I have escaped a hot and airless classroom into a medieval world of great imagination. I am journeying with Brienne, and her entourage consisting of Nimble Dick and Podrick Payne, as they search for Sansa and Ser Dontas. Brienne’s sword is named Oathkeeper, and every bit of this story charms me as I read about them breaking their fasts on honey and bread, traveling through bogs and woods of pine, looking down on cliffs at a strange rider who follows them several miles behind.
I root silently for Tyrion Lannister, my personal favorite of all the characters, and don’t believe for a minute that he poisoned Joffrey at his wedding, nor killed his own father Lord Tywin after Jaime helped him escape from prison. People love to accuse the ugly or maimed.
I want to see Cersei smacked soundly; the opinions she holds of herself are far too self-righteous and manipulative for my liking.
And there’s Aeron Greyjoy, the Damphair, who belongs to the sea as a drowned man. Only, he is a drowned man who lives.
I have turned away, temporarily, from the “heavier” reading of books in translation, or the meat of the classics, for a pure romp in high fantasy. I am fully enmeshed in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, and grateful for the escape it provides in tandem with the freedom of summer. I must read a little more slowly, for there’s only one book more: A Dance With Dragons.
Have you read any of the five books from A Song of Fire and Ice? Are you as mesmerized as I am with this tale?
Dolce Bellezza 
I’ve read the entire series several times! I think it’s one of the great classics of contemporary fantasy. That being said, I believe A Feast for Crows may be the weakest book in the bunch so far– but that’s relative. It’s still a tour de force. It was particularly enlightening to read it after watching the tv series, which I thought started off well and then really went off the rails at about that point. The writers tried to fix Martin’s “mistakes” and ended up making a bunch more of their own (I know that’s a controversial opinion). Can’t wait for book 6 to come out!
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I agree with you that this is the weakest one so far. Even Martin himself wrote in the acknowledgements, “This one was a bitch.” You can feel him struggling to write it.
Still, I am swept up in the story.
I have only seen season one on tv. I think it’s a series to buy; my son and husband like it, too. However, inthink it’s so intricate I wonder if I would notice any mistakes!
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Yeah, even “A Feast For Crows” is a magnificent story, although it suffers from being half of a bigger book. The second part of “A Dance of Dragons,” when the two storylines converge again, is pretty awesome, in my opinion.
I thought the first four seasons of the tv show, which cover the first three books, were great. Then they decided to deviate from the plot while shoehorning most of books four and five into a single season, and the result was predictably less than fabulous, I thought. I stopped watching the tv show and am waiting impatiently for the next book to come out.
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I can see why that would be horribly annoying, and enough to abandon the television series. Aren’t books the best anyway? 🙂
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Read all the books and then reread them again looking for clues to the upcoming parts of the story. Love the world and the characters he has created.
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