A Clash of Kings Book Review

I was a huge fan of the first novel in the A Song of Fire and Ice series, so I eagerly began reading this the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, as soon as I could. What carried over from the first book to this was Martin’s crisp writing and the sweeping epic feel of the series. Unfortunately, what didn’t carry over was the tightly woven narrative structure.

Perhaps it was the expansion of the epic nature of the conflict from two sides to multiple factions all vying for the crown that caused my problems with the book, or the addition of so many new characters. Whichever facet was the culprit, it left me with an impression of much sound and fury, but with little substance behind the cacophony. Even though there were a huge number of significant events in the book, by the end of it, I felt like almost nothing had happened, and very little hand changed, even though that’s far from the case. Entire factions dissolve in the war. A huge battle takes place near the end of the book. Kings die. Yet, much of the action of the novel takes place “off-stage” as it were, with the main actors not even involved in the resolution. In particular, we are left waiting for a clear understanding of the resolution of the climactic battle for almost 100 pages while the author focuses on other characters. I am a fan of the “viewpoint” style of writing, but here it left me feeling disconnected from the main events of the story. In addition, with so many minor actors involved in such a gigantic undertaking as a war, names are thrown around at will without any real context to the name, and as a result, I was left confused as to who did what.

Some storylines, particularly that of Jon Snow and Dany, spend an awful lot of words going through events that don’t seem to mean much of anything other than page filler. The sign of a good story, however, is that even with such a feeling about the book, I still want to know more.

Overall, the book is enjoyable, and it reads very quickly for almost 1000 pages. I only hope that later installments in the series are more focused in their narrative, or I could be in a for a long, slow slog.

March 28, 2012 at 3:38 pm | Books | No comment

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