Jilles’ weblog

I’m currently reading A storm of swords by George R.R. Martin. That book is book #3 in a series called A song of ice and fire. I was pointed to this series by some people on usenet. After reading almost all the material written by J.R.R. Tolkien I wanted something else, but similar.

The first book was a true page-turner. Once you got into the characters the story was absolutely breath-taking. The second book, A clash of kings, introduced 3 dragons (oh yeah, it was -if possible- even more a page-turner as book #1). While there are much more plots, sub-plots and other interesting things going on in the series, the dragons capture my attention more than anything else. It is like the history of G.R.R. Martins world becomes alive again: dragons flying through the air! Ah well… i’ll see what A storm of swords brings me on this topic.

PS: Martin is different from Tolkien in at least two aspects. A song of ice and fire entails 3k+ pages where The lord of the rings entails only half of that. Now I know that A song of ice and fire isn’t finished yet, and I also know that there is much more material written by Tolkien, situated in Middle Earth (Including The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The Hobbit Middle Earth’s books contain 3k+ pages too ). Another difference between Tolkien and Martin is that all important characters survive throughout the story in The lord of the rings, whereas in A song of ice and fire main characters will die on you. That was something that shocked me, being used to Tolkien as I was. I think I like Martin’s approach in this respect. But then again Martin started out on doing 7 books, whereas Tolkien wrote 1 book (and the publisher turned it into 3, but thats another story).

PS 2: I’m trying not to read too much at once so that I won’t rush through the story… first time I’m regulating how much I read