Game of Thrones 4.2: Whodunnit?

At last, a satisfying shocking killing in Game of Thrones 4.2 last night. After death coming down on Stark after Stark, and the villains suffering only a lost hand, we get to celebrate the poisoning of one of the most despicable characters in the series and indeed in all of television:  the just-married King Joffrey.   George R. R. Martin tweeted "You're welcome" after the show last night, and millions including me were thankful indeed that we won't have to see this sick vicious twit of a character again.

But two intriguing questions ensue - actually one question, in two parts: What will happen to Tyrion, denounced by Cersei as the killer, and who really killed Joffrey?

Tyrion clearly didn't do it.   Jamie and Tywin will likely see this, once they get over their shock, and I doubt if they'll let anything really bad happen to Tyrion, whatever Cersei's true beliefs.  (I've read only the first novel in the series, so I have no knowledge of what will happen.   Given, of course, what has already happened, anything is possible.)  Indeed, the early scene with Tyrion and Jamie suggests that the two may have the beginnings of some real rapport.

So who did the deed, if not Tyrion?   There are motives everywhere you look, especially with the Starks.   Sansa has more than ample reason to want Joffrey dead.  Did she act on it?  I don't think so.

Was the killer on hand at the wedding party, to witness his or her deed?  Probably - it's much more fun that way.

Is the killer someone we don't know, an agent from the north, or maybe Daenerys?  Possibly, but it would be more fun to already have seen the killer, in plain sight, maybe even a moment or two before the deadly cake event.

I'm putting my money on Oleena, who couldn't have been happy, deep down, about her beloved Margaery married to Joffrey, despite the power that would give the Tyrells.  But it's also not clear who will wield the power now with Joffrey gone.  Will Margaery, as Queen?  Will Stanis have a new claim to the throne?  If Joffrey's death gives Margaery more power, then that gives Oleena a pretty powerful motive.

Whatever comes down the road, we should be for some wild times in Game of Thrones, and we haven't even gotten to the dragons and the ghost hoard.

See also Games of Thrones Season 4 Premiere: Salient Points ...

And see also  Game of Thrones Season 3 Premiere ... Game of Thrones 3.3: The Heart of Jaime Lannister ... Game of Thrones 3.6: Extraordinary Cinematography ...Game of Thrones 3.7: Heroic Jaime ...  Game of Thrones 3.9: A Critique 

And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quoted about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

And see "'Game of Thrones': Why the Buzz is So Big" article in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2014, with my quotes.

 

"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now." 

#SFWApro

Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO

Game of Thrones began tonight on HBO.  It's adapted from George R.R. Martin's work.   I reviewed his novel set in this world back in 1996 - see the link to my review below - and enjoyed it.  But I'm going to review this series in its own right, and try not to let what I know about the story influence me overly, though it no doubt will.

Here are the basics of the complex, powerful plot.  King Robert - of the Seven Kingdoms, in a place much like medieval England - wants Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, the northern kingdom (he's also Warren of the North) - to become his "hand," or right-hand man.   Stark has five children, and a bastard son.  Before the first episode is over, the King's brother-in-law - brother of the Queen - will push Stark's youngest son out a high open window, because the boy saw the brother-in-law schtupping his own sister, the Queen (good to see Lena Headey of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and The 300 in this role).

Here, let me mention that there's lots of fine female nudity in this episode - and I presume series - if not quite as good as yet as on HBO's  Rome, I'd say better than Showtime's The Tudors.  And there's also a lot of love-making - to be genteel about it - and the characters talk about it a lot.   And, so far, they mostly seem to do it the really old-fashioned way, from the back.   I say mostly, because the Queen's other brother, a dwarf, is seen in bed with a bevvy of beautiful, procured women, and it's not clear how they did it in bed.

Meanwhile,  speaking of nudity, love-making, and politics, beautiful Daenerys is across the sea - in the equivalent of Normandy - and obligated by her brother to marry the young King of a fierce horsemen people, much like the Huns or the Mongols.   She's Tagarian, and her brother yearns for the throne now occupied by Robert.  A few years before the start of our story, the pair were driven from the Seven Kingdoms, when the King and his supporters swept the Kingdoms of Tagarians.

There's also a supernatural facet to all of this.   There are fossilized dragon eggs on the mainland - Daenerys gets one as a gift for her wedding.  And north of Winterfell is a wild, mystical, deadly land - north of the wall - peopled or zombied by "white walkers" (some kind of cold humanoid demons) and replete with dire-wolves.    Six of these baby wolves are now in the hands of Stark's children.  They - the wolves - grow up fast.  And one has seen Bran,  Stark's youngest son, pushed out of the high tower...

An altogether excellent start of what promises to be a superb series.  I'll be back here next week with more.


5-min podcast review of Game of Thrones

See also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

---

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

 

 

..

A Game of Thrones - my Fall 1996 review of 1st novel

As a warm-up for Game of Thones, set to premiere on HBO on April 17, I thought I'd share with you the review I did of the first novel, A Game of Thrones, in George R. R. Martin's book series, upon which the TV series is based.   As you'll see, it's something of mixed review.  But there was enough that I really enjoyed, even loved, in the novel, that I'm happily anticipating the HBO series, and will review every episode right here.

-->

from Tangent Magazine, #16, Fall 1996

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin,  Bantam Books, 1996, hardcover, 694 pp.

Reviewed by Paul Levinson

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN’S A Game of Thrones - a 694-page novel that begins a series- is in many ways a tale fit for a king.

Its tapestry is satisfyingly rich and complex, weaving together dozens of characters, major and minor, in a wide spectrum of shades of hero and villain, all vivid and memorable. The settings are equally diverse and evocative. Martin writes as convincingly of tart juices oozing from an apple as of sleet on the side of a mountain, and his book is as much an adventure of the senses as it is of the mind.

On the other hand, the thimble-full of living dead and the soupcon of dragons we’re served here add little to the story. Or, they may indeed be setting the groundwork for sequels - which seems clear at the end - but their presence in A Game of Thrones seems little more than frost and steam on the window.

But let’s look through the glass at the story within...It’s an old one - about a king who recently won power by not the most kosher of means, beset not only by inheritors of the displaced title, but members of his own entourage with sundry axes to grind. So he calls back into service his most trusted friend - a man who, for his part, was thoroughly honorable in the way he helped the king come to power. But the king’s new right hand of course comes to the table embroiled in his own familial and political webs, many of which overlap with the king’s, and the fun begins.

   As I say, this is an old story, but Game of Thrones  is so well played that, like a vibrant re-make of an old hit record, you can enjoy almost every beat of it. Indeed, Arthurian/Shakespearean clashes among great and lesser lineages, with all the opportunities they afford for exploration of  such perennial themes as honor, loyalty, ambition, love in all its forms, are always welcome subjects for science fiction and fantasy. Such political and personal strìngs served as superb accompaniment to the science fiction in Dune, and they’re often heart-rending, always provocative and appealing, to behold here - though as a center-stage performance, not as background or foreground for fantasy which is barely there.

    To be sure, a hint of the supernatural, a realm of being beyond our and the characters’ rational comprehension, can work very well in some fiction, and does, when it’s used that sparing way in Thrones. The extreme north of this English-like world, peopled now throughout by a medieval, late-Crusade-level culture, is said to hold more than one kind of cold, slouching beast - remnants or resurgence, maybe both, from a time when these things ravaged humanity. The “Wall,” erected long ago to keep these beasts out, and the men sworn to defend it with a pledge to the realm, not to any king or person, make one of the most riveting sinews in the novel. But the actual brief appearance of these cold nightmares-come-true has far less impact than their suggestion. Similarly, the dragons work better as natural history - they’re believed to have died out over a century before the action begins in this book, and their skeletons are admired, feared, and lamented by various characters who contemplate them - than as actual hatchlings at the end of the novel.

But the dragon thread has other problems. Published as a stand-alone novella in the July 1996 Asimov’s Magazine (“Blood of the Dragon”), it follows the trials and exploits of the overthrown King’s two lineal descendants - a brother who is a claimant to the throne with no army, and his sister, whom the brother gives as a bride to a Ghenghis Khan-type character reigning with a vast army in this England’s version of Europe and Asia, in hopes of getting that army to cross the “narrow sea" and reclaim the pretender`s throne. The descriptive passages are marvelous - you can smell the spice, and taste it in every cup of wine Martin renders - but the story as a whole is not special. Derryl Murphy’s review of the novella in the Summer 1996 Tangent said it read like a “Reader’s Digest” condensation, because its chapters were extracted from the novel. But the truth is that it doesn’t work very well in the full novel either, mostly because its story has only the briefest of intersections with the main action in the other threads.

These other threads show us two different daughters, a romantic and a tomboy, and how they fare in these less­-and-more than chivalrous times; a bastard and a “true-born” hero and another son whose legs are paralyzed but whose mind soars; another family where one son is handsome and vicious and evil yet brave, and his brother - a dwarf, my favorite character in the novel - is conniving, yet so honorable that he pays his debt of gold to a cruel, stupid jailor whom the dwarf has talked into taking a message that will free him. Yes, I liked this dwarf so much that I truly felt glad when, after months of travail, he finally finds comfort in a prostitute’s arms. The book is so good at this, so real and effective in its complex characterizations, that I would vote it an award just for that, and the dragons be damned.

      George R R. Martin, however, is at work on a sequel, which according to Asimov’s is to be titled Dances with Dragons – the second book in his overall series, A Song of Fire and Ice.  I’ll eagerly read it for the characters, the plot entwinement, and the prose craft, and hope that the beasts emerge from the cold and the hot a bit better done next time.

---

The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book