I suck at life...and fangirl-dom.
Okay, let me preface this by saying, I'm the girl who reads the last two pages of the book when I'm only a chapter in. That's the thing about me, generally, knowing how it ends doesn't spoil the story for me. Generally--mostly--hopefully. Often that's the case because there are so many other interesting things (with good writers) that happen between the first and last lines of a book. it's not the ending that catches my imagination, it's the getting there.
Mostly.
WHERE I F-ED UP!
First, I watched the show, which was only a minor screw up because, pretty. You know? And amazing and perfect, and, oh, did I mention pretty?But now I know EVERY DAMN THING that happens in the first book--(Except one plot point, which I'll get back to later, that is really intriguing me)--and that's making it really hard to keep....uh, interested isn't the word, in-touch, maybe with the characters that I don't already love. (SEE: Arya, Robb, Jon, Dany, Jaime, Tyrion, and Ned)
Second, I got internet. Now, granted, this mistake was made long before I'd every heard of GoT, but it was, nonetheless, a big one. Because you know what happens on the internet? No? Well, I'll tell you: People post spoilers! (And this is where we revisit my need to skip to the last pages of the book when I've only just started reading it.) It's hard. Hard to get attached to characters when I know they are going to die, hard not to get attached to characters when I know they are going to die, hard not to want to jump ahead, hard not to want to hunt George RR Martin down and make him change things...Everything's just so damn hard.
Third, and this one I blame on Loke, I joined tumblr. This one is, in many ways, a continuation of #2. Do you have any idea how many pretty, pretty GoT things there are on that damn site. Spoilery GoT things...? It's impossible not to become obsessed. Impossible, I tell you. And so you look around and you read and you become even more spoiled and the more spoiled you get the more information you have to have...it's a vicious, vicious cycle.
So it all boils down to this. I'm spoiled and, like many, many spoiled children the world over, it has made me depressed and sent me in search of something that is unpredictable and unknown. Pity me.
MY REVIEW SO FAR:
Okay, now that I have all that stuff out of the way, I'm just going to give a mini review of the book so far: (I'm on page 489 and Dany is about to chow down on a heart).
So, I'll do this by character:
Arya, Jon, Robb, and all those that I love: I love them. You know that, I know that, and for the purposes of this review that is, mostly, uninteresting.
Sansa: I want to like her. I feel like I'm supposed to like her, like maybe I'll like her in the future (or at least I'll stop using the word like), but I just...can't. I know she's young and she was raised to be a lady and I don't hate her, I don't want her to die or suffer or anything, I just want her to love her family a little more. Care for them a little more. Think of them a little more. Is that so much to ask? (Though, in all honesty, I sometimes, sort of, have this issue with Jon too--don't know why.) It's just...I get it, she's young, she's supposed to be self-centered, but I fined it really hard to believe that these parents who raised their children, in general, to put family and honor and all this good stuff first would not have raise a daughter who cared a little more for her siblings...no matter how bothersome she finds them. So, yeah, that's an issue for me. One I'm fully aware that I had at this point in the TV show too, and then I came around to her. I'm just not sure if I came around to her because she deserved it or because she finally lashed out at that little bastard prince. In honesty, she could be a perfect bitch to everyone else and if she cared for her family a little more I might like her a little more---and I worry, because I'm not sure this will change in the future. I guess she'll get strong, but will she become a better sister and daughter? I don't know.
Tyrion: Again with the love...and the confusion, and much of the confusion, I hate to say, comes from the writing--or crazy character quirks that I just haven't pick up on yet. Here's the thing: In the beginning he seems to know or he at least has some idea that Jamie or Cersei were involved in Bran's accident--Hence the conversation about whose side his one during dinner with Jaime. Do we all remember that? So why is he so....pissy with Catelyn for thinking he had Bran killed and wanting to do something about it? I get it, no one likes being kidnapped and taken to a crazy lady and her super crazy kid, but there are times when he seems to have a innate hate of all things Stark because of this and I don't get it. I mean I don't want to him sing their praises or anything, but in everything else he's so much the realist, so why does he not see this as the natural reaction to thinking someone crippled and then tried to kill your son? WTF, Tyrion? WTF?
And things brings me to the previously mentioned plot point: the knife and who actually sent someone to kill Bran? I feel like it's being spelled out that it was Jaime--or Cersei, but I don't get why the conversation didn't take place in the book somewhere or why they would use a knife they knew Tyrion was supposed to have...and was Tyrion actually supposed to have that knife...? It's just weird to me and it wasn't really addressed in the show so I ignored it, but it seems like it's being addressed in the book and I am intrigued/confused by it. So maybe I'm making something out of nothing here--but it's an interesting like ball of yarn to unwind.
Theon: Can I just smack him upside the head? Again, not sure if I should like him--though I think not, but either way, I don't. He's obnoxious and blood thirsty and did I mention obnoxious. I don't know how much of a key player he'll be, but something about him irks me even more than the child who will from here on out be known as the bastard prince.
Lyanna/Ned/Jon's paternity: This, right now, really has my attention....I think, at least partially, because there are no real answers--as far as I've seen--regarding this question yet so I can still imagine. Mostly I think that Jon is Lyanna's (is that the correct name, I don't have my book in front of me)...but wouldn't someone have noticed her being pregnant? I'm pretty sure I missed something in my reading--and this is the other problem with knowing what's going to happen, it sometimes cause me, a speedy reader, to become "a person who might have taken some speed" reader. Was she missing at some point? Kidnapped? And for how long? Anyway...sometimes I think he's Lyanna's and sometimes I think she just made Ned promise to protect him because and sometimes I think that's what we're so supposed to think so he's probably really Ned's. it's a thing....I'm crazy, I know.
Man...there really is so much more, but I need to get some work done, so I'll leave with this:
In general, I have to say I love the characters and the relationships and all that, but I'm a little...I don't know, unsure. I almost always like the book better than the movie/TV show and that is, usually, because of the more in depth look I get into the characters psyche, but I'm not sure that's the case with this book....I mean I feel like, in general, I know exactly as much from reading the book (at least about the characters) as I did after I watched the show. Is that because the show did such a good job, maybe? Or maybe it's because this is a huge ass series and I'm just not far enough in yet...but it's something I'm mulling over right now.
Mostly.
WHERE I F-ED UP!
First, I watched the show, which was only a minor screw up because, pretty. You know? And amazing and perfect, and, oh, did I mention pretty?But now I know EVERY DAMN THING that happens in the first book--(Except one plot point, which I'll get back to later, that is really intriguing me)--and that's making it really hard to keep....uh, interested isn't the word, in-touch, maybe with the characters that I don't already love. (SEE: Arya, Robb, Jon, Dany, Jaime, Tyrion, and Ned)
Second, I got internet. Now, granted, this mistake was made long before I'd every heard of GoT, but it was, nonetheless, a big one. Because you know what happens on the internet? No? Well, I'll tell you: People post spoilers! (And this is where we revisit my need to skip to the last pages of the book when I've only just started reading it.) It's hard. Hard to get attached to characters when I know they are going to die, hard not to get attached to characters when I know they are going to die, hard not to want to jump ahead, hard not to want to hunt George RR Martin down and make him change things...Everything's just so damn hard.
Third, and this one I blame on Loke, I joined tumblr. This one is, in many ways, a continuation of #2. Do you have any idea how many pretty, pretty GoT things there are on that damn site. Spoilery GoT things...? It's impossible not to become obsessed. Impossible, I tell you. And so you look around and you read and you become even more spoiled and the more spoiled you get the more information you have to have...it's a vicious, vicious cycle.
So it all boils down to this. I'm spoiled and, like many, many spoiled children the world over, it has made me depressed and sent me in search of something that is unpredictable and unknown. Pity me.
MY REVIEW SO FAR:
Okay, now that I have all that stuff out of the way, I'm just going to give a mini review of the book so far: (I'm on page 489 and Dany is about to chow down on a heart).
So, I'll do this by character:
Arya, Jon, Robb, and all those that I love: I love them. You know that, I know that, and for the purposes of this review that is, mostly, uninteresting.
Sansa: I want to like her. I feel like I'm supposed to like her, like maybe I'll like her in the future (or at least I'll stop using the word like), but I just...can't. I know she's young and she was raised to be a lady and I don't hate her, I don't want her to die or suffer or anything, I just want her to love her family a little more. Care for them a little more. Think of them a little more. Is that so much to ask? (Though, in all honesty, I sometimes, sort of, have this issue with Jon too--don't know why.) It's just...I get it, she's young, she's supposed to be self-centered, but I fined it really hard to believe that these parents who raised their children, in general, to put family and honor and all this good stuff first would not have raise a daughter who cared a little more for her siblings...no matter how bothersome she finds them. So, yeah, that's an issue for me. One I'm fully aware that I had at this point in the TV show too, and then I came around to her. I'm just not sure if I came around to her because she deserved it or because she finally lashed out at that little bastard prince. In honesty, she could be a perfect bitch to everyone else and if she cared for her family a little more I might like her a little more---and I worry, because I'm not sure this will change in the future. I guess she'll get strong, but will she become a better sister and daughter? I don't know.
Tyrion: Again with the love...and the confusion, and much of the confusion, I hate to say, comes from the writing--or crazy character quirks that I just haven't pick up on yet. Here's the thing: In the beginning he seems to know or he at least has some idea that Jamie or Cersei were involved in Bran's accident--Hence the conversation about whose side his one during dinner with Jaime. Do we all remember that? So why is he so....pissy with Catelyn for thinking he had Bran killed and wanting to do something about it? I get it, no one likes being kidnapped and taken to a crazy lady and her super crazy kid, but there are times when he seems to have a innate hate of all things Stark because of this and I don't get it. I mean I don't want to him sing their praises or anything, but in everything else he's so much the realist, so why does he not see this as the natural reaction to thinking someone crippled and then tried to kill your son? WTF, Tyrion? WTF?
And things brings me to the previously mentioned plot point: the knife and who actually sent someone to kill Bran? I feel like it's being spelled out that it was Jaime--or Cersei, but I don't get why the conversation didn't take place in the book somewhere or why they would use a knife they knew Tyrion was supposed to have...and was Tyrion actually supposed to have that knife...? It's just weird to me and it wasn't really addressed in the show so I ignored it, but it seems like it's being addressed in the book and I am intrigued/confused by it. So maybe I'm making something out of nothing here--but it's an interesting like ball of yarn to unwind.
Theon: Can I just smack him upside the head? Again, not sure if I should like him--though I think not, but either way, I don't. He's obnoxious and blood thirsty and did I mention obnoxious. I don't know how much of a key player he'll be, but something about him irks me even more than the child who will from here on out be known as the bastard prince.
Lyanna/Ned/Jon's paternity: This, right now, really has my attention....I think, at least partially, because there are no real answers--as far as I've seen--regarding this question yet so I can still imagine. Mostly I think that Jon is Lyanna's (is that the correct name, I don't have my book in front of me)...but wouldn't someone have noticed her being pregnant? I'm pretty sure I missed something in my reading--and this is the other problem with knowing what's going to happen, it sometimes cause me, a speedy reader, to become "a person who might have taken some speed" reader. Was she missing at some point? Kidnapped? And for how long? Anyway...sometimes I think he's Lyanna's and sometimes I think she just made Ned promise to protect him because and sometimes I think that's what we're so supposed to think so he's probably really Ned's. it's a thing....I'm crazy, I know.
Man...there really is so much more, but I need to get some work done, so I'll leave with this:
In general, I have to say I love the characters and the relationships and all that, but I'm a little...I don't know, unsure. I almost always like the book better than the movie/TV show and that is, usually, because of the more in depth look I get into the characters psyche, but I'm not sure that's the case with this book....I mean I feel like, in general, I know exactly as much from reading the book (at least about the characters) as I did after I watched the show. Is that because the show did such a good job, maybe? Or maybe it's because this is a huge ass series and I'm just not far enough in yet...but it's something I'm mulling over right now.