I Never Watched Game of Thrones. Then I Read the Book | Book Review

I never watched Game of Thrones. Then I finally picked up George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones and I get it now.

I went into the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire with almost no connection to the TV series. In fact, years ago I made it about four minutes into episode one before turning it off.

The book was a very different story.

It starts slowly enough, building the people, families, politics and world but somewhere around the first third it starts accelerating. By the final few hundred pages I was absolutely smashing through chapters just trying to find out what happened next.

In this review I get into:

Why George R. R. Martin's POV structure works so well

How he manages to interweave so many characters and storylines

Why the world somehow feels enormous while remaining grounded

The comparison with The Lord of the Rings

The brutality, darkness and unpredictability of the story

Why the final third completely hooked me

The slightly uncomfortable reality of starting an unfinished series