A Game of Thrones is the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy tale of kings, princes, politics, armies, whores, and rape. The series currently encompasses four books, and will stretch over at least seven by the time it is finished.

One of the most critical aspects of a fantasy epic is the world in which it takes place. There are many facets of the world of A Game of Thrones I could discuss - the summers and winters that last years at a time, the Wall, the death of magic - but if there's one distinct facet of Martin's world, one thing that makes A Song of Ice and Fire A Song of Ice and Fire, it's the female population, and the way that the rest of the world interacts with it. It's actually a pretty tough concept to wrap your head around, and I really can't do it justice here. In order to try and distill 800 pages into a short article, I figured the following Venn diagram might be useful.


As you can see, the entire female population of A Game of Thrones breaks up into one of three catagories, or some combination thereof.

Let's compare a situation from A Game of Thrones to real life so that we can further elucidate the difference between our world and Martin's. If you were a male in the world as we know it, and a buddy came up to you and said, "hey man, I totally had sex last night," your response might be, "how was it?" or perhaps "who was the chick?" or something like that. In Martin's world, the typical responses would be:

• "How many times did you rape her?"
  
• "How much did she cost?"
  
• "How many other guys raped her before you got your chance?"
  
• "Did you slit her throat after you raped her or did you just beat her and leave her for dead?"

Rape isn't just an unfortunate reality of the world, it's fucking institutionalized, much like having a beer while you watch a sporting event, or registering for the draft when you turn 18. Win a fight, rape a woman. Get a pay raise, rape a woman. Come of age, rape a woman. If you're a male in aSoIaF and you don't rape women, you're something of a social outcast, and you'll get stares and hard looks and death threats akin to those a child molester would get in our world.

Make no mistake, if you're a female in aSoIaF and you're lucky, you'll get married off to some lord because you're the daughter of one, and you'll only have to put up with having sex with some guy you don't necessarily know or like. If you're a commoner, you might as well become a whore, because at least you get paid when any given male who happens upon you fucks your dignity and shame into a couple of distant memories. If you don't go that route, you're simply doomed to be raped day in and day out with no compensation at all.


Moving on, A Game of Thrones is very nearly the inverse of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, which I read very recently. Where Terry focuses heavily on characters and practically throws worldbuilding to the side, Martin focuses on a highly crafted world and has nearly zero character development. Where I disliked Goodkind's tendency to explicitly detail a few unpleasant incidents, I dislike Martin's tendency to have a mindnumbing quantity of unpleasant incidents.

A Game of Thrones is a very political book. One of the main plot points is lineage and heritage. The title is apt; there may be armies and maybe even some dragons and magic, but this isn't the story of a small band of heroes saving the world. It's about the throne, and who it belongs to - rightfully and practically.

The characers are not really a focus. The story flips back and forth between quite a few of their viewpoints, which means you never really get a chance to get to know any of them that well. Perhaps that's a good thing, though, as most of the characters are fucking dicks. My feelings for them ranged from dislike to hate, with only a few characters charting on the positive side of things. It makes the book rather tough to read, really.

A Game of Thrones really didn't grab me much at the beginning, but it did pick up some steam by about two thirds of the way in. It ended up losing that by the end, unfortunately. The book is not bad, as it were, it's just way too political and not nearly character-centric enough for my tastes. Also, it has, I shit you not, more rape and whores than every other book I've read and movie I've watched in my entire fucking life combined. Really. The fact that I'm not terribly enamored by the series aside, I won't be purchasing any more of A Song of Ice and Fire simply because I cannot fucking stomach the ceaseless rape.