A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE NERDIEST THING I'VE EVER DONE: That would be "read all four extant volumes of the Game of Thrones series," which I refuse to call the Song of Fire and Ice series, because that title is dumb. Anyway, Game of Thrones premieres on HBO this Sunday, and I thought I'd give my two cents. Thank god for the Kindle, because (a) at 3500 pages (and counting, four books into an alleged seven-book series) and a dry weight of 4.3 pounds, that's a lot of book to lug around; and (b) nobody wants to be the guy on the train reading the book with a picture of a glowing chalice on the cover or the word "sword" in the title. Look, these are books whose enjoyability is commensurate with their heft, and I know I shouldn't care what anybody thinks of what I'm reading, but I'm just stating the facts here: it is embarrassing to be a grown man reading a book that people will assume is about dragons.

Which, of course, is not what the series is about. There is less magic in the 720 pages of the first book, Game of Thrones, than there was in the first ten pages of Harry Potter, in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, in Lost or Inception, in Shoeless Joe or its pale, inferior adaptation, Field of Dreams. There is about as much magic in Game of Thrones as there was in Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude. In the first book, with one exception, magic appears really as the memory of past magic -- the book is 95% alternative history, and only 5% or so fantasy.

Which isn't to say that the series is un-nerdy. What it lacks in dragons, it makes up in swords and armor. This is a series that knows and cares about the difference between boiled leather and chain mail, between destriers and coursers, between swords and longswords and broadswords. It goes into exhaustive detail about the minutae of clannish squabbles -- not where-did-Lisbeth-Salander-shop detail, but still. And it does that annoying thing where all the names are familiar but slightly changed just to emphasize that they are in a world that is only slightly different from ours, so that Edward becomes Eddard, Jeffrey becomes Joffrey, James becomes Jaime, Benjamin becomes Benjen, etc. Irritating.

But it also does some decidedly un-nerdy things. For one thing, it creates fully three-dimensional characters who, with very few exceptions, are neither all good nor all bad. That's probably too trite a way to say it -- one thing that these books does very well is set up people's obligations and motivations so that you can see how actions that seem monstrous from one viewpoint seem rational and inevitable from another. It's rare to read a book where two characters you like despise each other for very good and unavoidable reasons. If you have found yourself rooting for murderous mobsters, violent drug lords and corrupt cops, sociopathic saloon owners, self-deluding meth cookers, and serial philanderers, you'll probably be okay with most of these characters.

The second thing that the series does exceedingly well is paint a captivating picture of the political intrigue surrounding a war for succession. Here it draws impressively on historical source material. George R.R. Martin basically took a timeline of the Wars of the Roses, cut it into pieces, kept the choicest bits, and rearranged them into a different chronology. Instead of Lancasters vs. Yorks, you now have Lannisters vs. Starks (though the Starks come off quite a bit more heroic, if not more competent, than the Yorks). You don't need to know anything about the Wars of the Roses to get through the series (I didn't; instead, I read up on the history after reading the fiction, and was duly rewarded with endless chuckles of recognition). It's possible you might get an extra thrill if you already know your English and Scottish history ("Ha, ha! That is just like the Black Dinner in which Sir William Crichton invited the ten-year-old Earl of Douglas and his younger brother to Edinburgh Castle, served them the head of a black bull, and then beheaded them at the table! Hilarious!"), but it's not necessary. What is important is that the series usually feels more like a political drama than like a swords-and-magicians epic.

The third thing I wanted to mention was that the series passes the Bechdel Test in spades. Many of the key characters in the novels are women, and they rarely (not never, but rarely) fit either the damsel-in-distress archetype or the male-character-made-female-to-fill-a-quota slot. The key women in the novel are plotters, schemers, and participants in the action whose roles and motivations come in part from their positions within the patriarchal feudal order. To make a comparison, it was never really necessary that President Roslyn on BSG be a woman, but it is critical in GoT that Cersei and Catelyn are women -- their characters otherwise would not make any sense.

That last point is not to suggest that this is an equal-opportunity work. One need not look any further than George R.R. Martin's patchwork beard and sea captain's hat to understand that this is hardcore nerd fiction, a territory overwhelmingly populated by men. Saying "it's not about dragons; it's really about fifteenth-century English politics" is not likely to change those numbers dramatically. But the Game of Thrones series is a nuanced, rich yarn, only partially compromised by its permanent state of being half-finished, and I have high hopes for the HBO series.

Still, I predict that Spacewoman will not make it through the first episode. Too many swords.