Your favorite fantasy novel is shit.

"Martin amply fulfills the first volume's promise and continues what seems destined to be one of the the best fantasy series ever written."

-The Denver Post

...Really?

Game of Thrones is so bloated with weak-shit writing it can't even lift itself off its fat ass to chase you as it cries, "Why do I have to prove anything, these things are true because I say they're true! Why can't you just believe me?!"

I picked up the thing because I have no fantasy cred by ignoring it, and seriously? I wish I had bought rather than borrowed so I could stab it until it bleeds red ink.

 Read this:

"Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do, name one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm's End, surely."

The king frowned and said nothing. 

Ned watched him. "That is, unless you have already promised the honor to another."

Robert was startled. Just as quickly, the look became annoyance. "What if I have?"

"It's Jaime Lannister, is it not?"

Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. "Yes," he said at last.

"Kingslayer." Ned rode on dangerous ground now, he knew. "An able and courageous man, no doubt," he said, "but his father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West." 

"I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field," the king said. "At the moment, Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be succeeding anytime soon. Don't vex me about this, Ned, the stone has been set."

"Your Grace, may I speak frankly?"

"I seem unable to stop you." 

Now read this:

Ned was ready for that. "Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do, name one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm's End, surely."

He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He looked uncomfortable.

"That is," Ned finished quietly, watching, "unless you have already promised the honor to another."

For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as quickly, the look became annoyance. "What if I have?"

"It's Jaime Lannister, is it not?"

Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. "Yes," he said at last. A single hard word to end the matter.

"Kingslayer," Ned said. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew. "An able and courageous man, no doubt," he said carefully, "but his father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West." He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of Lannisters.

"I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field," the king said stubbornly. "At the moment, Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be succeeding anytime soon. Don't vex me about this, Ned, the stone has been set."

"Your Grace, may I speak frankly?"

"I seem unable to stop you," Robert grumbled.

This is how it appears in the book. 

These dialogue tags aren't the most offensive I've seen, I just wanted something quick. When you have your characters muttering, promising, admitting, warning, growling, saying cheerfully, adding morosely, ad. nauseum, you destroy the purpose of dialogue. Your readers don't even need to read what the characters say anymore because you're telling them exactly what you want to happen with these micro-transactions. 

Good dialogue should flow according to the pacing of the speakers transaction. You don't trip it up by adding how each speaker feels about every single damn thing they're saying; it makes your characters sound fucking manic.  Readers aren't stupid. They can guess how a big brute swinging a sword over his head is saying, "I will fucking murder you!" without the addition, "he roared furiously."

Everything written has to be proven by the story, down to the individual word, or you weaken the truth of your narrative voice. That gives your more discerning readers the space to cop an attitude with the narrator. Cause who the fuck are you to just say shit because you want it to be true? 

For a moment, Robert had the grace to look startled.

Why? He expected Ned would guess correctly? He's faking it to preserve his grace? This is a man who tells Ned he'll have his head on a pike if he calls him "Your Grace" one more time. The characterization of the king is a warrior gone to seed, a hedonistic man with a roaring temper and a booming laugh who misses the good old days like every other stupid, fat fantasy king. He isn't presented as some one who sees a point in the subtlety of feigning emotions, much less someone with the intelligence to catch himself and do so. So we're left with the narration changing a character's presentation because it likes how a sentence sounds. A similar problem happens here:

"Yes," he said at last. A single hard word to end the matter.

But Ned keeps harping about it, so it's not ended, is it? You don't get to say "and then the king shut his shit doooooooown," if in the next line Ned opens a serious, 'dangerous' discourse about it.

"Kingslayer," said Ned. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew.

What rumors are true, that he's a king slayer, or that Robert's putting up Jaime? And why is it dangerous to talk about this? Wouldn't it show so much more tension if Ned brought this up and the buddy-buddy king suddenly whips around and tells him to shut his fucking mouth? But no, in the line after, Robert speaks 'stubbornly', like a three year old girl might do when you tell her to eat her peas. So... what's the danger? He might pout at Ned?

 It wasn't established before this scene that Robert promising Jaime the position was a taboo subject, and the king doesn't respond as if it were either. If it were dangerous, the readers would feel it. They'd go, oh shit Ned, you fucked up, and feel an awfulness in the pit of their stomach, and they wouldn't put the book down until they figured out why the hell the king is just letting the Lannisters take over. 

Who am I kidding, people will read Twilight fan fiction rip-offs about shitty people emailing each other and having horribly misrepresented BDSM sex, and call it a page turner.

Anyway, Ned continues his thought:

 "An able and courageous man, no doubt," he said carefully, "but his father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West." He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of Lannisters.

Um, no he didn't. He just said that Jaime Lannister and his father would hold the east and the west. If you know there is also a north and south, and you know half of four is two, then you know the Lannister family would monopolize half of the directions there are. But yet again, some people think 50 Shades is legitimate writing, so maybe I shouldn't make assumptions about the intelligence of readers.

So let's sum up this exercise. 

The point of this scene is pretty damn simple: Ned wants Robert to appoint a Warden of the East, and suggests some reasonable candidates. Robert already promised the position to Jaime Lannister, whose family already holds the West, and is acting hella shady about it. This causes Ned concern. 

So why does the scene need the pace of a soap opera? It's exhausting to read. There's so much fluff around each line of dialogue and unnecessary narrative chatter that you have no idea which words are the ones you're supposed to pay attention to. Hint: It's the dialogue. If it's not good enough to stand on its own without the padding, your writing is weak.

Also, point of view disagreements run rampant through the book. Each chapter is titled with a character's name, which is annoying enough because there's no numbers or alternate titles to figure out where the fuck you are in the story. The third person narrative is supposed to be limited to the title character, but it occasionally slips and writes something as another character, or describes the character's actions as they would appear to them personally. For example:

Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions, with an odd cast to his face that looked uncomfortably like dismay...

...No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the Night's Watch was made up of men like his uncle. If so, Yoren and his companions were a rude awakening. 

Why is Tyrion uncomfortable that Jon Snow is disappointed in the caliber of people in the Night's Watch? I figure the narration is trying to say that Jon looks uncomfortable and dismayed, maybe even uncomfortable because he's trying to hide that dismay. So... why not say that? 

Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions. The boy sat stiffly and drew his mouth tight, but he could not hide the sinking falter in his eyes.

Or if you're not into that:

Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions with discomfort and dismay.

I know there's only so much this writing is shit you care to listen to if you're not fussy about the objective qualities of writing and you find this work entertaining, which is fine. I jam out to Riff Raff sometimes and I don't feel bad. So now I'll attack the content. 

High fantasy purists might have a problem with what I'm going to say, but they have the same bullshit response to "Why can't there be people who aren't white in fantasy," so fuckem. Why do women have to be treated like such shit? Even if the world's context is based on historical medieval social structure, why do the men of the book need to disparage women? Why does the book need sexist cracks and depictions of horrific brutality towards women? What about the realistic implementation of historical misogyny is important in a world with fucking magic? I've read enough fantasy novels and played enough video games to know it doesn't throw the audience into fits of disbelief if the women in the world have agency.

Dude, chill out, it's his book, he can write it how he wants it.

Sure, but why? Why does he want to write it like that? Why did he choose to create a world where women are shit all over? It may not have been a conscious choice, but it was still a decision. What you choose to do and not to do reflects on your character, your world view, and the society you live in. People can only write about what they know. So why?

I don't know shit about George R.R. Martin. He might be really nice, and he probably finds real-life misogyny abhorrent. But writing has to speak for itself, and this book reads like some weak dude's fantasy fulfillment of masculinity. I don't want to think about some sweaty guy jerking it as he lovingly describes a swarthy barbarian fucking a 13 year old.

The female character's povs are laughable at points anyway, so I'm going to recap Dany's chapters of Game of Thrones. I won't do the whole book because I'm not a masochist, and I think her few chapters distill all the awful I need to go from. Tune in when I've got more time to kill; this took way too long as it is.