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A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book TwoTHE BOOK BEHIND THE SECOND SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO. George R. R. Martin, a writer of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination, has created a landmark of fantasy fiction. In his widely acclaimed A Game of Thrones, he introduced us to an extraordinary world of wonder, intrigue, and adventure. Now, in the eagerly awaited second volume in this epic saga, he once again proves himself a master myth maker, setting a
THE BOOK BEHIND THE SECOND SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO.George R. R. Martin, a writer of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination, has created a landmark of fantasy fiction. In his widely acclaimed A Game of Thrones, he introduced us to an extraordinary world of wonder, intrigue, and adventure. Now, in the eagerly awaited second volume in this epic saga, he once again proves himself a master myth-maker, setting a standard against which all other fantasy novels will be measured for years to come. Time is out of joint. The summer of peace and plenty, ten years long, is drawing to a close, and the harsh, chill winter approaches like an angry beast. Two great leaders--Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon--who held sway over an age of enforced peace are dead . . . victims of royal treachery. Now, from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns, as pretenders to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms prepare to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war. As a prophecy of doom cuts across the sky--a comet the color of blood and flame--six factions struggle for control of a divided land. Eddard's son Robb has declared himself King in the North. In the south, Joffrey, the heir apparent, rules in name only, victim of the scheming courtiers who teem over King's Landing. Robert's two brothers each seek their own dominion, while a disfavored house turns once more to conquest. And a continent away, an exiled queen, the Mother of Dragons, risks everything to lead her precious brood across a hard hot desert to win back the crown that is rightfully hers. A Clash of Kings transports us into a magnificent, forgotten land of revelry and revenge, wizardry and warfare. It is a tale in which maidens cavort with madmen, brother plots against brother, and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, the price of glory may be measured in blood. And the spoils of victory may just go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel . . . and the coldest hearts. For when rulers clash, all of the land feels the tremors. Audacious, inventive, brilliantly imagined, A Clash of Kings is a novel of dazzling beauty and boundless enchantment--a tale of pure excitement you will never forget.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 02/02/1999
ISBN: 9780553108033
Pages: 768
Weight: 2.55lbs
Size: 9.70h x 6.40w x 1.70d
Award: Locus Awards - Winner
Award: Nebula Awards - Nominee
Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/1998 pg. 58
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/1998 pg. 1701
Publishers Weekly 12/21/1998 pg. 59
Booklist 01/01/1999 pg. 842
Library Journal 01/01/1999 pg. 165
Library Journal 11/01/1998
Library Journal 01/01/1999
Entertainment Weekly 07/29/2011 pg. 46
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 146645 / Clash of Kings
Reading Level: 5.5 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 49
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4.8 ★★★★★
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★★★★★ 5
Quick delivery, Naturally a great and easy gift.
Denomination: 0, Design Name: You're the best. (Animated)
Always a great way to say thank you.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2026
★★★★★ 5
A Dyadic Review: Baffling, Brilliant
Difficult. Rewarding.
Serious. Hilarious.
Wise. Faux-wise.
Scholarly. Mock-scholarly.
Observant. Absurdly, obsessively observant.
Sharp characterizations. Ridiculous characters.
Devout. Bawdy.
Endearing. Frustrating.
Genius. Barking mad.
Narratively incoherent. Stream-of-consciousness associative.
Consistently provincial. Profoundly universal.
Mired in the 18th century. Harbinger of 20th century literary Modernism.
Baffling. Brilliant
Not for every taste. For my taste.
And while I'm at it, let me give a shout-out for the out-of-print Norton critical edition, which provides many helps, essay avenues of understanding, and a clever chapter summary/table of contents. For so many years - since reading Moby Dick in grad school with the help of a Norton critical - this publication line has been my go-to for great texts: useful annotations, contemporary reviews, later scholarly articles, and more.
And also let me give a shout-out to Anton Lesser, who narrated the complete novel for Naxos. I have never, ever experienced an audiobook as masterfully produced and narrated as Naxos' Tristram Shandy. No, it is simply not a book one can listen to and fully comprehend as heard. But one might read while listening, or listen while reading, with - if you have the riight software - the narration sped up closer to one's own reading speed, and experience the full majesty of Lesser's absolute preparation, with Latin, Greek, French, and German - as well as regional English - beautifully and humorously intoned, character voices carefully differentiated, tone and mood captured, etc. Or, as I do, go for a walk and listen as you walk, and afterward slip into a comfy chair, crack the novel open, and continue from where you left off, or backtrack if necessary to sort out the characters. In any event, and particularly for devotees of audio books, do find Anton Lesser's note-perfect reading, a veritable radio serial, perhaps the last book you'd expect anyone to attempt single-handedly, with My Father, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Doctor Slop, Widow Wadman, and all the rest of the supporting characters beautifully, consistently interpreted. Lesser is, in a galaxy of fine narrators, the greatest I've heard: an absolutely peerless voice actor in a most demanding work.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016
★★★★★ 5
Brilliant stream of consciousness style, *extremely* humorous
"The Life and Opinions..." is perhaps impossible to really classify. It purports to be a biography of the fictional Tristram Shandy, but I don't think you can call something a biography when it only covers a year or so of the subject's life! I would say that more than half of the novel actually falls into the "Opinions" referred to in the title. The rest consists of short stories on Tristram's father, uncle, and a couple other minor characters.
I have never in my life read so many digressions from the topic at hand, most of which were utterly irrelevant but the charm of it is that Sterne *knows* they're irrelevant, but mockingly expresses his license of authorship in forcing the reader to go off on these sidetracks. His attitude is: "If you can't wait a chapter or two to get back to the story, well, go take a flying leap, I'm the author." Sometimes the digressions are exasperating. Very unlike Victor Hugo's signature habit of digressing, say when a certain main character in Notre Dame decides to enter the Paris sewers, Hugo takes thirty or more pages to give a history of the design and construction of the Paris sewer system. At least Hugo's digressions have *something* to do with the story.
Well, maybe that's the problem. There isn't a main story in this novel. It's not a storybook. There are many short stories nested within the main framework, but there is no real protagonist or overarching theme of any sort. Indeed, the end comes abruptly and there is absolutely no resolution of any conflict.
It's not trying to teach anything, really.
So what is it? I'm not sure. More a comedy than anything else. Right up there with Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" in terms of humor, but lacking the story. Maybe funnier than Dickens and just as clever. I was rolling in the aisles so many times I lost count.
I read the Penguin edition, edited by Melvyn & Joan New. The back cover does a better job than I could ever do in providing a sense of what you're getting into when you pick this one up:
"No one description will fit this strange, eccentric, endlessly complex masterpiece. It is a fiction about fiction-writing in which the invented world is as much infused with wit and genius as the theme of inventing it. It is a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction, and a wry demonstration of its limitations."
It's a large work, it will take a while to work through. It's worth it. There are passages I want to go back to and make copies of to tape to the walls, they're that brilliant.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2005
★★★★★ 3
Interesting read, but takes some getting used to
I heard about this book on a blog, and figured I'd check it out. It's the rambling tale of a man determined to give you every last detail of everything that might be important to the narrative of his life. Unfortunately, he goes on tangets so often that he doesn't even get to his birth for several chapters, let alone the story of the rest of his life. Along the way, you're introduced to lots of random characters who are (at best) loosely related to the protagonist, but as often as not these tangents are fairly amusing.
The writing is pretty dense, and this along with the tangents had me putting the book down fairly often. It's probably ideal for a commuting book, but I never wanted to just sit down and blitz through big chunks of it.
Overall it's a very different kind of experience than a novel reader typically gets. It's worth a read for a change of pace, but I can't say it's a life-altering read.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2013
★★★★★ 4
Mixed Bag
Everyone should know, first off, that the Dover thrift edition is NOT a graphic adaptation. For some reason, Amazon has attached editorial reviews from the hardcover edition of the graphic novel version to this page.
Now, the book itself offers a range of experiences from delightfully hilarious to annoyingly tedious. Lots of the "funny" parts depend on an understanding of 18th-century social mores. I'm sure some of it went over my head but I'm enough of a nerd to have enjoyed most of the drollery. I think...
The story is whimsical, told all out of order by a scatterbrained, easily-distracted narrator. Tristram Shandy himself is hardly in the novel at all; aside from narrating it, he only appears momentarily as a newborn infant and then as a boy about 6 years old - and his role in both incidents seems peripheral to the carryings-on of the other characters. Each turn in the story reminds the author of something else, and he turns aside to tell stories inside of stories, each of which are necessary to give the reader some vital "background information" .. with the result that the main story hardly moves forward at all. It takes nearly 200 pages just for Tristram to be born! and even then the reader isn't quite sure it has happened since the conversations and minute actions of the other characters are magnified to such an importance that the narrator's own birth is hardly observed. For the most part this rambling comes across as "quirky and delightful" and the novel flows along quite pleasingly in spite (or perhaps because) of it. The digressions add layers to the story.
Except when they don't. The "chapter upon noses" which is a translation of a fictitious(?) Latin work by the great Slwakenbergius, has little bearing on the story. Like most of the book, it builds up to a climax and then stops short of resolution, leaving you to wonder what was the point. It leads nowhere, but at least it was interesting. The same cannot be said of Book VII, which is a sort of travel diary of Tristram (in the novel's "present" time) touring France by post-chaise. Although this is the only significant appearance of Tristram himself as a character in the book, it has absolutely nothing to do with the story/stories he was telling, and it is neither very interesting nor very funny. It serves as nothing but a pointless interruption, delaying the reader for 50 pages before getting to the part we were waiting for: Toby's courtship of the widow Wadman.
This last section goes along nicely for a while, and then the book stops. It doesn't end; it just stops right in the middle of a conversation, with the courtship unresolved and most of the reader's questions unanswered. This is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the entire novel, but I have to admit it's frustrating. I had trouble deciding whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars but I think it entertained me more than it exasperated me, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt ... and round up from 3.5. It's worth reading once, just for the experience - there's no other book quite like it - and the price of the Dover Thrift Edition can't be beat.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2010