A Review of A Song of Ice and Fire: Fantasy for the Fantasy Adverse

By now you’ve probably heard of a little show called Game of Thrones, and when I say “little” I mean massively popular. The show has seized the imaginations of million of viewers and made sword-wielding, hard fantasy not only hip but accessible to a mainstream audience. But Game of Thrones isn’t confined to the screen; the series began its life on the page in the form of A Song of Ice and Fire, a planned seven-part series of novels written by George R.R. Martin. The books aren’t new. Martin began publishing them in 1996 with Game of Thrones. The fifth installment, A Dance with Dragons, just came out last year. Within the literary and fantasy communities, the books have been receiving accolades for years, but it wasn’t until the HBO series appeared that Martin’s sprawling world of Westeros became a certified phenomenon. Many fans of the show, myself included, spent the hiatus between seasons devouring the existing canon and driving up sales of the books in the process. Let me be clear: I am not a fan of hard fantasy. [...]