A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
It’s been many years since I read a 1000 page book in two days, so that tells you something of how I enjoyed this novel. GRRM really knows how to make a person care about characters. Some of the characters I adore, such as Daenerys and Arya. Some of the characters I couldn’t care less about, such as Davos. If you haven’t read the first novel and don’t know who these people are, don’t start with this book.
As with the first novel, Westeros is a land where human life is sold cheaply. People do awful things to one another, and even the heroes are not above killing someone who gets in their way. There’s torture, rape, and murder galore. It’s kind of like reading about Nazi and Soviet atrocities, except slightly more palatable because it’s not based on reality.
One troubling aspect of this novel (in addition the fact that I’m now addicted to a grim series of 1000 page novels) is that the cast of characters seems to have increased exponentially. No matter how many people die, there’s always a fresh crop of “Ser this” and “ser that” to replace them. There’s an appendix in the back, but it only has 90 names or so, so it’s not sufficient. There were two specific scenes in the book where I wasn’t really sure what happened and wanted to bounce my idea of what happened off of someone else, because I simply couldn’t keep the names straight. I hope that this problem doesn’t get worse in subsequent novels, though I fear that it will.
Still, it was a captivating read. As I’ve said before, GRRM knows plot and character. (Also, it’s going to make awesome television.)
