![]() ![]() There is an extraordinary battle scene which occurs during the last 200 hundred pages that is detailed, intense and mind-boggling in scope and creativity. Meanwhile, major armies are massing against King's Landing from all points on the map, and from various sources, all with their own interests at stake. King Balon Greyjoy, of the Iron Islands, has marshaled his forces in his own play for power. Deadly political intrigue is the name of the game at court. At one point he comments that he is all that stands between the family and the population, who despise him, and chaos. Tyrion, called the Imp, tries to check his nephew's arrogance and cruelty and his sister's power plays. His evil, manipulative mother Cersei and his uncle, Tyrion, the dwarf, dominate the sadistic young king and rule through him. The House of Lannister attempts to hold on to their power through young heir apparent, Jeoffry Lannister Baratheon, the child of incest, who rules like a tyrant from King's Landing. Robb Stark of Winterfell has been proclaimed King in the North and battles, along with his liegemen and their armies, against the Lannisters, while dead King Robert's brothers, Stannis and Renly Baratheon, fight each other for crown and throne in the South. King Robert Baratheon, and Lord Eddard Stark, enforcers of thirteen years of peace, have been murdered - victims of political treachery in the game of thrones. In just a short period, war has ravaged the land. An ominous blood red comet, thought by some to be an omen of evil, by others a portent of good, blazes across the sky. The ten year-long summer of peace has come to an end, and the darkness of a harsh, frigid winter is about to descend on the now splintered Seven Kingdoms. As with the first book, there is an Appendix at the back of the novel with the names of all the royal houses, their kings, queens, knights, histories, and mottos. ![]() This riveting, multi-layered epic saga reads, in part, like superb historical fiction, (the novel is based more on history than on legend or myth), and in part like dark fantasy, with a huge cast of vivid, well developed human characters - and a few of the supernatural kind also. The story deepens and becomes more complex as, (at least), four claimants battle for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms and unimaginable darkness and disaster threaten from the North. The novel picks up seamlessly where "A Game of Thrones," left off. Martin's remarkable "Song of Fire and Ice" series. "A Clash of Kings" is the second book in George R.R. ![]()
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