Firstly, the books that started it all: A Song of Ice and Fire
I highly suggest you read the books! They are infinitely better than the tv show and so interesting!
There are seven in total but the last two haven't come out yet (actually right now they're 1500+ page manuscripts each) and I doubt they are going to come out any time soon because he spends like 5 years putting the final touches of each book in.
Anyway, the books are set in a fantasy land called Westeros and focuses on these different Houses and families in their attempts to conquer the Seven Kingdoms of the land and win the Iron Throne. That one-sentence summary of the series really does no justice to the extent of the multiple plots and how deep and crazy George Martin gets, but I can't really give anything away. The language and content is heavy, extremely heavy. But it's so worth it because it's so interesting, unique, imaginative and unorthodox.
I think the reason I love the books so much is because of what a reviewer from Time said about it (as part of the praise section at the beginning of A Feast for Crows):
"What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of a world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil."
I think that sums it up perfectly. There's no cliched bad guy and prophesised hero; there's just a whole lot of people doing different things because of the different circumstances they get thrust into. One second you could love character A and hate character B, but then the next second character A makes a decision and you dislike it and you start understanding and liking character B more.
George Martin is such a good writer because he is able to make you absolutely despise a character, only to later write from that character's viewpoint and make you understand and even love them like you never would have predicted.
And that, I reckon, is a sign of an amazing author.
Also, for those who have read the books, a cool thing is this combined reading order for books 4 and 5, since they both occur during the same time period, but each book focuses on different characters. I highly won't suggest it for first time readers though, because I like doing things the way author's designed them to be done but hey, that's just me.
Secondly, the TV Series: A Game of Thrones
When I first watched the show, I really hated it. It was just so terribly slow and confusing and skipped out on a lot of the books' details and stuff (obviously I didn't expect them to put in every single detail but some of the stuff that seem important were skipped out). I only really continued watching because I loved the third book and I really needed to see what it would look like on screen, so I swallowed my way through the second season (which I think is the worst) for it.
The third season was quite good. The fact that they split up the third book into two seasons made it a lot better as they could then include much more detail and a lot more important events in. They still changed a few details though and while they seem minor, I'm not sure if these details may affect the future seasons (after finishing the fifth book I searched up a lot of theories and some plausible ones would be impossible to carry through after the show's changes).
But anyway, the cast is amazing and suits the characters perfectly. I love the actors for Cersei, Joffrey, Sansa and Margaery; they are so perfect for their roles it's insane.
Oh and another difference the show did was the way the Iron Throne was portrayed.
In the show:
It's a normal-sized throne that's just got a really epic design to it.
But in the books, it's described something more like this (and George Martin states this is closer to what he imagines):
Which is just epic beyond all words. It's more imposing, dangerous and a much more powerful statement than the one in the show, so I love it. In the books, it's stated that many kings have cut themselves on the Iron Throne, especially Mad King Aerys, and it has even caused the deaths of several people. The only problem with making something like the one George Martin imagined meant that they needed a building the size of a cathedral to house it...
Thirdly, fan sites!
There are so many of them out there but I'll just mention a few. I found one ages ago that was really cool and it had a forum on all these theories and topics. It doesn't sound too different, but the reason I loved it was because you could put in your settings what book you recently just finished to ensure you wouldn't get any spoilers reading the forums! I thought that was so clever and considerate, but alas, I DIDN'T SAVE THE LINK AND NOW I CAN'T FIND THE WEBSITE AGAIN. I forgot what the site even looked like (but I think it was white although that's still very vague) and it was hard enough to find the settings place to put where you are up to in the series and I can't be bothered making an account for each forum site I encounter so I've given up and lost all hope but if someone finds it please let me know even though I've read the entire series already.
Anyway, there's another site that does chapter-by-chapter analyses of the novel, although I'm not entirely sure how far they've gone since they go quite in depth for each chapter.
There's this *SPOILER* Forum of Ice and Fire (lol at the names these people come up with), which has a lot of theories on the books, so don't look at the site yet until you've finished all the books or it may be spoiled for you!
Another site for theories has *SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ STORM OF SWORDS* this theory on who Jon Snow's Parents Are. I think this site is done up by a single guy, which is impressive and slightly sad at the same time. Right now, he has only answered questions for the first three books (as in he's finished with both parts of A Storm of Swords) so don't read it, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT THE HOME PAGE BECAUSE THE TITLES OF QUESTIONS HAVE SPOILERS IN THEM!!
Fourthly, the George R.R. Martin website.
They had an app for the series but it's not available in Australia or something! So much disappointment!
The website also shows all these cool Merchandises and Song of Ice and Fire related stuff, like Calendars, the History of Westeros, the Map of Westeros, a Cookbook and even Card Games and Board Games!
And speaking of board games...
My bro bought me the Game of Thrones board game! It's supposed to be my early birthday present.
I haven't yet played it but I begun reading the rules (oh my goodness gracious the rulebook is about 30 pages long) and it looks intense! I think I'm only about 1/3 of the way into the rules yikes! I probably won't play it until after semester ends though so I have plenty of time.
There's also all these cool novelty items, like (and I haven't bought any of these yet):
This extremely cool dragon ear cuff that can be bought here:
And these Ten Cool Game of Thrones Merchandises. I love items 1, 4, 8 and 10 (yikes at the $30,000 price)!
I love the House Sigil Shot Glasses, which can be found on the HBO Shop! Don't they look so cool!
Anyway, that's the end of my rant.
The main reason I waited so long to do this blog was because I wanted to wait until I finished my Song of Ice and Fire drawings, but that never happened.
Maybe one day...
