I have a shameless love of all things medieval. (And ancient Egyptian too actually – could this have something to do with the fact that those were the two coolest Eyewitness books in my elementary school’s library? Quite possibly.)
So yeah, kings and queens and knights in armor and battles and court intrigues – yes please all the time. I’ve read a lot of King Arthur fiction, and one of the most useless but interesting classes I took in college was History of Medieval Europe. Signing up for that course struck me as such a great idea at the time, but clearly I’ve forgotten 99.9% of it.Luckily my lack of historical knowledge is not a problem in the context of reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the first book of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. The series (which you probably know is also a TV show), takes place in a fictional place in medieval-ish times, and is mostly realistic but has moments of magic and fantasy. Clearly I enjoyed all 807 pages of it, and as I mentioned on Monday, I am looking forward to getting my page-turning hands on the next one asap.
Books like this are like candy (or drugs) for readers. I open the book, turn my brain off, and immediately disappear from wherever I am – my bed, the metro, a coffee shop, waiting outside a restaurant…seriously, wherever – into the story. I mean, really, completely gone: I gasp, I frown, I sometimes tear up in public when reading...and I feel like that's ok. Because this is an intense story! It is violent, sometimes really gruesomely and graphically so, and there was a lot more weird sex than I was expecting (incest, rape, etc. I guess that’s why it’s on HBO).
My favorite story line was that of Daenerys Targaryen, because she starts out so weak and then turns into such a bad-ass! And I also really liked Jon Snow, I bet he becomes a big deal in future books.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (which is totally fine and as a fellow sometimes sub-rock dweller I do not judge), you’ve probably already heard of the books and maybe seen the show. So I am here to tell you: next time you want something fun and awesome to read, A Game of Thrones! DO IT!
