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| Robb and Bran Stark discover direwolf pups |
This is not a typical review, but rather a comparison
between the novel version and the TV version of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.
My initial experience with the A Song of Ice and Fire series was with the TV show Game of Thrones; I watched the opening
scene, which depicts dozens of dismembered corpses, and turned it off. Noooope,
I told myself. No way. Way too gruesome for me. Later, despite A Song of Ice and Fire topping all of
the bestseller lists and top fantasy lists, I made excuses not to read the
series. However, this year a friend convinced me to give the TV show another
try, and, like so many others, I got hooked.
I am current with the TV show, but only now have I read the
first book. I went into reading Game of
Thrones with some trepidation regarding how the violence that I knew was
coming would affect me in the written form (much easier to stomach words than
images, I found), as well as worries that the book would ruin my perception of
how awesome the show is. Either the book would be much better than the show and
the show would be devalued in my eyes, or the show would be better than the
books and I would be disappointed. Interestingly, neither happened. I found
that reading Game of Thrones
complemented my experience with the TV show. All of the back history provided
in the book makes the show richer, but the TV show holds its own.
What amazed me time and time again while reading the book is
just how great a job the HBO show did in capturing the first novel, in terms of
casting, acting, sets, writing, etc. All of the best dialogue in the show is
straight out of the book. As one of the writers said, why mess with perfection?
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| King Robert Baratheon visits the Starks of Winterfell |
What I liked about the novel:
- The names! I’m sure a ton of them will become popular names in the future… oh wait, it’s already started.
- The characters: Ned’s stiff sense of honor, Catelyn’s fierce protectiveness of her family, Lysa Arryn’s creepiness (she’s even creepier in the book than in the show, which is saying something!), Bran’s fighting spirit, Arya’s wildness, Sansa’s airheaded delusions of romance, Theon’s arrogance, Jon Snow’s sullenness and honor, Robb’s responsibility, Robert’s debauchery, Cersei’s manipulativeness, Joffrey’s egomaniacal cruelty, Tywin’s legacy-obsessed calculation, Tyrion’s defensive use of humor, Jaime’s self-importance, Varys’s mysteriousness, Petyr Baelish’s deviousness, Viserys’s madness, Daenerys’s haughtiness, Drogo’s ferocity, Ser Jorah Mormont’s angst, and, of course, Hodor’s Hodor-ness…
- The emphasis on dream sequences, foreshadowing, and symbolism. For example, early into the novel the Starks find their House sigil, the direwolf, dead in the woods with a stag’s horn lodged in its neck (the stag being the sigil of House Baratheon). This scene directly foreshadows all of the subsequent events of the first novel, and is an omen that only Catelyn has the wisdom to recognize.
- The book is more like a medieval fantasy murder-mystery than is the show, which I liked. The main plot of the first novel surrounds the mysterious death of Jon Arryn, Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon. Each character has a piece of knowledge that, added together, paints a picture of conspiracy. Because the reader has access to the point of view of numerous characters (Martin employs third person, limited omniscient narration), the reader is able to put together pieces of the puzzle while most of the characters remain in the dark. This serves to heighten the sense of foreboding.
- The descriptiveness of the writing. I never expected the
butcher behind the Red Wedding (Martin) to be so poetic or imaginative, but I
should have! In particular, I loved reading Martin’s descriptions of settings
and attire. I absolutely loved the descriptions of Winterfell, Vaes Dothrak,
and especially the Eyrie. I also really enjoyed reading about was the
descriptions of the armor of various knights and warriors. The Hound has a
hound-head helm that adds to his fearsome appearance, whereas Loras Tyrell, the
Knight of Flowers, has an elaborate get-up stylized to look like flowers in
bloom. Lovely!
The Hound 
Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers
