Books by author: George R.R. Martin

I am continuing my reread of A Song of Ice and Fire in conjunction with the airing of the first season of HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation, and in anticipation of the publishing of A Dance With Dragons.

In the second book of the series, magic begins leaking in around the edges of the narrative, but the prose maintains the gritty realism and character-driven action that make this series great. This time around, I'm enjoying all of the point-of-view characters (including the newly-added POVs of Theon and Davos). I loved Theon's introduction to Asha as well as Tyrion's role leading up to the Battle of the Blackwater. And I'm having fun speculating how they'll cast Melisandre and Asha on HBO next year.

Even if this series is never completed, it's a damn fine creation.

A terrific follow-on to A Game of Thrones.

[These notes are very light on spoilers — there's nothing here that would ruin your enjoyment of the novel.]

The long awaited, much anticipated Dance with Dragons has finally arrived, and I finished my re-read of the first four books of the series just in time to dive in. Having now spent the past two and a half weeks reading through it, I have mixed feelings about finishing it.

On the plus side, the early part of the novel advances several plot lines significantly and brings back the great POV characters that were missing from A Feast for Crows, namely Dany, Tyrion, Jon, Arya, and Bran. Bran's adventures advance quickly (with a satisfying twist) but end rather abruptly. Arya's thread is terrific, but there isn't enough of it.

On the down side, Dany sits around and boringly deals with politics for most of the novel (though she does have a couple of great scenes toward the end). Tyrion wanders around a lot, but doesn't really seem to get anywhere, and Jon ends on one of the most contrived cliffhangers I've ever seen.

A few presumed-dead characters turn out to still be alive, which is actually starting to be a problem. Part of what was great about the first three novels in the series were the sometimes unexpected mortal consequences of the plot. Martin has seemingly given up on killing anyone, and he now has too many characters to keep in motion.

A Song of Ice and Fire really needs to start getting into plot-resolution mode. Hopefully the next book won't be half a decade in the making, and hopefully it'll start to bring the many diverse plot threads back together. I'll keep reading this series, but I'm a little bummed out after finishing this chapter.

I liked this better the second time. The POV characters here aren't my favorites, but there's plenty of interesting stuff going on, and A Dance With Dragons is right around the corner.

This was better than I expected, given the mediocre reviews it gets in comparison to the previous books in this series. I'm bummed to be caught up and now have to wait for Mr. Martin to publish the next in the sequence.

I am a fan of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, so I expected to enjoy his take on the vampire novel.

Fevre Dream is set on the Mississippi river just before the Civil War, where an out-of-luck steamboat captain meets an odd stranger (a vampire) who makes him an offer he can't refuse. The novel follows their unlikely partnership over the next few years. Martin's vampires are a fairly run-of-the-mill mashup of various mythologies — they drink human blood and they live essentially forever, but sunlight burns them badly rather than immediately killing them, and religious artifacts have no effect on them.

The premise is good, and the arc is okay, but the plotting and storytelling are a little uneven. The end result is a minor work — enjoyable but not great.

I'm rereading A Song of Ice and Fire in conjunction with watching the HBO series Game of Thrones and in anticipation of this summer's release of the fifth book in the series, A Dance With Dragons.

I enjoyed the series a lot the first time I read it (about five years ago), and I've conveniently forgotten many of the plot points. I'm also soaking in the details and greatly enjoying some of the characters I didn't care for the first time around. I have found that the HBO series is adding to my enjoyment — they've done a splendid job of casting, and although they are telegraphing some elements that don't happen in the books until later, they are staying extremely close to the source material.

This is a masterful series, and I hope to see it completed some day, but even with just the first four books in hand, it's well worth the journey.

I'm not usually a fan of "knights and dragons" fantasy, but George R.R. Martin transcends the genre with this first volume in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Although I was frustrated with the language at first (too many realms, visages, destriers, etc.), I soon became absorbed in the large cast of complex, flawed, and interesting characters. Martin's fantasy world is very realistic in the sense that without proper medical care, even a minor wound can be fatal — and he's not afraid to kill a major sympathetic character if the story demands it. After 200 pages or so, I was so absorbed that I didn't want to put it down.

There are several more books available in this series (and at least one or two that remain to be published). I'm very interested in revisiting this fictional world, and if the other books are half as good as this one, I'll eventually read them all.

I'm continuing to quite enjoy rereading this series.

This is widely regarded as the strongest book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, but I think the first three have been uniformly good. This is great epic fantasy.