I FINALLY FINISHED GAME OF THRONES!!! 🙏🙏🙏

Celebrations are in order! I have finally finished a gigantic book for the first time in what 4 years?

This took a lot of patience and regular effort but I feel SO GOOD. YESSSS!!!

okay, calming down, this book is good. It’s very well paced and I loved reading it. Epic fantasy has this different kick to it which just isn’t comparable to literary fiction or any other genre. I think it’s mainly because of the length and the time you are putting in, that you get really sucked into the world and its environment and the 200 different characters and how someone was exiled or why someone joined the Night’s Watch. It truly brought me back to my old reading heydays when I was plowing through Harry Potters(fun fact: I read them in the descending order of length) and Artemis Fowls and Hunger Games. I will be jumping on to the next book immediately. (Maybe take a very different break and read Pother Dabi, we’ll see)

But, what about the book? It’s really good but also not the masterpiece people tell you it is. For one, you WILL NOT BE invested in all of the POVs at once. You will have favourites and you will fucking writhe in pain to get to them. For me, Sansa was just such a haughty bore. It was just such a old “knights and heroes” pretty princess outlook, it just didn’t work for me. Arya was good but same I mean there’s not much hype happening at King’s Landing unless its Ned and the murder mystery. I was really invested into the Ned Chapters and I mean, it is I guess the driving force of the story and also the thematic soul of it, but I mean, we all know what happens to Ned and for that storyline to be then handed to Sansa (especially when I was already not vibing) just derailed it for me. Arya was better but Arya barely has anything that important happening to her in this book and so when there are frickin wars going on outside, these felt like pitstops and
I just was waiting for this car to GO.

My favourite chapters here are Jon and Catelyn. Jon is easily the cleanest character arc here, if not the best. His last chapters were a little dumb and slow and just irritating character moments but his whole training with the Night’s Watch montage is just classic fantasy and that is the goods you are paying for, in every book you read. All of us love an underdog rising in the ranks story. And it’s very good and when Mormont comes in this boy’s life, it is a fucking FEAST.
Catelyn. Oh Catelyn. When I started this book, I knew Jon, Dany, Arya were POVs. I didn’t expect Catelyn to be one. I thought it would some middle aged aunty bs but OH MY GOD. Catelyn has 90% of the hype moments here. From her journey to Vale to the later Robb chapters, oh my god I finished this book because of Catelyn. While all the rest of the characters are suffering, Catelyn my queen out here is JUST WINNING. Robb, YOU HAVE MY HEART ❤ That boy growing up and leading armies and capturing Lannisters, he is an ICON. And I am so glad, through Catelyn we get this personal but mythical take on him. It is just perfect. I love the Catelyn chapters. To fucking death man.

Oh, uh yeah I forgot about the most hyped two characters of this show. The truth is… they’re just fine. I’m sure Tyrion gets a lot of traction in the later books but first in the Vale saga, he’s just an accessory. He just spouts clever lines. I mean the lines are great but there’s the whole Arryn mystery during that time and he clearly gets the short end of the stick consistently. While everyone else is having epic moments, Tyrion is left trying to get back to the Lannister army and negotiating with savages. His last few chapters are great, but clearly this book is not his shining moment.
Daenerys. Uhm, honestly this is the most fucked up fucking weird cross cultural appropriation portion of the book. We have fantasy stereotypes of the Chinese, Indians, I mean, if you are raped on the day of your marriage and then fall in love, I mean…okay? get help fast. There are multiple talks of women getting filled by seed of men here, a lot of rapes, weird fucking shit. It’s honestly not good. I mean I kinda liked Drogo for putting in effort to know Dany’s language but this whole bit with Viserys the fucking prick and all is just such “ugghhh” that I really don’t know what to tell you. I guess GRRM wanted to give a desert savages fantasy here, but it’s just plundering and raping and Dany’s whole arc here is filled with such Stockholm Syndrome moments or just such stubborn bs, I didn’t really like any of it. It’s so weird it ends with the dragons sucking milk out of her tits while she is found naked on the ashes of her husband so yeahhh.

Also there were a lot of spelling mistakes and punctuation mistakes here. Not even kidding. Double checked and all. Isn’t this book like 25 years old? Whatever. Do better.

Good enough, moving on to my sweeeeet new copy of Clash of Kings.