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A Song of Ice and Fire – A Storm of Swords (book 3)
Author: George R.R. Martin
**CAUTION: IT DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE PREVIOUS BOOKS**
The longest book of the series until now (900+ pages), A Storm of Swords is by far the best of them, but also the most shocking. It doesn’t start from where the previous book finished, instead, it goes back some months earlier, so the 1st chapters overlap with the last ones from A Clash of Kings.
There are 10 main characters telling us the story: Catelyn, Sansa, Arya and Bran Stark; Jon Snow; Tyrion and Jaime Lannister; Davos Seaworth; Daenerys Targaryen and Samwell Tarly. The prologue is told by a man of the Night’s Watch and the epilogue by one of the hundred Freys.
A Song of Ice and Fire Overview – Author: George R.R. Martin
There are 7 books on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, only 5 of them published to this date. A Game of Thrones is the first one, released in 1996 – early this year HBO made a TV series based on it, and that’s how I became aware of its existence. According to what I’ve read on the internet, two days after the season’s premiere a second season was signed up, to be aired in 2012. I loved the TV series – it is so good that we watched the 10 episodes in only 2 nights, and because I didn’t want to wait until next year to know what happens, I decided to read the books.
It is my opinion, but I know a lot of people agrees with me, that usually books are much better than their adaptations to TV, as it’s not always possible to include all important details, but I was very surprised to see that HBO’s Game of Throne is very faithful to the book and very little has been left aside, and the characters are perfectly portrayed, with only minor things being different, like some hairs being curled in the book but straight on TV.
So…watching the TV series before reading the books put faces in my head, which for me was fine in this case. Normally, when I read a book and then watch the screen version, I get disappointed because I had imagined everyone so different! For the 2nd and 3rd books (A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, respectively), which I’ve already finished, there are lots of new characters that I expect to be similar to what I’ve created in my mind, and I think this is the first positive thing I must say about the series: the author makes such a rich and detailed description of people, places, food, objects, etc, that it’s very easy to picture them.
