A Storm of Swords

I love it when a plan comes together... early on when starting into the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books, I planned on spacing the first three out somewhat evenly between seasons 3 and 4 of Game of Thrones. I figured three books was the optimal amount to read as it would likely give me knowledge of the first half of the fourth season; I could get the best of both worlds by being a reader who knows when some big plots twists are coming, and then I could go back to being completely unaware how the season would end. And here I am near the end of January with book 3, A Storm of Swords, completed. And it was awesome. Most of the Back-Blog members are already aware of the huge events of Game of Thrones' third season- Jamie's redemption arc, Daenerys' attempts to free the slaves in Essos, and of course the brutal red wedding. But this only takes up about 60% of the book, and there are a ton of huge twists to come; if anything, there's far more action in the rest of the book than what we've seen already on tv. My only complaint is that for several spoiler-y reasons, the red wedding didn't feel nearly as bad this time around (and not just because I knew it was coming this time). Still though, I had heard that A Storm of Swords was the best book in the series so far, and it lived up to the hype. Now I wait a few months for season 4, then at some point this summer I'll return for the widely-derided fourth book, A Feast for Crows. Seriously though, read the books. It's not that they're better than the show, but the two forms of media just complement eachother perfectly.