Book Review: A Clash of Kings

George R.R. Martin
1998
Awards: Locus
Nominations: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ – – –

SPOILER ALERT (for A Game of Thrones)

A Clash of Kings is the second novel in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, continuing the epic story begun in A Game of Thrones.

When last we left Martin’s intrepid and voluminous collection of characters, several would-be kings were arming themselves for war against each other. This war erupts in sprawling, slow-moving, multi-front fashion in A Clash of Kings. The Baratheons war against each other, the Greyjoys war against the Starks, and everybody wars against the Lannisters. Daenerys Targaryen prepares for war against the Baratheon-Lannisters, but never actually gets to wage it (at least in this book).

Thus A Clash of Kings is exactly what the title says it is: a clash between at least seven major contenders vying to be king of all the land. The contenders are:

The evil, lunatic, fifteen-year-old Joffrey Baratheon, put on the throne after his father, King Robert, died. Except that his father really wasn’t his father; Joffrey is actually the product of his mother’s incest with her own brother Jaime, so Joffrey really has no legitimate claim to the kingship.

Joffrey’s primary opponent, and our hero, Robb Stark. He is the one we really want to be king. But we almost never actually see him in the whole thousand pages of this book because he’s off waging battles in the north.
                                                   
Stannis and Renly Baratheon, the dead king Robert’s surviving brothers, both of whom want to be king and both of whom have something of a legitimate claim. Stannis’s right-hand woman is a sorceress who uses witchcraft to gain the upper hand in battles and get rid of his enemies.

Daenerys Targaryen, who arguably has the best claim of all since she’s the last surviving descendant of the last king of all the land. But she has the disadvantage of being a woman, so no one sees her as a legitimate contender. She spends the entire book traipsing across the desert with her three dragons and the small remains of her dead husband’s army, trying to build up her forces and buy ships to get her across the sea to where all the real action is.

Minor players Theon Greyjoy and Mance Rayder, who don’t really have a claim to much of anything but nevertheless form their own armies and go in pursuit of castles.

The thing is, although we see plenty of one-on-one fights, throat-cuttings, beheadings, and other small-scale incidents of violence, we rarely actually see any real full-on battles in person. We mainly just hear about them along with other non-participants by hearsay or messenger raven. The story is mainly told instead in the setup for and the aftermath of war. And the plot unfolds not by following the narratives of the kingly contenders, but by those of the secondary players around them.

Which is good, because the secondary players are the best characters in the book. There are still many chapters where you have to go slogging through the horror that is Sansa’s life at King’s Landing with her increasingly brutal and crazy fiancé, or Dany’s endless travels through the desert far from the action, or Theon’s miserable excuse for a storyline, but in general the most interesting parts of the story are told through these people:

Bran Stark (Robb’s second-youngest brother). Whiling away his time at Winterfell without his father, mother, sisters, or older brothers, he is making his own friends, getting wiser, and growing more independent. He is also getting in touch with the magic world; he has more and more frequent dreams which foretell the future, and/or in which he is a direwolf for real.

Arya Stark (Robb’s youngest sister). The tough little girl continues her slow escape from King’s Landing towards the north, now disguised as an orphan boy headed to the Wall to join the Night’s Watch. She runs afoul of one beastly capturer after another in the war-ravaged, brigand-full land.

Jon Snow (Robb’s half-brother). After joining the Night’s Watch in book #1, Jon gets picked to go on a search party into the wild lands north of the Wall to search for his lost uncle and also figure out what Mance Rayder is up to (which, as it turns out, is forming an army in preparation for marching on the southlands).

Davos Seaworth (a former smuggler in the employ of Stannis). Davos doesn’t get much play in this book, but he makes the most of his few appearances. During a previous war, back when he was a smuggler, he helped Stannis by supplying him with food during a siege. When the siege was over and Stannis was victorious, he promoted Davos by making him a knight… but chopped the fingers off of his right hand to remind him of his criminal past. Davos is fiercely loyal to Stannis and, because of his position as one of Stannis’s bannermen, gets to witness the most colorful battle in this book.

Tyrion Lannister (Joffrey’s uncle). Tyrion is the only person who seems to have any kind of long-range strategy for anything. He plans the defense of King’s Landing using clever tricks and weapons of mass destruction, and meanwhile tries to keep his crazy nephew from wrecking any shred of diplomatic connections the Lannisters have left. Tyrion wheels and deals with everyone, promising wives, castles, money, and titles, in exchange for various devious acts.

As with the first book, some of the best things about A Clash of Kings are the unique scenes and settings and Martin’s vivid writing of them. I particularly liked his presentation of Pyke, the windswept, wave-battered castle of the Greyjoys. And I said earlier that we see very little of A Clash of Kings’ eponymous battles themselves, but one notable exception to this is the fantastic naval battle of King’s Landing, in which Stannis Baratheon attacks the forces of “King” Joffrey Baratheon, and which is waged brilliantly by Joffrey’s uncle Tyrion. I could picture every moment of the chaos, with ships in various stages of destruction dotted all over the river, and the glowing, greenish, terrifying, agent-orange-like wildfire creeping over attacker and defender alike. With this battle, Tyrion proves just how ruthless he can be in the pursuit of his goals, and how willing he is to cause horrifying pain and death (even to himself) in order to defend his family, whom he doesn’t even necessarily like.

The direwolves are also always a huge plus any time they appear in the book. And of course it is beyond impressive how Martin is able to keep all of his millions of intertwining characters and their motives—overt and secret, large and small—straight in the chess game that is the plot.

However… other aspects of Martin’s writing started rankling me more than ever. I don’t know whether it is just because my tolerance was worn down from reading the previous eight hundred pages of book #1, or if the negatives in book #2 really are more exaggerated, but on balance, this time, the parts that bugged me far outweighed the parts that I liked.

As in the first book, the pseudo-medieval language is stilted and self-conscious. I also started to get increasingly tired of the endless lists of colors, sigils, and waving flags that accompanied every army arrayed for battle, every group assembled for a banquet, and any audience waiting for any of the various kings. I got through the book much more happily once I started skipping the long descriptions of arrayed banners adorned with flayed men, krakens, flowers, and human hearts in lilac, crimson, pale yellow, and snowy white.

And, again, as in the first book, there is a frustrating lack of resolution of any of the major plot lines. Or even temporary, periodic, small resolutions on a small scale, for that matter. And, again, very bad things continually happen to good people. The book just goes on and on for thousands of pages with nearly unrelenting toughness and inhumanity. Our favorite people (those who survive, anyway) must soldier on, alone and lonely. We hardly ever get any vindication for any of the characters we are invested in—no long-awaited reunions, no long-lasting freedom, no easing up of the brutality.

Which leads directly to one more problem: rape. This book is chock full of rape, in addition to hordes of slightly less personal incidents of maltreatment. Women in this book (as well as some men) are beaten, stripped, sold, traded, and pimped. It is almost impossible to take. And even if some of the women grow to love their abusers, it doesn’t make it any more tolerable.

A Storm of Swords, the third novel in this series, also won a Locus. But in spite of Martin’s inarguable storytelling talent, I don’t know if I can deal with any more of this trauma.