Denise

"The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that's true, Lord Eddard, tell me...why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?"

This was a book that I had wanted to read for a while but had been too intimidated to read it. Just the amount of characters had me wary about it (and that was before I knew about all the point of view changes). I really thought that it would be hard to follow along and to sort out who all the characters were. Luckily for me that was not the case when I actually sat down to read this.

My mind does feel a bit exhausted now that I've finished this book. It wasn't the characters that really sucked the energy from my brain but that fact that you really have to be committed to this book in order to get to the really awesome parts of the book. There will be something that happens that might just blow your mind but then the next few chapters could pale a bit in comparison to what previously happened. I am going into reading this book not having watched the tv adaptation (even though I do know some of the things that will happen in the series) so all of this is really new to me.

I was not really prepared for all the point of view changes in this book. While I did like reading from the point of view of most of the characters, there was one that I couldn't stand, Sansa. I just wanted to jump into the story and smack her. I just kept dreading having to read another chapter from her point-of-view. I did think it was a bit weird that we never get to read anything from Joffrey or Cersei's point of view. While I didn't like those characters I would have liked to have gotten to jump inside their minds.

Altogether I did enjoy this book. I grew to love some characters more than others (like Jon, Bran, Ned, and surprisingly Khal Drogo) and there was some great action to keep me pretty excited from time to time. I can't say that I was all that excited about all the magical stuff with Dany towards the end but it does look like her future will be weirdly interesting. I do intend and look forward to continuing on with this series but I think I'll give my mind a bit of a rest before I jump into the next one.