HBO’s critically acclaimed Game of Thrones TV series introduced George R. R. Martin’s brilliant A Song of Ice and Fire series to a mass audience who may never have been interested in fantasy fiction. But it also happened to air at a particularly auspicious time, with the first season ending shortly before the long-awaited fifth book was released.
Considering that the 1510-page length of A Dance with Dragons (available on Amazon
) only makes it the second-longest book in the series, plunging into the text version of a world so well-constructed on screen is no small undertaking, but it is well worth it. As a prose stylist, Martin is no Nabokov, but the point-of-view chapters full of flashbacks and internal dialogue give his world and characters a historical and personal depth that can only be hinted at in the screen adaptation. And despite their daunting length, the pages turn so quickly that one could easily plow through a third of the book in a single sitting without even realizing it. Continue reading →
HBO’s critically acclaimed Game of Thrones TV series introduced George R. R. Martin’s brilliant A Song of Ice and Fire series to a mass audience who may never have been interested in fantasy fiction. But it also happened to air at a particularly auspicious time, with the first season ending shortly before the long-awaited fifth book was released.