I’m still a little amazed I managed to make it twenty-two years without any spoilers in this universe. Having avoided the TV series for years saying ‘I’ll watch it someday’, I was so grateful to experience the books completely blind to the plot. I finally finished the series after nine months of entirely immersing myself in Westeros, now beginning to dive into the TV series (which I have heard mumblings about and I’m already not impressed by how much it diverts from the books :/).
Anyway! Here’s my blind ranking to A Song of Ice and Fire (split volumes).
(Please note, this post will probably house a few spoilers. Although I’ve managed to avoid them as much as possible, it’s hard to do whilst truthfully ranking a very long series)
1. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold
I mean there could never be another one to top this list. Despite the length I managed to soar through this story in less than a week and I think that sums up its excellence. This novel was the perfect explosion of all the tension that had been building up and up in the series so far. The Red Wedding itself was the closest this series got the horror and oh my, I don’t mind if this series ending gets delayed a little longer if George R. R. Martin follows his true calling into horror writing! This book made the blind read all worth it, and I just never know if I’ll be ready to see that all unfold on the screen…
2. A Dream with Dragons 2: After the Feast
I’m not sure if I’ve seen people rank this one so high, but personally it really got me. I suppose it was more towards the end of this novel where everything unfolded, but I didn’t mind waiting for the way I got absolutely grasped. Once I got past the frustration and distraught that this series may never be completed and this is the only ending we’ll ever get to have, I was struck by just how each character’s development, along with the political development of the whole of Westeros, was so utterly well-written and was transforming into something so far from the events we started this series with.
3. A Game of Thrones
I mean, it always had to be high up there. Sometimes, the start of such an epic series, a high-fantasy one at that, can sometimes crumble with expectations and become an almost recollection of the history over storytelling. But George R. R. Martin really managed to combine these, introducing you to such a complex world with each character carrying their individual motivations and voices through their chapters. Maybe the best first novel I’ve ever read of a series, and I’m flabbergasted how an earth people stop at book one because it’s so engaging and beautiful.
4. A Storm of Swords 1: Steel and Snow
As a complete novel, A Storm of Swords is simply one of the best books I believe ever written. Even separated into the two volumes, they both rank so high on my list. This novel is so rich in politics and it really tells the story well of how high man can reach before they’ve hit the sun. There was a lot that hit me unexpected in this novel, the gore and truth of a kingdom starting to bleed through the pages…
5. A Clash of Kings
This one was tough for me to rank, because it was an incredibly long second novel with a plethora of new introductions, I lost my way a bit. In no way does this impact this absolute excellence of this novel, but I find that reading this series blind I was a little lost by the amount that was thrown at the reader for this book. Despite this, I did love it utterly. It continued well from the first novel, continuing to build up that tension over and over again following the violent and surprising aftermath of the ending of A Game of Thrones.
6. A Dance with Dragons 1: Dreams and Dust
Interestingly enough, this novel is completely separated from its counterpart up in second place… Similar to A Clash of Kings, I found this novel setting up a lot and building this tension as mentioned a thousand times before, which leaves not an awful amount actually occurring. Honestly it’s so hard to talk bad about these novels, because I never imagined I would read a series where I would rate every book five stars, but this was one of them. I wonder if, with A Dance with Dragons combined, it would boost this ‘half’ of the novel so much higher in my ranking.
7. A Feast for Crows
When I started reading this novel I was a little disappointed by the ‘note on chronology’ because my favourite characters were those spread about the world, such as Dany, Jon and Tyrion (which did change once I read the next few but they definitely stood as my favourite here) but I did utterly fall in love with the development of some characters following this novel. This was another time as, mentioned before, this rise of kings ends up following the story of Icarus and the characters become this mess as both leaders and people. There was a lot going on inside the minds of these characters, as a reader being trapped inside King’s Landing it was interesting to watch madness take over so many characters.
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This may have been one of the hardest things to do, constantly fluctuating between where I place novels. It felt almost blasphemous to rank any of these books last as I do now, and will forever, hold them in an incredibly high regard. I just hope that one day we will end with an end to this series, and release these characters from the awful suspense they remain stuck in!
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