Why You Should Never Judge A Book By It's Overhyped Show: A Game of Thrones Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Reviewed by Beau Selby, Carrots With Knives

If you’ve seen the show but never read the book, or if you skipped it because you thought it was all blood, brooding, and bad wigs, I’m here to tell you something important: you’ve got it all wrong. A Game of Thrones isn’t what the show made you think it is. The book that started it all is sharper, smarter, and infinitely more human. The television adaptation might have made the story famous, but the novel makes it real.

Let me just start by saying this: if you think A Game of Thrones is just political scheming and misery porn, congratulations, you’ve been watching too much HBO (a sentence I never thought I'd write). The book isn’t grim for grim’s sake. It’s sharp, deliberate, and, dare I say it, even kind of classy about its particular brand of brutality. George R.R. Martin may have birthed one of the bloodiest franchises in fantasy, but on the page he’s more a surgeon and less a butcher. He cuts deep, but he knows when, where, and why he’s cutting.

The pacing? Utter perfection. Every chapter feels like it’s holding its breath until it absolutely must exhale, and when it finally does, good luck putting it down. Martin weaves tension he majored in it at Oxford... and minored in cruel irony.

But where he truly ascends the Iron Throne of my literary heart is in his characters and dialogue. Nobody, and I mean nobody, writes people like George. They don’t speak like characters; they talk like people who could ruin your life over dinner only to then ask if you’re enjoying the soup (that probably has body parts in it). Tyrion’s wit cuts cleaner than any sword in Westeros. Catelyn bleeds conviction (even if she is CONSTANTLY wrong about everything). Ned’s honor feels heavy enough to bend gravity (and you'll want to beat him over the head for it). Even the kids talk like they’ve seen too much (because, well, they have) you will love them all the more for it..

And here’s the shocker: the book is less gratuitous than the show. I didn’t expect that. Not at all. But where HBO sometimes winks too hard at its own darkness, Martin’s prose just lives there. When he shows brutality, it’s not spectacle, it’s consequence. When a character dies, he makes us FEEL it, makes it linger, not just notice it and forget it a chapter later. Even when the show mirrors the text exactly, the written word hits differently. It’s purposeful. It’s earned. It’s necessary.

So yes, this is high fantasy. I don’t care what the gatekeepers say. There are dragons, direwolves, royal bastards, magical assassins, undead horrors, and enough ancient prophecy to make Tolkien raise an eyebrow at how lived in the world feels after only a few pages. If that’s not high fantasy, then I’ve been shelving my books wrong. And I'll admit that's a possibility because I am actually about to reshelf all of our 1,100+ books into an entirely different order... but that's likely due more to ADHD than any fault on my own part, I'm sure.

If you love intricate worlds, dialogue that slices like political gossip in a castle corridor, and characters so real you’ll mourn them like friends (and you will mourn them), then A Game of Thrones isn’t just a must-read. It’s a literary feast.

Bring your appetite. And maybe a few tissues. And if you’re still convinced you “get it” because you’ve seen the show, trust me, reading the book is like switching from Starbucks to literally anywhere else. You’ll never go back. You're welcome. Beau out.