A game at least as long as Monopoly

Martin, George R.R. A Game of Thrones. New York: Bantam Books, 2011.

My apologies for the length of time since the last post. I haven't been gallivanting: I've been working my way through the epic adventure (wait, make that the first leg of an epic adventure) in A Game of Thrones. At over 800 pages of small print, crammed with detail that makes it a no-brainer that a TV series or movie would result, the book requires a serious investment of time.

I could have done without the extensive set-dressing description of garments, sigils, and houses of this imaginary world. A shorter book without all that might have meant a week's reading over a few hundred pages. As long as that version retains what I really liked about the story--the careful development of a handful of characters that grab the reader's interest (the plucky tomboy Arya, the outcast bastard Jon, the crafty and undervalued dwarf Tyrion, the ever-strengthening exiled heiress Daenerys, and a few others) and the sheer magnitude of the world invented by Martin--I would recommend it in a heartbeat.

This version? It's a cliffhanger, and I do want to see how things turn out (and if my Big Theory is correct), so I imagine I'll read the rest of the series. I may just need to read another book alongside each so I don't have a posting blackout every time.

Rating: **1/2