A Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin
835 p.

For Here Be Dragons.

Bantam USA, 1997.
(first published by Bantam Books, 1996.)

Back cover blurb:

In A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.

In a land where summer can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family born to harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a take of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs periously in the balance, as each endeavor to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

I didn’t think this book was so long. I really didn’t. It looks like it’s maybe 500, but definitely not 800. Partly because of this, I guess, I had problems really getting into the book. (I am not a big fan of too long books, when I can’t think of any justified purpose of them being so long.)

Another reason why it took 500 pages for me to get into it was all the main characters. Every chapter was told from a different perspective, and it honestly took hundreds of pages before I for sure knew what was going on. That the main characters all had nicknames which were used interchangably with their given names didn’t make the thing better. There was a different plot for every character. Alright, so, the different doings influenced the rest, but the first few hundred pages I was completely lost. Admittedly, it only took a bit before I got a new favourite character, but after a while I realised she wasn’t really a favourite character, just that I always knew what was going on in her world, and I was thankful for that. Of course, for her nothing happens. She basically thought about dragons and had sex with her husband. It was safe. All the other characters rushed about cutting each others’ heads off. Not very nice.

So, for the first 500 pages, I was unsurewhether I liked the book or not. Now that I’m finished, I feel that I do quite like it, but on the other hand, I feel it was a bit too complicated and too much happening all the time. Or maybe it is just that I am used to a straightforward narrative without any thought required on my part. Still, it is a bit bad that it takes more than the book before I can even know if it’s any good. Before I can tell between the main characters! Yet… the story was cool.

Assassin’s Apprentice
Robin Hobb
435 p.

For Here Be Dragons.

Bantam Spectra, 1996.
(First published 1995 by Spectra/Voyager Books.)

Back cover blurb:

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father’s gruff stableman. He is treated as an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz’s blood runs the magic Skill - and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family.

As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz is growing to manhood. Soon he will face his first dangerous, soul-shattering mission. And though some regard him as a threat to the throne, he may just be the key to the survival of the kingdom.

This if the first (new for me) fantasy novel I have read in Ages. (so long the Ages is capitalised!) Earlier, I used to read fantasy novels all the time, so returning to this kind of literature after quite soem time, I felt a bit unbalanced. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Additionally, I wasn’t sure if this was a very serious novel, or a more light-weight one. Soon I realised it was a serious novel. It was also a quite unsettling novel. (The forged scared the living daylights out of me.)

So, the plot was quite slow-moving, and at times I wondered if there even was a plot, but the more I read of the novel, the more I liked it. If the plot ever was boring, Hobb’s language made up for it. In a way, I wish I could read the second book in the series now, partly because of the story and partly (yes, I am that way inclined) to find out what the gay is. But I’ve got my planned reading, and anyway, I don’t have my hands on the second novel. Maybe this autumn I’ll be bothered finding it. Probably.

Bilbo: en hobbits äventyr
(The Hobbit or There And Back Again)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Translated by Britt G. Hallqvist
Illustrations by Tove Jansson
308 p.

Rabén & Sjögren, 1962
(first published 1937 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.)

For Decades ‘08 and Here Be Dragons.

Back cover blurb:

none

I read this book a year or so before the first Lord of the Rings film was released, and it took longer time still before I actually realised that the upcoming film and the book I had read some time before were even connected. (what can I say? I wasn’t a particularly bright kid, and I’m still daft.) I read it in the same version as I did now, an older translation and beautiful pictures by Tove Jansson (who, if you don’t recognise the name or the style, also wrote and drew the Moomin-stories, as well as illustrated several other childrens’ novels). It is a lovely translation, and it isn’t often I can say that. Admittedly, I sometimes started wondering if the text was only translated, or if it had been altered in any way. As I have never read The Hobbit in English, I can’t tell. The style of writing is vastly different from the one he came to use when writing Lord of the Rings, which I haven’t read in English either. I am a little ashamed, yes.

Now, when I was tiny, I loved this book. When I later read Lord of the Rings, I loved that even more. I was completely enraptured by these hobbits and dwarves and men who were so amazing and different from any other thing I’d read. I never particularly liked the elves, I thought them self-important and more than a little egotistical. The humans were the ones for me. Still, I thought them the best books ever published. I never re-read The Hobbit, which is a little peculiar, but the trilogy I read three or four times. Completely brilliant. Now, when I read it again, I started to feel a little nervous. After fifty pages I didn’t enjoy it at all as much as I ought to. I ought to swoon and go “Oh Tolkien!” in wonder, but these swoons were illuminating in their absence. It was very alarming. And quite upsetting. I really wanted to love this book as much as I did when I was ten.

In the end I didn’t. I liked it more than I did when I started, but it never filled me with that alarming sense of joy that was present the first time. I liked the middle a lot. The middle made me happy. The end confused me a bit, because I had got a strong idea of what was going to happen: the dwarves were going to hunt down the dragon and everything was going to be hunky-dory. Of course, this didn’t happen. I remembered vaguely what was going to happen - who was going to do the dragon in and a few of who were dying. That didn’t match with my view of what should happen. When the great battle started I found myself disappointed again, because in my mind, a great big battle wasn’t really justified for this. The orcs hadn’t been that important before and the dragon was the fiend! Battles where hundreds of people die are not necessary! I guess reading a few Tolkien-ripoffs has taken its toll already. That it ricochetted on Tolkien himself was a bit of misery, though.

I don’t mean that I didn’t enjoy it. I did enjoy it, but with the expectation so high, I loved it less than I wanted to. When I reread it, in several years, I will probably read it in English. This translation is beautiful, the poems and songs are fantastic, but reading the original is always nice. If we had owned it in English (which we don’t. We have a copy of the first edition of Silmarillion, a book it is highly unlikely I’ll read again, but not The Hobbit in English. Two in Swedish, though.), I would have read it in that language. This one copy I read is so worn and loved that the back has fallen off and the spine is leaving. The edges are banged and frayed. Still, it is a lovely edition of a more than decent book.