Lyn's Reviews > A Storm of Swords

DAMN!

It’s like if you buy a muscle car on Friday afternoon and you drive it home some friends come over to look at it and you know and they all know how cool it is. Then on the second day you get to drive it around town and everyone that sees it knows you’ve got a beast, a low growl coming from under the hood. But it’s not until the third day that you arrange to go out onto a track and open it up that you realize what a monster machine you’ve got and even as the speedometer passes 100 you press down further and it responds like a galloping horse and keeps accelerating and you breathe catches in your throat and you know you’re on the ride of your life. And you whisper: DAMN!

George R.R. Martin knew he had something cool when he first published A Game of Thrones in 1996. Martin had been toiling away as a writer for more than twenty years and had seen struggles and poverty, as had many speculative fiction writers before him. While he had seen some success in his fantasy and horror stories and books, and had some work screenwriting, it was not until he set out to create this epic fantasy that his stock began to rise – his muscle car hit the nitro and fishtailed into wild success with the HBO adaptation and millions of golden dragons to line the coffers of his keep.

A Storm of Swords, first published in 2000, his third in the series, is the muscle car, the biggest and fastest horse, the book where Martin, established as a success and had his readers’ attention, put the hammer down to see what this thing can do.

It’s a wild ride. Fans of the first two books knew about Westeros and Essos and about the Starks and the Lannisters and the faded glory of the Targaryens; and they know about the raw carnality of the books, the guttural sex and violence that adds harsh realism to the story. ASOS takes it up a notch and demonstrates that as good as the series is, Martin can continue to make it a bionic man of fiction: faster, stronger and better.

The violence. One of the criticisms of the 2004 Antoine Fuqua film King Arthur starring Clive Owen was the minimization of violence. Whereas earlier adaptions of the Arthur legend were intentionally theatrical and atmospheric rather than realistic, Fuqua seemed to be on to a cool angle by introducing a historically accurate revisionist story of Arthur as a Roman leader fighting Picts and Scots. There’s swords and daggers and arrows and lots of fighting, but not so much blood and guts. The incongruity of the muddy realism with the stylized violence was distracting.

Martin, on the other hand, takes the Tolkienesque legend, adapts it to fit on to his alternate War of the Roses inspired fantasy and does not leave out the brutal reality of war and survivalist feudalism. Razor sharp blades cut, people bleed and die, women get raped and slavery exists. In his zeal for a fantasy that also seems real, Martin shines a light on the good, the bad and the ugly and his narrative is far better for it.

Martin’s POV chapters highlights and exhibits his great talent for fully developed characterization. The players are complicated and there is a dynamic depth of relationships that is mesmerizing. His world building, adding detail and history to an already spectacular creation, continues to impress.

There are several scenes that stand out: the Red Wedding, Daenerys at Astapor, Tyrions trial of combat between Gregor Clegane and Oberyn Martell, and many others that fill this thick tome and make it a page turner.

This is the best one so far and I’m already on to the next one.