SPOILERS!
(Major
spoilers for those who only watch the TV show)
This
is the installment that features the infamous Red Wedding sequence, which Martin
handles really well with tense, taut prose:
"No one sang
the words, but Catelyn knew 'The Rains of Castamere' when she heard it. Edwyn
was hurrying towards a door. She hurried faster, driven by the music. Six
quick strides and she caught him. And
who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so law? She grabbed
Edwyn by the arm to turn him and went cold all over when she felt the iron
rings beneath his silken sleeve.
Catelyn slapped
him so hard she broke his lip. Olyvar,
she thought, and Perwyn, Alesander, all
absent. And Roslin wept...
Edwyn Frey shoved
her aside. The music drowned all other sound, echoing off the walls as if the
stones themselves were playing. Robb gave Edwyn and angry look and moved to
block his way... and staggered suddenly as a quarrel sprouted from his side,
just beneath the shoulder."
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This is
really an abrupt style of prose from Martin, made more abrupt in the
context of the sprawling chapters either side of it. You see, A Song of Ice and Fire achieves the
majority of its tension not through violence, but through psycho-political maneuvering and the subsequent threat of violence. The events that led to the Red Wedding started in the first novel of this saga, and so this particular chapter is an
unexpected and brutal climax. It makes for compelling reading, and Martin is
utterly successful in achieving reader engagement.
What I
also like about the series so far, is how historical realism is blended with
magic. There are seven books in the series (as of writing), and each book is
really an epic in its own right. For the majority of the novels, there is not
much going on in the magic department (this ain't Hogwarts, folks), but then
Martin will throw in some magic that is actually quite bat-shit insane. After the
infamous Red Wedding sequence, in which two Starks are brutally slain, the concluding chapter of A Storm of Swords presents us with a newly resurrected Catelyn
Stark who can't speak because her throat has been slit:
"Her cloak
and collar hid the gash his brother's blade had made, but her face was even
worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and
turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had
turned as white and brittle as a crone's. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face
was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails.
But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.
'She don't
speak,' said the big man in the yellow cloak. 'You bloody bastards cut her
throat too deep for that. But she remembers.' He turned to the dead woman and
said, "What do you say, m'lady? Was he part of it?"
Lady Cateyln's
eyes never left him. She nodded."
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I mean talk about crazy! Where the hell did
that idea even come from? You know what? I don't really care where it came
from, because it's a work of genius. In the hands of a lesser writer, such
insanity wouldn't fly, but because Martin writes with confidence and finesse,
he manages to pull it off perfectly.
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