing, given that the writing style is very much the same as in the first book, but this one was much, much easier to read. Partly this is because there are fewer of the traumatic deaths and maimings in evidence, but partly I think it is simply because there is so much low-level random violence and cruelty going on that any sense of shock is lost. The conceptual jumps from chapter to chapter are much easier to take, too. Yes, each chapter has a different character as its focus, but the plot flows seamlessly from one to the next. In practice, the character point-of-view chapters are less about the characters themselves, but more a way to move quickly around the widely distributed locations where the action is going on. The chapters actually feel quite episodic, and perhaps it is no coincidence that the author is also a screenwriter.

Suddenly, there is overt magic in the world, too. There is even an explanation for this - the magic supposedly lost its power when the last dragons died. Now that three dragons have been born (as we know, but most of the characters do not), it seems the magic has regained its power. So we have some very strange killings - Renly murdered by a shadow, the defending Lord at Storm's End who mysteriously throws himself from the battlements (both achieved by Melisandre) and elsewhere, Ayla's overseer is killed by his own dog, and the freed prisoner who makes this happen changes his appearance magically.

The most interesting magic is that experienced by the Stark children through their wolves. Bran, in particular, is able to move his consciousness into his wolf, and Jon too has some ability.  Rickon probably also has it, since he shared a dream with Bran after their father died.  Arya is at present merely very aware of (ordinary) wolves, but there is no sign that she has been in the mind of her wolf (who is still alive, but location unknown).

But most of the book is taken up with the much more earthly machinations of the political scramble for position after the death of the king, and this is where the book is quite glorious. Down at King's Landing, Tyrion the dwarf is in charge, and, where his Stark predecessor was ponderously straightforward (and therefore inept) in his handling of affairs, Tyrion is even more devious than the other courtiers - and the queen. Elsewhere, the two brothers of the dead king are fighting each other, and in the north, Theon and his family are more concerned with settling old scores. Only the experienced Tywin and the fifteen-year-old Robb Stark are getting on with the business at hand.

It is still distasteful how even the knights and high lords are uniformly horrible - not just to each other but to everyone. Women are there to be raped or put to work, men who are only trying to defend their properties and families are routinely slaughtered, servants are beaten or maimed for the slightest imagined transgressions, prisoners are gruesomely tortured. This book is much more graphic than its predecessor, and one has to wonder just what the purpose is (apart from a more dramatic story, that is). If battling lords made a habit of killing off all their farmers, smiths and millers, and burning their woods and fields in the way described, the victor would find himself king of a desert. Farms and villages do get destroyed in the heat of war if a battle happens to be fought on the spot, or a passing army camps there, but generally only those who take up arms are liable to die as a result, and the innocent bystanders are left alone. Even kings have to have subjects to rule over, and bread to eat, and keeping the population alive, contented and productive is part of the deal, or so I would have thought.

I do have some concerns over plot credibility. A major motivating factor is the lack of food in King's Landing, the main city of the south. Given that it is not under seige, is nowhere near the theatre of war, and has a seaport, it's hard to know quite why food is in such short supply.  For most of the book, the fighting is at least a hundred miles to the north, and the entire regions to the west and south, while not exactly settled, are not totally disrupted either. The farmers need to sell their produce to the city, and the city needs to eat it - it's a simple and effective arrangement, and when war is looming, prices go up, and trading is even more profitable. It only breaks down by physical prevention - seige, or having nothing to sell.

Then there is the group moving north through the war zone, and reduced to eating worms. Granted, the armies have been back and forth, and those camped or installed in a castle somewhere will deplete local supplies by foraging, and there has been some burning. Nevertheless, it is very hard to destroy a farm to such an extent that there is nothing at all left to eat. Crops rarely burn fully, there are orchards and vegetable gardens, underground storage facilities, and even if the pigs, sheep and cattle have all been taken, there will always be some chickens left.

The first book had a grim and depressing tone to it - the most honourable character ends up dead, horrible things happen to some of the children, while the bad guys get away with (literally) murder. This book is a little more balanced. The children are beaten up or enslaved or hunted down, but they come through it all relatively unscathed.  All the remaining direwolves survive (so far). Some of the bad guys get their comeuppance, and some of the good guys are victorious. The author still takes pleasure in killing off the (relatively) nice characters (eg the lovely Renly) in favour of the unappealing (Stannis, Cersei, et al), and maiming poor Tyrion even in his moment of triumph. What does a dwarf have to do to get a break?

But the book is beautifully written. There is enough information to remind those who read the first book some time ago of important plot points, without seeming repetitive to more recent readers. All the characters are interesting and, to a greater or lesser degree, sympathetic. And the various plot threads weave in and out of each other like Gandalf's magically controlled smoke rings. In one chapter, a peace envoy's escort is infiltrated with a group of carefully chosen activists whose job is to free a prisoner. Many chapters later, we find out, oh so subtly, that this failed, by seeing their bodies suspended from gallows. This is so much more effective than a direct report.

The multiple character viewpoints work well in this book, too. In the first book, it was sometimes quite jarring, but it seems less so in this one - or maybe I'm just more used to it. But it serves the plot well in the way it enables the author to jump about the country, as needed. The action is taking place in some seven or eight different locations, and although it sometimes seems contrived that Catelyn, in particular, manages to arrive at various places at crucial moments, generally the transitions are quite seamless and there is no difficulty working out where we are and what is going on, and the overall plot flows effortlessly from place to place.

The setpiece battle which forms the climax of the book is brilliantly executed. The preparations for it underly the entire book, and the twists and turns of the fortunes of the opposing forces are ingenious. Will it be the King in the North who comes? No, he's tied up elsewhere. Will it be Stannis or Renly? No, they've  gone off to fight each other. Oh, wait, Renly is dead, it is Stannis after all... And the actual battle follows a similar pattern - the defences are holding, we have them on the run... no, they're still coming, we can't hold them off... but wait, we're saved after all. And even though these are (in a very real sense) the bad guys in all this, we still want them to be saved.

This book has fewer shocking moments than its predecessor, and so was a much less intense experience. In some ways it feels transitional, with little real progress for most of the characters. The ending, which has four of the five Stark children setting out on new ventures and the fifth released from previous ties, has the feel of preparation for the next book. Politically, with the rival kings dead, defeated or tied up fighting on their home turf, and the rival queen still looking for an army, there is the possibility of stability for the unlikeable boy king and his family. But undoubtedly it won't be as simple as that. Five stars.  [First written February 2011]

Review: 'A Game Of Thrones' by George R R Martin

This book is the first of a proposed 7-part story known as 'A Song of Ice and Fire', of which only 4 parts have been published so far, in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2005. [Edit: book 5 appeared in 2011] At the present rate of production, we might all be dead (including the author) before #7 appears. The story is fantasy, although not the high fantasy of Tolkien - there are no elves, orcs or wizards (so far), and the only dwarf is all too human. There is more political intrigue and betrayal than undying honour or valour, but there are dragons and direwolves, and magic of a sort, although it is subtle at this point.

I am totally ambivalent about this book. I love it, but I also hate it. I am fascinated, but also repelled. Reading it has been a totally absorbing and emotionally draining experience. There is an army of devoted fans out there, and entire websites devoted to detailing and analysing every aspect, however small, and I could easily become just as obsessive. I am not sure that I want to, so this review is partly catharsis and partly an attempt to keep a sense of perspective.

Let me deal with the fascination first. Every fantasy book defines its own world, and Martin's is intriguing and well thought out. There are two defined continents, a western one (Westeros) and a larger eastern one (Essos), and as you can tell, names are not the author's strongest suit. There may be other continents beyond these. The initial focus is mainly on Westeros, but there is some action on Essos too. There are cities and kingdoms and castles and ancient forests and vast grasslands, and it all feels nicely believable. The far north of Westeros is permanently cold, and the south (some 2000-3000 miles away) is tropical to desert. The most interesting aspect of this world is that both summers and winters may last for several, sometimes, many years, and their cycles are not predictable (at least, not to the characters). There are some mysterious entities to the far north, but these are kept at bay by a 300 mile long wall of ice 700 feet tall.

There is a 12,000 year backstory, with an original people, now possibly extinct, several waves of invaders of increasing technological complexity, a lot of wars and some mysterious events, which may or may not have a bearing on the overall story. There are two religious dogmas, an older and a more recent one, which co-exist, plus others on the eastern continent. Martin is no linguist (unlike Tolkien), so his Westeros characters all conveniently speak the 'Common Tongue'. The Essos characters have their own languages, but we hear no more than an odd word or phrase of them

One quibble: the author is American, and his invented world falls very much into the northern hemisphere pattern. Westeros corresponds with North America and Essos with Eurasia, with a relatively friendly (to Westeros) western seaboard, a more exotic and barbaric central plain, and the far east, with its Jade Sea and places like Yi Ti. It would be nice to see a little more imagination at work here.

A bigger quibble is one that I have with Tolkien too: the described world seems like a vast, empty landscape, with only the merest hint of farms or fields or fertile valleys. All these cities and castles and armies of warriors had to be fed somehow, but there is no real indication of the vast acreage of agricultural land that would be needed to sustain them. In Essos, for instance, the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo has 40,000 fighting men in his train, with all the corresponding numbers of hangers-on, riding about their vast grasslands and making camp wherever they want. There is simply no way to feed those kinds of numbers with the occasional recreational hunt and a bit of bartering for fruit, it takes military levels of organisation and bulk food supplies. But on the plus side, the author takes some pains to describe the food: barley and root vegetables in the north, exotic fruits and spices in the south.

The book's setting is, essentially, medieval Europe, at least in Westeros. There are kings and queens, knights and various lordly retainers, swords and battles and tourneys, a little chivalry and a lot of aggressive power-snatching. This seems to me to be an extremely conventional, not to say hackneyed, approach, and although it leads to some dramatic action and court intrigue, where you are never quite sure who is trustworthy, it is still unimaginative and a disappointment.  Nevertheless, the author adds some original touches to it, and some of the descriptive writing (of the battles, for instance) is glorious.

Apart from the aristocracy, who cover the full spectrum of human characteristics, there are the 'smallfolk', who appear to be uniformly awful. They are ugly, often deformed, dirty and smelly, and live as outlaws, whores, thieves and the like. Even those who are relatively ordinary are routinely hostile and treat those around them badly, whenever they can get away with it. The city of King's Landing is depicted as a cesspool of unrelieved wickedness, and the countryside is filled with bandits and cut-throat robbers. Very occasionally, a relatively kind or at least normal peasant is wheeled on for plot-related purposes, but mostly Westeros is a dangerous and unpleasant place. This too is less than original.

The plot is driven by the machinations of the court, and with the rule of primogeniture, there is the inevitable emphasis on male heirs, fighting prowess and legitimacy, with females relegated to the role of mothers, and passive objects of desire or alliance. There are signs that some of the female characters may become warriors or other kinds of plot-drivers, perhaps at the expense of motherhood, but certainly the females are less rounded characters than the males.

But Martin's great success is in making us care about his characters. In this book, most of the action is seen from the point of view of one family, the Starks, and they are by far the most normal and likeable in the book. Despite a political marriage, the parents love each other, and are devoted to their children, who, despite their squabbles, are close too. Each chapter takes a different character's point of view, but there is never any difficulty following who is who, and the story runs on seamlessly from one chapter to the next. Occasionally, this device is jarring - after a dramatic cliff-hanger, for instance, we want to know more at once, rather than switch to another character and location

The plotting is immensely complicated, encompassing not just the here and now, but the traumatic events (not fully described) of fifteen years before, and even earlier than that, but mostly it's easy enough to follow, and the revelations are well signposted, without ever being blindingly obvious - you think 'oh, of course' rather than 'well, obviously' or 'wait, what?'

I have a bit of an issue with the sheer number of characters. To Martin's credit, he has worked out names and histories and heraldic devices for not just his main aristocratic Houses, but a whole welter of lesser ones as well, but this doesn't mean that he has to blind us with all of this (or even any of it). It would be enough to mention an odd detail in passing, to give the reader a flavour of this long and convoluted history. But no, when it comes to the battle scenes, we have to hear all the names and have their flags described, in mind-numbing detail. And the names are all rather dull variants on Anglo-Saxon names, with a great deal of repetition to boot.

And so to the big issue - the cause of the loathing and repulsion mentioned above is this: Martin takes great delight in killing and maiming even his lead characters, in a variety of truly horrible ways. Of course, there's nothing wrong with killing off a character, in principle at least, if it drives the plot forward in unexpected ways, or illuminates a character, or to create a redemptive ending, and in a faux-medieval setting there's no need to shy away from the gritty reality of life. But an author of fiction does have, in a sense, a contract with the reader: the characters are the vehicle by which the story is played out, but they are not merely expendable props, they are the sole means by which the reader engages in the fictional world. If you remove a main character without an obvious reason, you cut the reader adrift from that.

After several of these nerve-shattering incidents, I broke my number one rule, and went off to the internet to find out which characters survived (at least as far as the last book published). I never normally want to know what's coming next, it really spoils the surprise, but it is extraordinarily stressful when characters find themselves in a threatening situation, and you have no idea whether they are going to survive or be horribly maimed. And Martin must have a very sadistic streak - just when you think it's all over, there's a completely unexpected and cruel twist.

Nevertheless, the writing is excellent, with only the occasional infelicitous line or Americanism to jar the reader. Martin's world is totally believable, engaging and absorbing. The landscape feels real, and the people and events are described with just enough detail (although the author's interest in the niceties of the costume seems a little excessive).  There is the real feeling that the overall plot (lengthy as it will eventually be) has been well thought out, and is really going somewhere. There are mysteries to be unravelled, loyalties to be untangled, prophecies to be interpreted and an underlying layer of magic added with a very light hand to leaven the mix. There is simply no knowing where it will all end, but you really really  want to know.

Westeros is a fairly brutal place, where people treat each other in horrifying ways, but the violence is never unduly graphic, and although there is a great deal of killing and maiming, there is no torture (yet). There is a certain amount of casual rape, but only in the context of a society which is barbaric on various levels and sees it as the natural right of a victor after battle. Again, it is not described graphically, and sex scenes between leading protagonists are actually rather gentle (so far).

I do feel uncomfortable with the rather casual approach to justice. Even in the midst of the fairly revolutionary events depicted here, it somehow feels very wrong that characters should be found guilty of a crime without even the most cursory attempt at a trial, and minor characters are simply killed off to create dramatic tension. Given the emphasis on knightly codes and oaths and honour, it seems quite unbelievable that one group of knights should kill another group in cold blood in the middle of the city, without being subject to any penalty whatsoever.

There are some plotting glitches. Distances in Martin's world are vast, and land travel is slow, but somehow they manage to move around quite freely (perhaps the author is deliberately vague about times and dates). Communication is conveniently fast by means of trained ravens, a slight cheat but acceptable. However, the characters travel almost entirely by road, even when this is obviously slower than using ships. At one point, a group of characters travels by road, while another character uses a ship and arrives at the destination ahead of the original group, begging the question why they chose to travel by road at all when the sea is a much quicker route. And one has to wonder why there is so much disparagement of bastards, when there are so many of them (except that it is necessary for motivation).

The book opens with the discovery by one set of characters of direwolves, the sigil of their house, and ends with the discovery (or creation, perhaps) by another character of dragons, the sigil of her house. The word 'sigil' is an interesting choice by the author, as it implies more than a mere heraldic symbol, but a degree of magic, of protection, even. It will be interesting to see whether this means something: the dragons are clearly significant, but it would be impressive if the wolves also turn out to have some importance to the overarching story, rather than being simply mobile plot devices - conveniently protecting their characters from harm, or finding things at key moments, for instance. In particular, the two daughters are now without their direwolves (while the male characters get to keep theirs), and I wonder what the meaning of that is (if any).

It should be obvious by now that, although the writing is extraordinarily vivid, the characters well-drawn and the plot intriguing, I have serious reservations overall. My main concern is the amount of casually brutal violence inflicted on even the most innocent or honourable characters. It may be that when the story reaches its end, we will be able to look back and see that all of this was necessary for plot or character reasons, and the resolution could not have been achieved without it. But until then, I reserve judgment.

Thoughts after rereading: It is six months since I first read this book, and since then I've read it twice more. What is there to say about it? With an average rating of 4.42 on Goodreads, rated by 36,383 readers, and with 4,724 reviews (to date), what can I possibly add? What can I say that has not already been said before, and undoubtedly better? This is the book that got me reading fantasy again. Decades after 'Lord of the Rings' left me stunned, here was another piece of fantasy that completely blew me away. Larger than life characters, a vipers' nest of political plotting, a whole world of places and inter-related families and history and creatures and magic and strange happenings, plus a dazzling writing style - all that and more blended to make a story I was unable to put down.

But...

Well, there has to be a but, doesn't there? Right from the start, almost, I had concerns about some of the author's methods. After the rereads, that has settled into three issues. Firstly, Westeros is a dismal, depressing, miserable place. No, I don't want fairies and unicorns, or a simplistic good/evil dichotomy, and gritty realism has its place, but this is beyond realism. Nowhere in the real world do you find quite so many selfish, scheming, treacherous, downright evil people, and so few people with even an ounce of good nature in their bones. Now it may be that Martin will eventually toe the traditional line, and good will triumph over evil (in some sense) somewhere in the latter part of book 7, but until then we are left with a book whose message appears to be: life's really a bitch, and then you die (horribly, painfully and slowly).

Secondly, Martin does appalling things to his main characters. They die (if they're lucky), otherwise they're mutilated, crippled, beaten up, enslaved and forced to see and do hideous things, even the children. Minor characters fare even worse, but that's almost expected in a genre that deals with end-of-the-world scenarios. But the main (point of view) characters are the way the reader engages with the story, we have to care about them on some level to enjoy it, and having them vulnerable to death or worse at any moment actually interferes with that. The reader is liable to disengage, and that (surely) is not what any author wants.

In fiction, it's not enough to make your characters suffer just because you can. They have to suffer for a reason - because the plot depends on it, because it makes their character grow, or because the author is making a point about life or humanity or some such. There are too many instances in Martin's work where the reason is not at all obvious - Bran's injury, for example, where we can clearly see the proximate but not the ultimate cause (in plot terms).

Thirdly, the story sprawls. Now, fantasy is prone to largeness by nature - you can't fully describe an epic story in standard novel format, so three volumes at 600+ pages apiece is perfectly normal. Entire continents and worlds need a lot of people and places to fill them. Martin, however, takes this to a whole new level. The cast of thousands all have names and affiliations and children and servants and histories and sigils and named swords. No one could possibly remember a tenth of it, without a photographic memory. To get a handle on it, you have to take copious notes or use a wiki or read the books many times.

And the plot sprawls too. The first book's narrow focus on the Winterfell/King's Landing axis, plus the Dothraki movements, makes for a tight story, with only 8 POV (point of view) characters, excluding the prologue. But the later books begin to spread all over Westeros, with 9 POVs in book 2, 10 in book 3 and 12 in book 4. Book 5 is reported to feature 16. This, combined with the explosion of the originally planned trilogy into 7 (at least) books, makes me wonder whether the story has actually got away from the author altogether.

Now, I realise as I write this that all these points are precisely the things that many people love about the books. Gritty reality is much better than elves and Tom Bombadil tweeness, they argue, it's truly exciting if any character could die at any moment, and the depth and richness of Westeros is awesome. I can understand that. When you've eaten marshmallows for years, something acid is just what you want. But I think Martin takes it too far, and too much acid is destructive. I still see these as defects.

They aren't the only ones, of course. Sizes and distances are dodgy, the magic is all over the place and the medieval European setting is conventional, to put it mildly. But none of that bothers me much, because the story is so good, and the writing is extraordinary. I'm still going to read the whole series (assuming the author and I both live that long). I'll still enjoy it. I trust Martin to produce an amazing finish. But ultimately I will judge the books by the reason for Bran's injury - was it critical for the plot, or did the author do that just because he could? [First written January 2011]