A Storm of Swords

I just finished the third installment in the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, entitled "A Storm of Swords."  I haven't been hooked this much on a book since the Harry Potter series.

I was actually reading The Shadow Rising (4th book in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series) when I started reading the series A Song of Ice and Fire.  Now, when I first picked up Jordan's books, I was amazed.  His writing lets you get to know his characters until you feel like you've known them as friends yourself.  And his world is so full of life that it seems the people in it continue to thrive even after you're done reading about them.

But when I started on Martin's series, I was simply blown away.  Eventually I stopped in the middle of The Shadow Rising so I can have more time for Martin's books.  Besides, by his fourth book, Jordan was narrating three different storylines happening in three different parts of the world, which don't seem to have much to do with one another. And this made for a really slow progression in the main storyline. And so I grew bored.

There are three things I like best about the Song of Ice and Fire series.  First, Martin does away with cumbersome chapter numbers and titles (which you don't remember anyway halfway through the chapter). Instead, each chapter is named after the character from whose point of view it is told (in third person). Thus a chapter's tone, style and vocabulary would vary according to the character it's focused on.  This also lets you see the world from different eyes, who often see the same things differently.

Secondly, there's no good or evil characters.  Some may seem nasty and wicked at first and you soon wish for the "good guys" to defeat them, but eventually you find out that these "bad guys" are people too, with hopes and dreams like any other.  You might even grow attached to them.

Thirdly, Martin doesn't hesitate to kill his characters.  Some authors seem to love their protagonists so much that you're sure they'd never die, or they'll come back to life, for if they perish then the story is over.  This isn't the case for A Song of Ice and Fire, because since there is no good and evil, there are no protagonists. Sure, you might be drawn to root for a certain character, but that doesn't keep them safe. They can be killed just like everybody else, and when they do it's usually with reckless abandon.  This results to a more engaging experience for the reader, as you more keenly feel every hope and fear, every victory and loss.

I've just started on the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, but the next one (A Dance with Dragons) won't be published until around mid-2009.  Once I finish this one, I'm sure that I'll be hard-pressed to find a worthy read to while away the months of waiting.