Audio book narrated by Ray Dotrice.
Released 3rd November 2015 by Harper Collins.
From the cover:
HBO’s hit series A Game of Thrones is based on George R. R. Martin’s internationally best-selling series A Song of Ice and Fire, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A Game of Thrones is the first volume in the series.Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.
The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.
Winter is coming...
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I think you would probably have had to be living under a rock for the past the past few years not to have heard about the hit HBO television series A Game of Thrones, based on the books by fantasy author George R.R. Martin. Along with millions of others, this series consumed my family from the time it was first broadcast in 2011, all the way to the questionable events of season eight - but that is a discussion for another time...
It has long been a wish of mine to start reading the books from the beginning, so this year I finally took the plunge with book one of Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones, despite the slight trepidation that Martin has not yet completed the series. My chosen format has been the audio book narrated by actor Ray Dotrice (who, incidentally appeared in Season Two of the TV series as pyromancer Hallyne), and I have slowly ambled through the epic 33 hours and 45 minutes of this adventure over the last couple of months.
It is not my intention to regale you with the ins and outs of this story, as a lot happens over the course of these 800-odd pages, however, for the uninitiated, they are mostly concerned with the bloody machinations that come with powerful families vying for the right to rule the seven kingdoms of Westeros. The story begins in the far north of Westeros, where Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark, is visited by his old friend and brother-in-arms, King Robert Baratheon, with his sizeable court in tow. Robert begs him to come south to Kings Landing to act as his close advisor, Hand of the King, after the previous one died in murky circumstance. Stark is torn between wanting to remain at home at his beloved Winterfell with his family, and his duty to his King, but after much soul-searching, off to the south he goes in the company of his two daughters, Sansa and Arya... and so begins the splitting up of his family, and a sprawling series of books filled with war, dark deeds, and astonishing acts of treachery.
Along the way you become familiar with a grand cast of players, many of whom share their points of view in the text of this book, such as noble Eddard; his wife Catelyn; some of their children (notably Sansa, Arya, and Bran); Eddard's bye-blow Jon Snow; the King's dwarf brother-in-law, Tyrion Lannister; and across the Narrow Sea, the exiled daughter of the mad king deposed by Robert Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen, whose brother yearns to regain his birthright. From their stories, bristles a smorgasbord of twisting plots that are carried along through the series.
Martin's plotting is delicious, and as you swing back and forth between the different narratives, the story carries you along on a tide of betrayal, war, and the intricacies of ambitious long-games... with a sprinkling of folk lore and magic. The characters are well drawn, and you become completely immersed in their fates, even when you can see from the beginning where their more noble ideas will make them prey to the rotters among them. I acknowledge that much has been made about the violence against women in Martin's books, but his world in based in a greater part on very real history with its false notion of chivalry, so this comes with the territory. In fact, there is violence here against everyone, and Martin includes some kick-ass female characters for you to get behind from the outset. It is also worth mentioning that the first season of the TV series actually follows this story very closely, which was rather surprising given that propensity of adaptations to diverge wildly from their source material. Excellent stuff!
I must admit that I am not in love with Dotrice's narration, despite the fact that it has been much lauded, but I did get used to his halting style eventually, and the many hours of the audio book slipped by nicely - taking you all the way to a cracking finale that leads into the following book, A Clash of Kings. I have already bought the audio book of the next adventure, and look forward to settling into more of Martin's wondrous story-telling in 2024.
Here there be dragons...
A Game of Thrones is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats.
About the author:
George R.R. Martin is the globally bestselling author of many fine novels, including A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons, which together make up the series A Song of Ice and Fire, on which HBO based the world’s most-watched television series, Game of Thrones. Other works set in or about Westeros include The World of Ice and Fire, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. His science fiction novella Nightflyers has also been adapted as a television series; and he is the creator of the shared-world Wild Cards universe, working with the finest writers in the genre. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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