Book Review: A Game of Thrones

Salam everyone!

Okay, this blog has been so quiet and deadly dull, it kind of saddens me that it still exists here in the cyber world, neglected and oh so...sparse.

Anyway, loads of stuff happened since my last faux-news-report post (which, btw, was inspired by my amazing-but-brief training at News Straits Times) that I haven’t covered here. I won’t bore you with a list, so I’m just going to randomly type out whatever pops into mind, then decide the title for this post.

Oh...yes.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: A GAME OF THRONES IS SO EPIC!!1!!!!11

YOU GUYS HAVE TO READ IT! READ! IT!

IT’S LIKE LORD OF THE RINGS IN ITS SCALE AND EPICNESS, ONLY MINUS THE CONFUSION OVER HOBBIT ORIGINS AND LONG SONGS OR FLOWERY DESCRIPTIONS OF SCENERIES, BOTH OF WHICH I ALWAYS SHAMELESSLY SKIMMED THROUGH WHEN READING LOTR!!

Ahem. End of capslock party.

Ever since I finished reading the Hunger Games, I was endlessly wondering what else could I read that would consume me so completely (and provide me with a fictional character I could fancy. Man, I miss my Peeta Mellark lovelorn days) and keep me absolutely riveted. Honestly, nothing can compare to the experience of reading an Excellent Book...

...and fancying a lovable male character.

Like the Hunger Games, I decided to try out A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones because of all the hype from the Internet. (Kind of funny, actually, since those two books are so different.) I think I learned from good ol’d TWoP about how a HBO series had been made based on A Game of Thrones, and that it was supposedly really excellent. The clincher? Boromir was acting in it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Mama had stopped paying Astro bills about ten years ago in a desperate attempt to get us Shurfas to hit our textbooks more often (it failed in my case), there was no chance of me actually checking out the show to evaluate its overall excellence-ness.

I was in a dilemma. Gone were the days when I could just sit cross-legged in MPH and devour a book in one sitting. Nor did I want to risk purchasing a book I might not even like (with money earned doing subtitles from Astro shows. Let us all take a moment to bow our heads and relish this irony).

So, like The Hunger Games, I was left with no choice: I set aside my ethics, subdued my conscience, donned a pirate eyepatch and scoured 4shared.com for a pdf version of the book. Within a few minutes, the book was safely downloaded onto my phone for me to consume at my own leisurely pace with nary a dime spent.




I’ve been reading it for the past three days now, and I still haven’t finished it. Now usually this means the book is not good at all, cuz I normally take only one night to complete an Excellent Book. But finishing A Game of Thrones in a few hours would be impossible, even if I cheerfully forfeit my basic rights to eat, sleep and take trips to the loo. Because this book? Is 900 pages long.

Which, while being a mind-whammy, is also perfect because, think about it: the excellence just keeps going on and on and on and on and on...

Because this book is honestly great. Set in a medieval fantasy world, it’s an intricate story of how many (emphasis on many here – there were a lot of times that I lost track of who was who and I’m not even half way done here) key people either a) vie for the throne or b) attempt to protect the throne or c) just happen to be related to either (a) and (b). So you can already assume there’s lots of intrigue and murder and mystery and... you know what? I suck at summaries, so just read the book or check out the reviews at Amazon.

Thanks to the power of A Game of Thrones, my text messages on Friday went like this:

Nazriq, 6:17 pm : How are u doing anisah?

Me, 6:21 pm : Tgh baca buku!

Nazriq, 6:46 pm : U buat apa skang?

Me, 6:46 pm : Baca buku!

Nazriq, 10:10 pm : What are you doing now? I baru keluar masjid!

Me, 10:11 pm : Baca buku!

...and you get the gist.

I’ve also downloaded the first two episodes of the HBO series (yes, again I donned the pirate eye-patch as I waded through the murky waters of warez-bb.org under the disguise of my sister’s username) and, while seriously EPIC to the power of 88, it may be confusing for people who haven’t read the book because the characters keep flinging around names of places and people and terms like “the Hand of the King” without making it obvious that it’s capitalised, so you’ll be like “lol-whut.” Also, Jaime’s hair is too modern.

Its kind of hard to swallow that everything is supposed to be set in medieval times when the dude walks around with such neat, post-millennium tresses. Compared to, say, this manimal*:

BE STILL, MY BEATING HEART.

And while we're at it, why must there be so much nakedness on the show? Honestly, it’s really unnecessary and makes me super uncomfortable, even at my ripe old age of 22! Thank God I watch it alone; I can't imagine how awkward it would be if I were watching it with my Mum...or my little sister Aida...

Whoah, okay, so this post turned into a book review. Kind of. So what’s the title of the blog post going to be?

An Update!

No.

A Song Of Love and Praise?

No.

Boromir is Awesome?

Ye—No.

Real Men Don't Comb Their Hair?

....

You guys, this is hard.

You know what? I'm just going to keep the title clean and simple.

*manimal = man + animal. Noun coined by Kak Aisya. Used to depict a man so hot and rugged, other words found in the dictionary do not do his physical beauty justice.