Book recommendation for August 2025: “A Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin
The first instalment in George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, inspired by the Wars of the Roses, it’s gritty and violent and driven by human greed and vanity, with tumultuous politics, backstabbing betrayals, and unexpected deaths. What more could you want?
What’s it about: It’s the story of two great Houses—the noble and loyal Starks, and the powerful and scheming Lannisters, as well as a deposed Princess looking to get her Throne back. It’s set in the medieval inspired Westeros, with hints of magic, heroic knights and lots of politics. King Robert, the best friend of Eddard “Ned” Stark travels to the North and appoints Ned his Hand (his number two, basically), but things go awry when Ned discovers that the heirs to the Throne are not actually Robert’s children, they are the children of the incestuous relationship between his wife, Cersei Lannister and her twin brother, Jamie. The 20-year peace is shattered and Westeros descends into war with every great House vying for more power and influence.
Why I love it: A Game of Thrones was the first really gritty fantasy book I read, which made no attempt to gloss over the violence committed in the periods that inspired traditional fantasy settings. It also delved into the political scheming and backstabbings of noble society, and really presents the reader with a cast of very flawed, but very human, characters, with no “truly good” or “truly bad” characters (well, okay, maybe a few characters are perhaps purely evil, such as the 8 foot tall psychopath known as the Mountain). It is a brutal warts and all type approach to fantasy that I found refreshingly different, especially when you realise that nobody is safe from being killed off in this book; it really ups the tension and stakes. Also, the amount of sub-plots and foreshadowing of later events is ridiculous and really quite inspiring for a writer to take notes from.
Beyond the book: I started reading this on my commute to work and was all of a sudden glad to hit traffic jams (I read it on the bus, I wasn’t driving!). I loved it from the prologue, where a member of the Night’s Watch encounters a mysterious ice wight, though I must admit I nearly chucked it in shock after the double whammy toward the end of SPOILER ALERT a certain proud Northerner loses his head and a Genghis Khan-alike dies with a whimper. Luckily for me, I stuck with it and I’m now a huge fan of the series. I introduced it to my wife and, just before we both got to the fifth book, “A Dance with Dragons”, we were backpacking around New Zealand and found a hardback copy in a second hand bookshop for $12 NZD in a lovely town called Kaikoura. I obviously bought it—it seemed like Fate wanted us to get it—and over the next few weeks we swapped it between us, reading a few chapters at a time each, as we travelled across the south island of New Zealand and Fiji. It’s a chunky book but it was definitely worth carrying the extra weight. And now, when I think of the ASOIAF series, I remember being curled up before a log fire, skint and dirty and tired, but having the time of my life with my best friend (and now wife) and the company of a great book.
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