A Game of Thrones is the first installment of the highly popular A Song of Ice and Fire series. The books, though not much popular earlier, have garnered great success for suspenseful writing, interesting characters and multiple, and constantly, crossing plot lines leading to a highly gripping and extremely detailed story. The series has been adapted a to very successful TV series with the same name.
The narrative is set 297 years after the conquest of Westeros by Aegon Targaryen. A major part of plot takes place in Westeros, where the stories of major characters, Ned, Cat, Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Tyrion are told. The story of Daenerys takes place on a different continent, Essos. All the characters have different motivations and thus make the story richer. Unlike major epic stories, the books in the ASOIAF don’t usually endorse karmic actions. Characters like Ned Stark are killed when they appear to be the major protagonist, creating a sense of deep thrill for the reader and thus, keeping the readers on edge for the next event in the book.
The book starts with the death of Jon Arryn which triggers the other actions in the book, but a lot of major plots have started much earlier, like the backstory of Others or the mystery behind Jon’s parentage. The characters have rich and detailed backstories and it takes more than one read to completely comprehend the story and plot points. A major reason for the success of ASOIAF is how the plots are twisted completely and while major characters die, the underdogs like Jon and Daenerys in this book get ahead.
The book creates amazing imagery, with scenes from a medieval world not much different than the present. A mundane detail in every sentence makes appearance in a next chapter or book or much later in the series. This is not just an epic showing the battle between right and wrong, but creates multiples shades of grey where characters and plot points twist in a completely opposite direction.
