A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings is the second book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and is as good as the first. Again, I was reading much more of it than I expected - normally I read a chapter of my book each evening, but I found myself reading several, simply because I needed to find out what would happen next. It's gotten to the point where it is seriously cutting into my study time. I console myself with the thought that once I've read the four books that have been released so far, I'll settle back into my normal routine.

This book is even more complex than the first - the scattering of the Starks across the continent of Westeros doesn't get any better, and in fact gets worse - as the plot progresses it gets rarer and rarer to find the family that had basically never been apart actually getting to see each other at all. Horrible things keep happening to them, and to everyone else. The war gets deeper and nastier, and it gets harder and harder to see who are the good guys and who are the bad. It's getting easy to see why Martin is having such a hard time getting the later books in the series written; the plot is so thick with hundreds of characters running around causing trouble that is must be bloody tricky making it all fit together while only hinting at and not revealing the overarching plot.

Like the first, it's an amazing book. Weaker in places, stronger in places, but it keeps pushing the tragedy, the anguish, and the horror of a world at war. I'm glad that this time I've got the next book sitting ready beside my bed to start reading tonight, because this is a series that doesn't bear putting down.