Right
off the bat, I have to admit that because I thought that A Clash of Kings proved to be
rather disappointing, I definitely went into reading A Storm of Swords with somewhat lower expectations. That being
said, I actually ended up liking this book a little bit more than A Clash of Kings. However, this book still
proved to be rather difficult to get through in terms of its ability to maintain
my interest throughout the entire book. I actually ended up taking two breaks
from reading this book in order to read two other books. If I’m being entirely
honest, I’ve definitely been kind of dreading writing this review, because I
know that there are a lot of people who think very highly of this particular
book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Admittedly, I held off on writing my review for A Storm of Swords for quite a while after having finished reading
it. When it comes to discussing my thoughts on this book, I want to be
perfectly clear that I definitely didn’t completely hate A Storm of Swords, but I do have quite a few problems with it; that
being said, here are my thoughts on A
Storm of Swords.
When
it comes to which characters’ P.O.V. chapters I enjoyed the most, I definitely
enjoyed Jon Snow’s, Arya’s, Daenerys’ Catelyn’s, Tyrion’s, and Bran’s P.O.V.
chapters the most. I have to admit that I’m surprised that I enjoyed Catelyn’s
P.O.V. chapters in this book as much as I did. While I’ve always liked Catelyn
as a character, she’s never really ranked very high on my list of favorite
characters; both in terms of the A Song
of Ice and Fire book series, and the show Game of Thrones. Samwell Tarly’s P.O.V. chapters were definitely my
least favorite out of all the P.O.V. characters in this book. I just thought
that he was a very annoying character, especially when it comes to his first
P.O.V. chapter.
The
main problem that I have with this book is that I felt like George R. R. Martin
really meandered quite a bit throughout the book in a lot of ways. While I
really appreciate it when authors, especially fantasy authors, really take
their time to try and create elaborate worlds for their books to take place in;
sometimes I feel like Martin has the tendency to get too caught up in spending
a lot of time describing things such as the food the characters are eating, or
the clothes that the characters are wearing. In the grand scheme of things,
those kinds of things aren’t really all that important when it comes to actually
developing and progressing the various storylines that take place throughout
the book. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind Martin spending some time talking
about things like that, because I do think that it can help with the world
building for the series. I simply think that this book and the series as a
whole could definitely benefit from there being a better balance between
describing some of the details that help establish the series’ setting and the
society that the characters live in, and actually progressing the various
storylines at a satisfying pace.
