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If you really think about it, the characters in the Arthurian legends are really screwed up. I mean, Merlin agrees to use magic to allow Uther to seduce Igrayne, so long as he is given the child conceived through the union. Morgana tricks her half-brother Arthur into sleeping with her, their son Mordred kills his mother, and then father and son kill each other. And then, of course, you have Lancelot, the epitome of knightly virtue, who has an affair with the wife of his sworn lord and king, who also happens to be his best friend. In A Game of Thrones, the stunning debut to the Song of Fire and Ice fantasy series, George R. R. Martin creates his own Arthurian-style myth. But he cranks up the underhanded political maneuvering, the deviant sex, and the brutal violence by a factor of one hundred. The result is a novel that is sometimes disturbing, occasionally brilliant, and always entertaining.

Nearly every character who populates Martin's world is memorable and fascinating... and if they were real, I would not trust any of them. Everyone, from kings and queens to lowly peasants, has an agenda and is not afraid to use any means to see it fulfilled. In Martin's Machiavellian world, everyone's looking for an angle that can be used to his own personal advantage. This harsh, ultra-realistic approach to the usually romantic fantasy genre can be a little troubling at first, but quickly the reader becomes wrapped up in the complicated but compelling plot.

Martin's book is also refreshing for it's intelligent villains. There are no "Dark Lords," "Evil Ones," "Shadow Lords," "Great Lords of the Dark," or "Forsaken" who do evil for evil's sake. On the other end of the spectrum, there's no one who risks everything in order to obtain some pie-in-the-sky good. The only difference between the bad guys and the good guys is that the bad guys are willing to push the ethical boundaries a little more in order to obtain their goals. Some characters who are nominally good guys are bad, and some characters who are nominally bad guys are good.

Also contributing to the books realism and suspense is that characters die. Lots of them. This marks a huge step forward from the works of Robert Jordan, the other great contemporary fantasy author. Not knowing whether your favorite character is going to make it out safely from his or her latest predicament makes the book a real page-turner. Martin also deserves credit for creating the most multifaceted, rich, and realistic female characters to ever grace the pages of a sword-and-sorcery book. And how's this for an innovation - not all of the main female characters are stunningly beautiful. In fact, some are downright unattractive! Now that's an original concept in the fantasy genre.

Unfortunately, I find that I am too often forced to judge fantasy novels by a lower standard than I judge other books. The truth is that there just are not that many good fantasy writers. But Martin's book is not just a great fantasy novel. It's a great novel period, and I recommend it to everyone... with a caveat. The violence - particularly violence against women and children - is graphic and very disturbing. A Game of Thrones is far from a kid's fairy tale. It harshly shows the ugly side of magic kingdoms, and, not surprisingly, it is not pretty. To quote the motto of the Stark family that is at the heart of the book, "Winter is Coming."

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(Submitted 6/3/02 by Cleveland lawyer Julio.)