A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings is the sequel to A Game of Thrones and also serves as the basis for the second season of the HBO show based on the books. I've raved about both the first season and the first novel recently on this blog, but the second season of the TV show just felt like it came up a tiny bit short of the first season's greatness. As such, I was worried that this second book, even longer than the first, would also be slightly less engrossing and exciting than the first. Fortunately, this wasn't the case. While the first season of the HBO show played out about as faithfully as one could expect of a ten-hour page-to-screen adaptation, the second season, I can now confirm, diverged just a little bit from the book's narrative. Fortunately (for the book - not so much for the TV show), it seems like just about every place in which the show differed from its source material was a place where it was worse off for doing so. In other words, every complaint I had about the second season of the show - and truly, there weren't many at all - ended up being specific to the show and not to George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones follow-up itself. I'll share no specifics for two reasons. One, in a book so full of characters and plots, no brief overview can do any part of the story any justice. Two, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone reading this, because, seriously, everyone reading this post right now should get into this series. The books, the show, preferably both. Take it for a spin and it won't disappoint. Now, after finishing the first two books in 25 days, you better believe I'm jumping headfirst into the third one, A Storm of Swords. But don't expect a post here any time soon. For one thing, the third book is long as hell. It's usually split into two separately sold paperback books because it's well over a thousand pages long. I think, though I won't verify it today, that it'll be the second-longest book I've ever read, bested in length only by Les Misérables. And making it far longer will be the fact that I haven't yet seen the TV adaptation for this third book. In these first two, I rarely had to go back and re-read a paragraph, worried that I'd missed something, because I was already familiar with the characters and the story. The third book will be an entirely new story for me, so in the interest of full comprehension I may find myself slowing the pace a bit. At any rate, this was another excellent effort from Martin, whose series I've come to thoroughly enjoy so far. What else is there to want?