Finished the first book of ASOIAF: A Game of Thrones. Just as great as I expected it to be, made me appreciate the series more given the content I now know that was cut from the show, and made me appreciate the show more given the things they added. 10/10

GRRM manages to do it man, A Clash of Kings was even better than A Game of Thrones. The political deceptions were much more prevalent this time around given how we’ve replaced Ned as the main perspective to Tyrion who plays the game much better and relishes in it, by day he’s

scheming with Varys and trying to wrap the small council around his finger, turning Cersei’s own men against her, coming up with official excuses that of sending her guards and her children away, trying to balance the city by keeping his sister on a leash, making sure he doesn’t

make the same mistake Ned did trusting Littlefinger or Pycelle, trying to manage Joffrey, protect Sansa, and prepare the city for Stannis’ attack, and even going out to the battlefield himself while the king hides, and what makes it all so compelling is that the whole city blame

and hate him for all their sufferings despite being the only Lannister that’s actually looking out for them instead of his own skin, and by night he spends his time with Shae, being conflicted with his love cause he doesn’t want to feel the same pain he felt when his father

paid a woman to pretend to love him, he fears she’ll end up deceiving him or if she really loves him, then his enemies will hurt her, adding a desire in Tyrion all men share despite being only half a man. Meanwhile we have the Starks all separated from each other and grieving

for each other not knowing if the other is alive or dead, in Sansa we see a girl growing into a woman, she represents the realization of stopping to believe in fairy tales and see how cruel the real world actually is, through Arya a girl who tries to be a warrior and learn all

the tricks a killer would need to survive that cruel world and it exemplifies this by having her forced to work for her enemies. Through Bran we see a broken child with a burden of ruling as a lord, and his hopes to believe that magic really exists so it can wake him up from

the nightmare he’s living where he can never be the knight he really wanted. Through Jon we see a bastard that tries so hard to live up to the honor his father once had and being in the night’s watch makes this really shine because although they are an “honorable” organization,

there are many things that the night’s watch have to do in order to guard the realms of men which aren’t honorable, and Jon has to struggle with that and it might even change him as a person, like near the end of the book Jon let’s an enemy go because with his honorable eyes he

judged she wasn’t evil, trying to live up to father’s Code, but it also meant disobeying the night’s watch, and similarly at the very end when he even had to kill one of his own brothers of the watch to survive and bring information of the enemy back to his commander, all of

which required him to break his vows, it’s a cruel and cold environment and it was the perfect place to explore Jon’s character in. Through Catelyn we see the views of a grieving woman who despises the very nature of battle that rules over the world, she’s the pacifist that would

rather accept her grieve than risk losing more in vengeance, the only person in the whole series they truly puts her family above everything else and there isn’t a better way to show this then through a strong mother, this is also added on by Catelyn always being the lady of her

house since her mother and older brothers died, so she’s had to play the role of the strong dutiful lady for as long as she can remember and now having been separated from her sons and daughters, losing her husband, and her father being on his deathbed, Catelyn offers what’s

arguably the most emotionally powerful perspective in the series. Not gonna lie Daenerys’ hadn’t made much progress during this book but through her we got great worldbuilding of Essos with the city of Qarth and all the differing factions that rule it as well as the different

customs they hold, and she saw a bunch of visions of the past and future which will no doubt be used as great foreshadowing seeing as she saw her brother Rhaegar naming Jon Aegon and saying that his is a song of Ice and Fire, and many other visions which can mean a number of

things, we’ll have to see what. Lastly, the most gripping part of this book was how amazing the warfare was, it’s really hard to describe but it’s incredible meticulous and tightly written and filled with genius strategies that take many factors into account one that takes place.

Across all these differing perspectives I mentioned and over the course of months and many small battles, every decision mattered, every command issued or a strategy employed by one of these characters and then dealt with by another, one army moves and the other goes

where one least expects it and we may even find out after it’s already happened as someone’s reading a report, witnessing this gigantic war from multiple sides, information being lacked because ravens can’t get to certain areas, enemies being taken by surprise because their

scouts were assassinated. Negotiations between houeses to give their aid, genuine compromises like when Tyrion gave his niece to Dorne in a marriage proposal, or the Lannisters capitalizing on Renly dying and his former wife Margery being open for marriage. We see the hypocrisy

of it all too when lords lose their king then flee to another and swear their loyalty to them and get praised for it like everyone who fled to Stannis after Renly died, and this bounces back to Jaime and how he’s so as low and dishonorable for betraying his king when all these

knights and lords do the exact same, he said it best “no matter what you do you’re forsaking one vow or another” . This world just how so much to talk about and it has so many things that it addresses in so many different and unique situations that it’s overwhelming. Easy 10/10