Canción de hielo y fuego

The past few weeks have been extremely difficult for me, I didn’t have the mind to read or watch anything on my list (that by the way, keeps getting bigger and bigger…). So, I was speaking with a friend, and it turned out that he was a huge nerd of George R. R. Martin, same as me. We met through fantastic literature but for some reason we never discussed it and he gave me the idea to re-read A Song of Ice and Fire. And I decided to go down the rabbit hole. Keep this friend of mine in mind (we’ll call him Pippin) as he will appear in future reviews.

So, I started reading Game of Thrones. ¡Oh boy! This is the best medicine for reader’s block in the world. These books are so f… well written… I read the book in a couple of days. Special mention to the Spanish translator (Cristina Macía). Shit I drank every word! And the characters? Nowadays it’s impossible to find characters so well created. And here, I want to talk about one of my favorites, from a writer’s point of view: Sansa. Yes, she might be one of the most unpopular characters from the saga, but one thing that is not up for discussion is how well written she is. You might not like her part in the story (although I disagree here), but she is one of the best characters created by George R.R. Martin. Very few authors (none that I could find) have ever written about a 12-year-old girl with more accuracy.

I read the book for the first time in 2011, when the tv series aired and of course hated Sansa. I was young and foolish myself, such as Sansa was and uggg… All she could think of was how handsome Joffrey was, beautiful clothes, parties, etc.… I think that I saw myself in her and didn’t like it. I thought of myself as a different special girl. But in the end, we were the same. Pretty boys took most of my thoughts (girls, too). Not dresses but special outfits that marked my difference with the rest. And even though I positioned myself as the fighter, the girl that is not scared to get her hands dirty, I always wanted to look pretty and even sexy. Honey, admit it. All of us were that kind of girl during our teens, independently of the object of our admiration or our aesthetics.
But Arya… BS! Arya was nine when the story began. And I would love to see how she would have behaved if she wasn’t able to pose as a boy. Let’s not forget that she has helpers during most of her road trip, but I’m jumping ahead, I want to speak only about Game of Thrones.

I have studied some narrative and some creative writing, so I’m able to “dissect” the text in a more technical way. It is a long book but every word, every scene is placed with the precision of a neurosurgeon. If you haven't read George R.R. Martin’s short fiction works you should. They are even better. There are lots of anticipations of what’s to come during the whole book. Dreams, animal symbolisms (the mythical scene of the direwolf killed by a stag’s antler). There are lots of mentions to the fire and the dragons that are about to be reborn. All of these mixed with characters' thoughts about the world and about humanity that can be applied to our society.