I've seen all episodes so far in Game of Thrones and I've read three of the books and spoiled all of them beforehand on Wikipedia. I couldn't resist.
I love it. It's everything I've always loved in big, sprawling epics; the political intrigue and machinery and intricate plotting and ruthless scheming, huge battles without the boring details, exhilarating twists and breathless tension and a mad, mad pace.
I read somewhere that George RR Martin used to be a tv writer, and it certainly seems like that in his books - he's no Tolkien, whose painstaking and near-obsessive attention to detail has so far derailed me from finishing the The Two Towers (I promised myself to read all three LOTR books this summer, but it's just....difficult to get through without my eyes glazing over, to be perfectly honest). The suspense and building up of scenes are perfect, and though the writing is occasionally cheesy and inelegant, it's just such a good story.
Martin based the stories off the War of Roses (Lancasters and Yorks = Lannisters and Starks, though the similarities mostly end there) and other major feuds in English history. And it certainly feels like it. The absolutely fascinating dynamics between the different noble houses and the scheming towards the throne is uncannily representative of medieval English politics - the persistent threat of rebellion and chaos always hanging overhead; the (at times literal) backstabbing and allegiances switching in the blink of an eye, an entire war ended by a single sword or orchestrated by a few letters, the power struggles, the greed and inevitable desperation - I just love it.
And the characters! I wouldn't say that the characters are especially outstanding - sometimes they seem to meld with one another - but the humanity is so present and the drama so compelling that you're glued to the characters at all times. I became emotionally invested in most of the characters' fates - and boy, are there many of them - it took me a long time to actually put everything together and remember everyone's names, even - and the emotional stakes feel real and utterly convincing. The backstories and flashbacks are as fascinating as the present, and everything intertwines - weaving past, present, characters a thousand leagues apart to predecessors a century before - beautifully. Even reading the thing on Wikipedia was enthralling and exhilarating.
And Christ, is Martin BRUTAL with them. This isn't Harry Potter or LOTR or Narnia, where aside from a few token minor characters' death, everyone else's safety is pretty much guaranteed and you basically have to root for them. It's a war, plain and simple, and a POV character may be wiped out ruthlessly without warning. They're the source of most of the WTF moments in the books, and have simultaneously pushed away and attracted readers. One of my favorite bloggers stopped halfway through the third book after one after reading one particularly infamous chapter, claiming that said part was nothing short of a "violent act against the reader". It's pretty incredible testament to Martin's emotional efficiency, though, to have readers to be so affected by a fictional character's fate that countless readers have either set aside the books or at least paused, either because they needed to recover from the emotional toll or were disenchanted. No death is senseless or gratuitous, in my opinion. You always, always see the core of it - you can trace the origin of the character's downfall, you see cause and consequence reverberate and the clues are right there, mapped out in the chapters. You understand why this person died, and how it will impact others or shift the course of the game. It's brilliant, really.
Me, I'm a sucker for anything that draws me emotionally, and it's most impressive of all when it can hurt me. This is particularly hard with fantasy. Not even the deaths in Harry Potter affected me or surprised me; I loved all the characters, but they were still so removed. Usually, when a major character is wiped out, I actually don't care that much, but Martin is so vivid and sick that I consider it a great privilege to actually feel so much over a character's death.
But IMO, I think the first thing to understand in the books is that death is one of the major characters in the book. I think Martin effectively conjures up the atmosphere of the Middle Ages - why the fleeting chance of glory is so sweet, why anyone would welcome the chance to go to war to certain death. Death is always around the corner for every character, whether it's a peasant boy senselessly executed for no purpose at all, a musician who becomes a nobleman's scapegoat, a king's throat slit. The knowledge that "winter is coming" - the grim, endlessly repeated motto of the Starks - is a given. Living in constant fear is the only rational state of being. Whenever my mind drifted away from the books (and that happened very rarely), all I could think of was Hobbes' "life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". That's the essence of this cold, cruel, epic world of Martin's. You can't figure out what's worse, battling the wild elements in the bleak and solitary, ice-strewn land of the North, or caught in the political webs of the South. Each is just as unpredictable and unfeeling, and murderous as the other.
Still, I got to the certain part where my blogger stopped reading, though, and I almost cried. I had known about it beforehand, but when I read it, I was so affected that I actually fell into a deep melancholic state afterwards. The nature of the tragedy echoed the deaths of other historical characters that had possessed me as a kid, like the story of Lady Jane Grey or Richard III - the themes and details of their downfalls were beyond the average deaths; the way they died, and why, is simply unforgettable. I couldn't get it out of my mind, and it broke my heart. I'll talk about it in some other post. Oh, and the rest of the time I was just consumed with the desire for all-out revenge for certain characters.
The fifth book comes on July 12th. Can't wait.
Oh, and the series are badass too. The actors are sublime and everything feels in-place and nothing cheesy. Tasteful - not emotionally absent like Boardwalk Empire or silly and exasperating like True Blood. Unlike True Blood, GOT actually reveals answers (Martin's also great at that - the answers are often unexpected and surprise you, but you actually get real, concrete answers to the plots and whodunnits. No existential angst here). Speaking of which, I'll probably start watching True Blood again, but if someone asked me what had happened in the last three seasons, I'd have to admit that I don't have a fucking clue. That show is SO incoherent.
