I finished the audio books for the Game of Thrones series last week. I feel like I should be calling it “A Song of Ice and Fire” since I think that’s the actual name. I think everyone knows it more simply as “Game of Thrones,” though, so I’ll just go with that.<\/p>\n
The super short version: I loved this series.<\/p>\n
Slightly more verbose:
\nThe first three books were amazing. Book four was really good, but something of a let down after book three. Book five was a little bit better than book four. I enjoyed all of it, though.<\/p>\n
I like how George Martin uses his characters. He gives them consistent personalities with relatable ambitions and quirks. At the same time, he uses them as a craftsman uses tools, with disregard for their well-being, scraping them against rough places until those rough places are smoother.<\/p>\n
Listening to the books, I felt like George had a plan, and I felt like I could trust him to execute that plan to the completion of the series. By way of comparison, somewhere in the middle of the Wheel of Time series, I felt like Robert Jordan’s plans had been muddied somewhat. I started to get a little bit worried during A Feast for Crows. I’m not worried, now.<\/p>\n
I want to mention Roy Dotrice’s reading. Roy Dotrice did an outstanding job with the whole series. For the most part, he gave the different characters consistent voices. The pronunciation of a few names did change, and that was jarring occasionally. I did have one observation, which is juvenile but funny, and that is every time Roy Dotrice said the word “breast” or “breasts,” it was like he was in a rush to get the word out. It almost sounded like he was barking the word out. It amused me every time, so that little bit had me constantly amused.<\/p>\n
So in summary, I found it to be an excellent series with a few minor imperfections creeping in at the fourth book. And by “imperfections” I mean, something unfolded in the story and my response was, “Oh, fuck you, George!” and I shut off the book for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finished the audio books for the Game of Thrones series last week. I feel like I should be calling it “A Song of Ice and Fire” since I think that’s the actual name. I think everyone knows it more simply as “Game of Thrones,” though, so I’ll just go with that. The super short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}