[Book Review] A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin 

Rating: 4/5

A Game of Thrones Review

A Clash of Kings Goodreads Review (Spoilers Blanked Out)

“The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.”

A little advice: Don’t start this series unless you are 100% committed to seeing it through until the end. If you don’t want too commit to the endless number of pages and povs then just watch the show, I’ve heard its quite good.

I read the first 650/80 pages of this in physical form but then changed to the audio book in order to finish it faster. I’ll admit that while the audiobook copy is a faster way to get through the book but although I was still really invested in the story and plot I did find myself missing some of the details. The narrator for this audio series on audible is Roy Dotrice and here’s the thing, some of his accents were ridiculous and made it increasingly difficult to understand what he was saying and he wasn’t saying some of the character’s names correctly. He is on book two of the series – that’s just not good enough.

I would rather read this series physically instead of listening to it but I really want to get up to date with it this year and I don’t know if I’ll have the time.

The books in this series are all really hard to review. There are soo many characters, each with their own subplot and there are soo many POVs. Also, these books are all roughly 800-1000 pages long – that’s a lot of words.

I’m just going to break this down into character discussions because that’s way easier.

Sansa

When I read AGOT I thought Sansa was the most annoying person in the world but over time I’ve come to realise that she’s actually one of the toughest characters in the series. Sansa is a teenager, she only gets her first period in this book, that’s how young she is! She’s being held against her will, is being forced to marry the boy king, Joffrey – the man who ordered the death of her father and she doesn’t know what’s happening in the rest of the world or where her family is.

Thankfully Sansa doesn’t have to marry Joffrey anymore but I absolutely died when it was pointed out that he could still rape her at any time.

Jon

❤

Along with the majority of people that read or watch Game of Thrones I am a big fan of Jon Snow and honestly I don’t even know why, I just do. He doesn’t really do that much in this novel but I’m sure he will do a bit more than walk around in the snow for 900 pages in the next book.

Tyrion

Tyrion, as per usual one the comedy relief in the book. He got a bit more of a role while also growing as a character which was nice to see.

Bran

Bran didn’t do too much during the book but I feel like this was sort of a filler book for a lot of characters who will have bigger roles as the series progresses.

Arya

As much as I enjoy Arya’s pov if you asked me to tell you what she did in this book this is what I’d say:

• Ran around with some men – pretended to be a boy
• Decided that was lame and became a servant – still a boy
• Beat up a tree with her sword and talked about being a cat? – Still a boy
• Not much tbh

Honourable mentions

Ghost

Perfect, as always. But, it nearly killed me when he got hurt and Jon had to hold him down so they could heal his wounds.

Although nothing happened until 80-85% of the way in – (that’s a lot of pages where nothing much happened) I did still really enjoy this instalment. Hopefully I can get to the A Storm of Swords next month.