'A Song of Fire and Ice': Volume 1/864

Until the recent HBO adaptation of ‘Game of Thrones’ I had been unaware of the existence of G R R Martin,  called by some ‘the American Tolkein’ – it’s those middle initials that do it. Anything from the network which gave the world ‘the Wire’ has a head start with me so I gave it a go, and was initially very impressed.

The characters seemed fuller than in much fantasy (though admittedly there are lampposts with more developed personalities than Orlando Bloom’s Legolas) and there seemed a somewhat more complex version of morality than ‘the Dark Lord wishes to enslave and destroy’.  (It must be rather limiting being a Dark Lord.  You wake up in the morning thinking ‘what should I do today; watch the cricket, maybe pet a cute puppy, oh no I’ve got to get on with my murder, torture and enslaving the world just like every other day.) I suppose that’s why they say “there’s no peace for the wicked”.

The first few episodes on HBO were so impressive that I couldn’t wait for the series to end.  Box sets have completely changed the way I watch TV and waiting weeks to find out how the story end seems so 20^th Century.  So I placed a series of staggered orders with Amazon for the volumes of ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ to arrive a few days apart, not realising I’d booked in on a Cresta Run of literary quality.

"I am a lady," insists Lady Sansa

The early books were not masterpieces but they were gripping stories where the desire to find out what happened kept the pages turning.  Not without irritations; the changing a single letter to make things exotic: Sir, Ser Fray Bentos, Jeffrey, Joffrey, Edward, Eddard, and the rest quickly lost their novelty.  Characters who on screen, in the hands of an actor, had some sort of life, on the page subsided into fairly simple types:  Ned Stark is dour but honourable, one daughter is a tomboy, the other so insistent about wanting to be a lady as to irresistibly summon up images of ‘Little Britain’.  And if Genghis had sussed beforehand that rebranding his hordes of nomadic mounted warriors by changing the n of Khan into an l and putting the title first would have meant his proxy rejoicing in the name Carl Drogo he’d have thought better of the whole idea.  And that’s before Shagga, son of Dolf pops up to trump it in the Silly Names contest. 

There was a degree of character development.  Sinister, cynical dwarf Tyrion Lancaster Lannister turns out to be not quite so sinister when you get to know him, though he stays a dwarf – and cynical.  His brother Jaime (shouldn’t that be Jemeaime?) proves to be rather nicer than first view suggests.  Though as we first see him attempting to murder a seven year old who inadvertently spots his incestuous adultery with his twin sister it would be difficult to go far downhill from there.

 

 

"Did you call me  a lady?" asked Brienne.

(To Be Continued)