I have come to love reading again due to the wonderful series of books called “A Song of Ice and Fire” or as it is more commonly referred, the “Game of Thrones” books. I have never watched the TV show and my only knowledge of it is the passing comments of people online and the fact they left a Starbucks cup on the table recently.

That being said, I have heard criticisms of the show in broad terms and I think that I would come to agree with them as applies to the book as well. Mainly, the fact that it is always going “H.A.M.”.

I wouldn’t mind if the story was always building to battle. I wouldn’t mind if political intrigue was happening at the same time. The reason I say it feels exhausting is that it feels like both elements are going 110% at the same time. I have a hard time keeping up with the status of the large scale battles as I wrap my mind around the current personal stories of the characters. I have a hard time caring about certain side stories because they don’t feel as important to the main plot so I think they aren’t going to be something I will become invested in because I’m so invested in the main goal of the war.

I am not a professional critic by any means. I am a lower class consumer of works made by people that I cannot dream of out-writing or creating. That being said, I think the term that a critic would use is “pacing”. The “pacing” is the element of the storytelling I have a problem with. I would assume when writing, you have to give enough action to keep the reader flipping the pages without getting bored but also enough world building to make the reader better understand why any of this matters and why the stakes are so high. Going too much towards action could be considered “too fast” in the pacing measurement and doing too much world building without any thing of interest happening could be considered “too slow”. That being established, I would say that I feel like the pacing is inconsistent and doesn’t always land in the happy medium. The start of each book seems too slow and the end is too fast. I welcomed the slow build of the first book but now as I am getting past the halfway mark of the third, I am feeling the speed jump from one extreme to the other.

I could be totally off base because I haven’t read for fun in a very long time and I am just now getting my opinions formed without much recent experience for storytelling pacing but this is where I stand at the moment.