Absolutely incredible book, I couldn't put it down! Can't wait to get my hands on the next one!

For my full review please go to http://tubchairtimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin.html

One day I went to a book store, looking for a book and I found this book. I started to read it at home and could not stop reading it.

I found the idea really good and title of the chapters really original, the names of the principal characters of the story. The book is like a Lord of the Rings, it is in a world that the author invented and it has the name of Westeros and it is built of 7 kingdoms ruled by one king. There is some strange creatures in that world, but they are considered as legends to the people. The time in this book is medival with castels and sword fighting like in Lord of the Rings, but the difference is that the story is more psychological. The characters are really endearing and the story good. I really recommend everybody to read that novel.

Not into these kinds of books at all, but when I seen some previews for the HBO show thought I'd give the book a try. As soon as I was finished the first chapter I went out and bought the other 4 books following it. Really love the descriptive writing, makes you really fall in love with the characters or despise them.

I can't say enough good things about this book! I loved the HBO series and sincerely debated diving into the books ~ which at 1000+ pages each, and 7 books predicted in the series (5 of them already written) ~ appeared a daunting task to say the least. I feared boredom, I was concerned that I've never been one for the "fantasy" genre, my excuses were endless. I am now obsessed with this story and committed to reading every last page, and no doubt wanting more still! I highly recommend this book/series to readers of all genres. The characters are compelling, the storyline gripping ... and in the end I'm still not sure who I'm rooting for, but I am enjoying the journey. A series opener not to be missed!

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I have never been a lover of fantasy novels and bought this book on a whim. The books are incredibly complex and the number of characters makes it confusing to keep them straight at times. The story moves along at a pleasing pace and the plot twists are always exciting. I thought many of the characters were fun to follow and each faced their own series of unpredictable predicaments. Arya, the youngest daughter to Eddard Stark was my favorite character. Her father hires Syrio to teach her to fight with her sword, needle. Arya's older sister Sansa is betrothed to marry Joffrey, the heir to the throne. Arya's direwolf Nymeria is banned after she attacks Prince Joffrey.
I chose to just discuss one of my favourite characters to show how much I liked the book. There are plenty other characters that get into exciting situations. Anyways the book was a page-turner until the very end and I cannot wait to read the next book, A Clash of Kings.

I watched the show first and loved I was more so excited to find out about the books and by the first page I was amazed by the 10th page I was delightfully blown away by 20th page i was Obsessed I couldn't put it down I drowned in the characters,and I enjoyed every last bit of it like a good meal.It was so cleverly written that every word,character and landscape came alive and made my mind its home.The book junkie in me raged strong n proud n I had to complete the series to at least try to appease the insatiable thirst I had for the book.

Kudos to HBO for doing this series justice! I picked up the book after falling in love with the show and I was so happy to see that they were very similar with few differences. It was very readable, I don't usually enjoy the genre but it was a light read. Each chapter is a different characters perspective too. So you keep bouncing and you never get bored.

First and foremost, this is the first part of a fantasy series. But, not the type of fantasy like Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, or what have you. This is more akin to 'The Once and Future King'.
In terms of feel, it's like the tv series 'The Tudors' (it focuses on noblemen, and highborn etc.. and the drama & politics) mixed with the grittiness and realistic approach as Ridley Scott's Gladiator film.
In short, quite a good (original) read, which will have you wanting the next book once you're finished this installment.

Amazing book. I couldn't put it down, and when I was done I couldn't wait to start reading the next one. It is a very grounded series that isn't as crazy as some of the other books in the fantasy genre.

George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic tale of war, politics and romance all rolled into one. Although there are several sub-stories going on (which I assume are carried onto the later novels) the main ones focus on the mysterious murder of the King's right-hand man and the effects of the murder on the Kingdom as a whole, and girl trying to reclaim what was originally hers.

Each chapter focuses on a different main character and the struggles they themselves have to go through. Although I like the idea of seeing through the eyes of various different characters I found myself impatient at times, wanting to read a chapter focused on a character I preferred more. Also, some chapters seemed to go a little too slow and boring, especially if the previous chapter was interesting and exciting.

The book itself, and the other ones in the series run for a few hundred pages (around 700 or so) and there are a lot of characters and locations to remember so I suggest that people who want to enjoy just a light read to stay away from it. Overall A Game of Thrones is an amazing novel and one that every Medieval-Fantasy geek should check out.

Having talked about this series with numerous friends and seen the TV show. I am still baffled as to why this series is so highly regarded and I feel obliged to warn others about these books before they get completely turned off by fantasy books and writing as I found this series to evolve into complete and utter disaster. The first book is alright and sets a great stage for a promising series but from there it all goes down hill. There are so many characters that are annoying and you literally wish would die while you read the book in order to be able to move past their dreary and uninspired dialogue. I found myself quite often skipping parts of the book so I could get to better characters because so many were brutal SPOILER ALERT for example Lady Stark. In my opinion by far the most annoying character in the series finally gets killed only for her to return as an undead zombie!! Really?? Where as in contrast it seems that all the great characters that Martin creates for example The Hound and The Mountain that Rides SPOILER ALERT he just kills off and totally destroys the momentum, flow and likeability of the series. Another major flaw is the fact that NOTHING and I mean NOTHING seems to happen. It literally gets so bad that when something finally does happen no matter how small it is it's a major triumph SPOILER ALERT If you're trying to tell me that the attack on the Night Watch and the wall was the arrival of Winter that has been alluded to since book one then that's sad. Like disappointed. SPOILER ALERT Also does it really take two whole books for Daenerys Targaryen to wander about in Bravos without any real goal "contemplating" crossing back over with her dragons? I don't understand how that takes up two books worth of time to cover. Everyone seems to talk about how well the characters are developed and to be honest I would certainly hope so after so many words that Martin has written with so little happening. It took over a month to for a friend of mine to finish the last 170 pages in the 4th book because as he put it and the best way to describe this series is that "reading the books became a chore." I feel that this is one case where the TV show is far better then the books and I look forward to seeing how the TV show progresses but will NOT pick up any new books in this series. People laud these books as the best fantasy series out right now and call Martin the American Tolkien and to that I say nonsense and rubbish. In my opinion if you want to get into really good fantasy then read Steven Erikson's the Malazan Book of the Fallen. In this series stuff is continually happening all the time and in the first 50 pages I found numerous characters that kept and held my imagination far better then the best character that Martin has to offer. Read Erikson, ditch Martin.

This book is phenomenal, can not wait to read the rest of this series!

HBO has been long promoting the highly anticipated Game of Thrones series, and, if you read the novel, it is easy to see why. "A Game of Thrones", the first in Martin's "A Song of Fire & Ice" series is an epic fantasy tale that twists and turns like the dragons of old.
Set in Westeros, "Thrones" tells the tale of several of the leading houses of the 7 Kingdoms, and their individual bids to gain power or, simply to hold on to what they already have. The book made me think of Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" with magic and myth thrown in. Then, just to add fuel to the fire which is the main storyline of the book, you have the foreboding Haunted Forest in the North that seems to be more active by the day, and yet hardly noticed by the warring houses in the south.
I won't go into great detail, but needless to say that while the "end" of this novel left you with more questions than answers, it was to be expected given that there are already three other books that continue the story and plans for two more in the near future.

Words cannot express how much I loved this book. it has been on my 'to read' list for far too long, I finally got at it and could not put it down. The universe is very intricate and balanced - the character rooster is massive, but they are all so great. I love books with a lot of characters, but it's hard to give the characters the space and backstory they deserve - but man this one does it, and does it well. The people are very real, in the sense that even the good guys make mistakes, and even the bad guys are not always the bad guys in every situation. I am so very glad to started this series and can't wait for the second. I urge everyone I know to pick this one up - even people who say they don't like fantasy - this isn't fantasy, it's a human drama of operatic proportions.

I loved this book and I have high hopes for the rest of the series (even though I know about the controversy regarding the fifth book). The world feels real and so do the people in it. The "high fantasy" element is quite toned down in this book, yes the world does have dragons and magic but its not over done and taken for granted.

One look at G.R.R. Martin's website (www.grrmartin.com) makes me appreciated the way the man thinks. A avid medieval history enthusiast, collector of 54mm knights & scale models of castles. He crafts the world he creates in his own recroom for us to read about. I know I've been light on the plot, characters, events because I don't want to spoil anything. With the upcoming HBO series, I would whole heartily recommend anyone who wants to watch the show to read the book first.

Sean Bean will be a great Eddard Stark and I'm sure HBO will acquit themselves well (as they are known to do). The TV series will be great but I can't help but think if I watched the show first it would take some of the magic away from the book when and if I decided to read it. It started to happen just having seen the trailer. In my minds eye, I had a younger Brian Cox as Eddard, but after the trailer Sean Bean took over. I had someone else maybe a younger Christian Bale,as seen in Henry V w/Kenneth Branagh. The imagery we project to the characters makes them more alive rather than something we equate to an actor on a tv series.

The pacing can be trying for some, it wasn't for me. I loved the political intrique, the personal quarrels both internal and external and as each chapter is a different point of view of a different character the book never lagged for me. I kept wondering how "Bran" was doing after I hadn't read about him for a few chapters, so the characters started to take on the importance of real people.

So if the trailer for the HBO series peaked your curiosity at all, go out and read this book!

This book was a little hard to get into at first but once you memorized all the characters (and there are so many) and see where the plot is going it gets really dramatic and exciting. This was an excellent first book for this series. The characters bring a lot of emotions out of me and at times I just want to strangle a few of them. This is one of those books that will keep you on the edge because anything can happen. You don’t know who will be killed or will betray or who will make the next stupid move. My only fear is getting attached to certain characters because I know there’s a huge chance he/she will die but that’s what keeps me reading. Great fantasy novel.

There's only one word for this book - epic. I've read fantasies this long before, but I've never read one this complex. As I read, I kept finding myself in awe of Martin's world-building. I was amazed by the details - the genealogies, the geography, the conflicting agendas of the characters, the sheer scale of the story. The book reads as a satisfying story, while hinting at so much more to be revealed in further volumes.

This isn't my favorite epic fantasy - David Eddings' Belgariad and Elenium will always hold that position - but it's thoroughly absorbing, and I have enormous respect for the author. Highly recommended.

I was looking for a fantasy series to immerse myself into and the Fiction boys at my store rave about "A Song of Ice and Fire", so I decided to give this first book a try. True to their word, it captured my attention and opened up my imagination to this Medieval-like fantastical world, filled with different lands, cultures and house factions, fables and creatures.

Truth be told, I did not get what I initially was looking for. There is little of the showy fantasy-magic business whatsoever, but this minimalist approach worked. What I loved most of the novel was the treatment of the multitude of characters - each chapter focusing on one character in a third-person narrative, all this while filling in for others as the story is driven forward.

Onward read with the series, but I beg of you Martin, hurry with the fifth one. I, born of the Dragon horoscope year, do not want to be kept waiting!

After many recommendations I decided to tackle this behemoth last spring. I'm no stranger to Mr. Martin's works so I had really high hopes for this novel. The book starts off at a good clip with lots of cool events occurring straight off. Halfway through I found that it really slowed down to a crawl. In a book this size, you really
have to move it along or it takes forever to get through it. As it was, this took me about seven months to read, on and off. In that same time, I read about a dozen other books. There was just nothing pressing in the plot for me to return back to it. Eventually I was sick of seeing it on my bedstand and I bulldozed my way through the rest of it. Don't get me wrong - there are great characters here and the setting is very original, but it's really dull in the middle third. The end picks up substantially and now I am anxious to read the next instalment. Just maybe not tomorrow...

Wow. What a great beginning to a fantasy series. It took a little while to keep the characters and their relationships straight at the start but luckily the book contains an Appendix showing the family trees of the Great Houses. Once I got that straightend out in my mind I fully enjoyed this epic fantasy. The characters are well written, the story was engaging and I can't wait to continue reading this series. Easily in my top 5 books read this year and possibly #1.

UPDATE: ReReading this work 3 years later and after watching the excellent HBO show has made this work even more enjoyable than it was the first time. With the characters firmly established in my mind before beginning, any confusion originally experienced was no longer present. A truly pleasurable read.