A Game of Thrones

In a word of my native language, "Bangsat". Or, in a less expressive and far less satisfactory word of English, "Kick ass!". That's what i thought of this book. One of the best fantasy, if not the best itself that i had read so far. It's different with every other fantasies i had read. It's not of the High Fantasy, for a start, at least as long as i could made out from the first of the seven books (four has been released, and fans has anxiously patiently waiting for the fifth to be released for the past three years. Yep. Three years and probably more, George RR Martin himself has made excuses in his blog as per June 2007 that his dog has ate his manuscript and he was tired of making excuses, one fan even went as far as making a camp outside of Mr.Martin's house so that each day when Mr.Martin looks out of the window, he could see his hand pointing to his watch and heard him making sound, 'tick-tock-tick-tock').

Anyways, the first of the serie, A Game of Thrones, as its name suggested it's a multi-factions struggle to reign the throne in a land called Westeros where Summer last for years, and Winter was the time when there would be terror ascended from the North, from the Land-beyond-the-Wall. But, unlike any other fantasies i had read, there's not yen an ultimate evil entity that looming ever in the darkness weaving its treacherous web to entangle the world's inhabitants while our protagonists went around land high and low, meeting creatures both exotic and mysterious to finally confront with the evil itself in the end of the book. At least, not yet.

A Game of Thrones, follows three main subplots that happened in different regions of the 'world' and told in a third person limited point of view, where each prominent characters act as a POV character in each chapter. I gave praise to A Game of Thrones as a fantasy because here, everyone had their own agenda and these agendas doesn't necessarily comforting each other's. Well, actually, they're never at odds. There's a mother who looked ultimately evil from the outside, yet, on the inside, she did it because she loved her son and her family, whether they're on the right side or wrong side. There's a man who was good seeds in and out, honorable, loyal, but yet, wasn't quite a decision maker. And of course, there are wars, betrayal, and a sense of magic (evil or good, can't tell, but it's lingers). In short, this multi-character fantasy is actually the first fantasy i read where i still can't decide which one to root for, so far, i had chosen to root for a lowly character, evil, but somehow felt noble. At least, this character's story is the most interesting and the one i'm really looking forward to. I had finished the book rather quickly, and already i'm halfway through the second book. Give this book a try if you really are a fan of fantasy genre, you could easily decide whether this book is your cup of tea or not from several first chapters, so you won't waste any precious time than necessary.