Two or three years ago, I mowed through the six current books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire saga. That's a figurative embodied metaphor, of course, because I can mow my own lawn here at the house in thirty minutes and reading those amazing books took me the best part of a full year. It was like going to Westeros boot camp, and I was a lowly hedge knight for three hours every evening, eager to lend my sword to any liege lorad with mutton and mead.
It was exhilarating, and I looked forward to those reading sessions all throughout the day.
Martin's stories are told from multiple points of view, allowing the readers all kinds of insights into these lively, round characters. Even though I was reading at the same time that HBO was releasing new episodes of their televisual adaptation (also appointment viewing for us), it was such an enhancement to read those books while seeing the characters on the small screen.
Martin is a wordsmith, a master plotter (I thought we'd never see another writer that could build worlds as adeptly as Tolkien, but perhaps even the great master of the fantasy genre would be impressed with the depth and detail in these tomes...), and a perceptive student of the human condition. He really understands conflict (some of these books will make you wince and squirm and feel a flush of love and joy in a single sitting), and he writes with an active, engaging voice. His understanding of language is impressive, with so many antiquated terms and phrases peppering the writing with great ease.
I loved these books, and Fire & Blood is every bit their equal. In some ways, it exceeds them in its focus on familial history and the broader scope of governance and struggle in the Seven Kingdoms.
Told in the form of a maester's textbook, the writing is humorous, pointed, and fluid. The work covers long centuries of triumph, tragedy, and conquest before the Ice and Fire books. It's spicy, with lots of sex and romance (if you can call it that) subplots, and there are dozens of dragons in this book. The tale of the Greens and the Blacks, which forms the foundation for HBO's spinoff equally excellent House of the Dragon, is simultaneously heart-breaking and revolting, as these characters stoop to the very depths of treachery in their lust for the Iron Throne. The violence is not for the faint of heart, but it never feels gratuitous or indulgent. It merely serves the narrative arch that sitting atop the Iron Throne and ruling the Seven Kingdoms is Westeros's finest drug--a narcotic so powerful that it causes men, women, and children alike to cast aside any façade of human decency in its pursuit.
This is one of the best books I've read in the last year or so, and I most highly recommend it to those that love the venerable fantasy genre...
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