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A review by silvae
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
2.0
TW: rape, abuse (mental/physical/emotional), grooming, incest, murder, death, graphic violence, slutshaming, animal abuse. Many of these topics involve minors. This review also refers to scenes of rape, non-consent and coercion, please proceed with caution.
Spoilers ahead!
My relationship with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is rather difficult to summarize. On one hand, reading all the books back to back in the summer of 2012 is one of the best reading experiences I've had in all my life. There's nothing nicer than spending days to weeks on end doing nothing but read stories set within one universe, a rush that glosses over the problems a series may have. I was a very uncritical reader back in the day and this, paired with the sheer thrill of wanting to find out what happens, made for a very enjoyable reading.
This time around, my experience was a bit different. I have now read A Game of Thrones for the third time (though I do not recall if I ever actually finished the book on my second readthrough) and it proved to be a chore more often than once. Full disclosure: I went into this with a.) a craving to read the series I enjoyed so much again 2.) low expectations, except for entertainment and an easy reading experience. ASOIAF is very entertaining and I think GRRM does a good job at pacing the story (which I remember being a big problem with book 5), and the characters are all fleshed out well. It often feels like he is just a narrator, while the characters act as they see fit, going against rational thought and acting only on their own agenda. This makes for a thrilling reading experience, though only if you go into the reading without any prior reading.
There is definitely a shift in the story once you know the basic points of the books, as you feel yourself moving from one stressful scene to the next, frustrated, tense, intrigued and worried. You have more time to pay attention to the characters, their descriptions and how GRRM, or rather our narrator, tells the story, and this may actually be one of the biggest flaws the series has. There's a large amount of - mental, physical, sexual - violence done to young children and teens, mostly girls, over the course of the first book alone. You may say "hey! this is just how things were!" or "we are talking about a patriarchal society, a society where violence gets you places!" or "they're shitty people and have to be characterized by such actions!", but in all honesty - this world is completely in the hands of the author. Compare this world to other patriarchal fantasy worlds such as Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea (especially the fourth book, Tehanu) and you will find vastly different ways of describing gendered violence and dominance - especially in regards to intent and execution. It's a question of "does this happen to someone?" vs. "is this done to someone?".
--- TW: rape for the following paragraphs ---
While ASOIAF isn't nearly as bad about this as the TV series (wherein rape and sex were omnipresent, barely differentiated and used to shock and test the limits of HBO's boundaries), it still is horrific to read about 13-, later 14-, year old Daenerys (who consists of supple breasts (later: heavy breasts, swollen with milk), hard nipples, perfume on her genitals); whose chapters mainly consist of her having coerced sex with a man twenty years her senior, seeing girls her age get raped, freeing them from said rape, and then hearing of them being raped again, only to then get killed. The fact that these scenes take place within the context of her being among 'savages' - the eastern tribe of the Dothraki, who take what they want and in front of the eyes of their brothers and who stand in direct opposition to blonde-haired, pale-skinned, violet-eyed Daenery Targaryen - makes this all the more problematic, especially given the controversies surrounding GRRM (see: "George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (RageBlog Edition)"). He obviously isn't the only media creator to do this, but I find it very worrying that rape as an enforcement of power is such a prevalent trope in media. Isn't it much more exciting to create a fantasy world that does not reproduce gendered cruelty prevalent in our own world? I think it should be, but I guess not everyone agrees with me on that.
One interesting thing: rape is not seen as a signifier that a character is evil, at least not in this volume. Joffrey is evil, but he does not rape anyone. Lord Tywin does awful things but is not characterized by raping. Cersei may be seen as evil but explicitly engages only in consensual monogamist sex with her brother, rejecting her drunk husband. The amount of rape that the dothraki engage in does not signify them to be evil, only "foreign" and opposed to 'kind-hearted' Daenerys. The rapists that travel to the Black Wall later fade into the background, for they of course didn't rape anyone! Rape is seldom questioned: one of the main romances in this volume is Daenerys and Khal Drogo, who, while asking for consent during their wedding night, often rapes Daenerys throughout her chapters.
Herein lies the horror of it all, for rape in ASOIAF is just something accept, occassionally be enraged about, but in no way preventable... at least if a woman wants to be seen as "strong".
EDIT: I just read up on GRRM defense of use of sexualized violence and rape in his series and that's it, I'm going down from 3 stars to 2. SOURCE: https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Rape#George_R.R._Martin.27s_views_on_presenting_rape_in_medieval_fantasy_literature
--- End of TW ---
I have to say that ASOIAF sports some of my very favorite characters, and it is quite hard to pinpoint who is my actual favorite. The villainous characters are cruel and unlikeable and difficult for the reader to empathize with, yet their unreliability also makes them interesting. It's funny that the red thread of the series seems to be "don't engage in incest because you will get pregnant and your children will be insane".
I think my conflict is quite obvious: I loved reading the series the first time around and rereading the first book has kept me on my toes, yet I can no longer read it without a critical eye. I love the characters, but I hate the narration. There is something special about these books and GRRM juggles the multiple perspectives very well, but I do think that the best reading experience you will ever have with this series is the first time around, without any prior knowledge - and even then it will falter based on how much you are willing to accept within the argument of "this is a fantasy world based on medieval times!" vs. "if the author is creating a FANTASY world, why don't they opt to leave out incredibly problematic tropes for the sake of some equally cruel, yet less real-world-based choices?".
Finishing the book left a bad taste in my mouth, as I had skipped over a lot of the battle scenes, only to find myself in the final scene of the book: a fourteen year old girl, emerging out of a fire with two baby dragons suckling on her lactating breasts. There are ways to write that scene that would make it less weird and voyeuristic, and yet GRRM chose to describe it in such a way, in detail, across multiple paragraphs. I'm not sure if I will continue reading the series at the moment, but I do know that it will be a fully different experience than I had the first time around.
Spoilers ahead!
My relationship with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is rather difficult to summarize. On one hand, reading all the books back to back in the summer of 2012 is one of the best reading experiences I've had in all my life. There's nothing nicer than spending days to weeks on end doing nothing but read stories set within one universe, a rush that glosses over the problems a series may have. I was a very uncritical reader back in the day and this, paired with the sheer thrill of wanting to find out what happens, made for a very enjoyable reading.
This time around, my experience was a bit different. I have now read A Game of Thrones for the third time (though I do not recall if I ever actually finished the book on my second readthrough) and it proved to be a chore more often than once. Full disclosure: I went into this with a.) a craving to read the series I enjoyed so much again 2.) low expectations, except for entertainment and an easy reading experience. ASOIAF is very entertaining and I think GRRM does a good job at pacing the story (which I remember being a big problem with book 5), and the characters are all fleshed out well. It often feels like he is just a narrator, while the characters act as they see fit, going against rational thought and acting only on their own agenda. This makes for a thrilling reading experience, though only if you go into the reading without any prior reading.
There is definitely a shift in the story once you know the basic points of the books, as you feel yourself moving from one stressful scene to the next, frustrated, tense, intrigued and worried. You have more time to pay attention to the characters, their descriptions and how GRRM, or rather our narrator, tells the story, and this may actually be one of the biggest flaws the series has. There's a large amount of - mental, physical, sexual - violence done to young children and teens, mostly girls, over the course of the first book alone. You may say "hey! this is just how things were!" or "we are talking about a patriarchal society, a society where violence gets you places!" or "they're shitty people and have to be characterized by such actions!", but in all honesty - this world is completely in the hands of the author. Compare this world to other patriarchal fantasy worlds such as Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea (especially the fourth book, Tehanu) and you will find vastly different ways of describing gendered violence and dominance - especially in regards to intent and execution. It's a question of "does this happen to someone?" vs. "is this done to someone?".
--- TW: rape for the following paragraphs ---
While ASOIAF isn't nearly as bad about this as the TV series (wherein rape and sex were omnipresent, barely differentiated and used to shock and test the limits of HBO's boundaries), it still is horrific to read about 13-, later 14-, year old Daenerys (who consists of supple breasts (later: heavy breasts, swollen with milk), hard nipples, perfume on her genitals); whose chapters mainly consist of her having coerced sex with a man twenty years her senior, seeing girls her age get raped, freeing them from said rape, and then hearing of them being raped again, only to then get killed. The fact that these scenes take place within the context of her being among 'savages' - the eastern tribe of the Dothraki, who take what they want and in front of the eyes of their brothers and who stand in direct opposition to blonde-haired, pale-skinned, violet-eyed Daenery Targaryen - makes this all the more problematic, especially given the controversies surrounding GRRM (see: "George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (RageBlog Edition)"). He obviously isn't the only media creator to do this, but I find it very worrying that rape as an enforcement of power is such a prevalent trope in media. Isn't it much more exciting to create a fantasy world that does not reproduce gendered cruelty prevalent in our own world? I think it should be, but I guess not everyone agrees with me on that.
One interesting thing: rape is not seen as a signifier that a character is evil, at least not in this volume. Joffrey is evil, but he does not rape anyone. Lord Tywin does awful things but is not characterized by raping. Cersei may be seen as evil but explicitly engages only in consensual monogamist sex with her brother, rejecting her drunk husband. The amount of rape that the dothraki engage in does not signify them to be evil, only "foreign" and opposed to 'kind-hearted' Daenerys. The rapists that travel to the Black Wall later fade into the background, for they of course didn't rape anyone! Rape is seldom questioned: one of the main romances in this volume is Daenerys and Khal Drogo, who, while asking for consent during their wedding night, often rapes Daenerys throughout her chapters.
Herein lies the horror of it all, for rape in ASOIAF is just something accept, occassionally be enraged about, but in no way preventable... at least if a woman wants to be seen as "strong".
EDIT: I just read up on GRRM defense of use of sexualized violence and rape in his series and that's it, I'm going down from 3 stars to 2. SOURCE: https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Rape#George_R.R._Martin.27s_views_on_presenting_rape_in_medieval_fantasy_literature
--- End of TW ---
I have to say that ASOIAF sports some of my very favorite characters, and it is quite hard to pinpoint who is my actual favorite. The villainous characters are cruel and unlikeable and difficult for the reader to empathize with, yet their unreliability also makes them interesting. It's funny that the red thread of the series seems to be "don't engage in incest because you will get pregnant and your children will be insane".
I think my conflict is quite obvious: I loved reading the series the first time around and rereading the first book has kept me on my toes, yet I can no longer read it without a critical eye. I love the characters, but I hate the narration. There is something special about these books and GRRM juggles the multiple perspectives very well, but I do think that the best reading experience you will ever have with this series is the first time around, without any prior knowledge - and even then it will falter based on how much you are willing to accept within the argument of "this is a fantasy world based on medieval times!" vs. "if the author is creating a FANTASY world, why don't they opt to leave out incredibly problematic tropes for the sake of some equally cruel, yet less real-world-based choices?".
Finishing the book left a bad taste in my mouth, as I had skipped over a lot of the battle scenes, only to find myself in the final scene of the book: a fourteen year old girl, emerging out of a fire with two baby dragons suckling on her lactating breasts. There are ways to write that scene that would make it less weird and voyeuristic, and yet GRRM chose to describe it in such a way, in detail, across multiple paragraphs. I'm not sure if I will continue reading the series at the moment, but I do know that it will be a fully different experience than I had the first time around.