A Clash of Kings
I finished reading A Clash of Kings the second book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. This book was just as gripping as the first. It picks up right where Game of Thrones leaves off following the same cast of characters. Sometimes the book would be frustrating because the chapters would end on cliff hangers and then shift to another character’s perspective usually somewhere else in the world. The worst was when it would shift to Daenerys, who is an interesting character in her own right, an exiled young queen of dragon blood, but currently on a different continent and so far removed from the actions of the Seven Kingdoms that at the moment she holds little significance to it. I am sure that will change in the future, but the characters I most want to know about are eight year old Bran Stark who has unusual dreams, Arya Stark a ten year old highborn lady who wants to play with swords over needlework, and Jon Snow their bastard half-brother who is discovering that the old stories and legends are still true.
What makes this books so gripping and wrenching is that half the characters are on opposite sides of the battle lines. You may like all the character’s in their own way, but in the end you know that some of them will win and the others will lose, but when and how much you never know until it happens. Living in the heads of some of the “antagonists” allows the reader to see their very human motivations, and while it may make their actions no less horrible or wrong, it highlights how the choices of one individual can affect a nation.