"These are northmen, uncle. The north remembers."

According to commonly adapted reading routines, carrying a book with you for the amount of five consecutive months can mean two things: either you're despising the material but are determined to finish whatever book you've started (not the best piece of advice for that matter) or the book actually is your diary. Both of these scenarios can so NOT be considered in this case (although keeping a diary that epic and rich of details would be amazing), so let's add another category that I'd like to call "must be a fucking George R. R. Martin book".

My love for his work is something I cannot put into words. Although I can only talk about what he did with his epic fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire that you probably all know/have read/have seen the tv show, I am convinced that his way to tell a story is special. First off, I cannot strech enough how crucial his decision to tell each chapter from one of approximately ten characters's view was for how his story comes across. All the different point of views on the state of the realm, other (minor) characters and even the mythology itself provide a multi-layered image of Westeros and beyond as a storyworld and I cannot cope with how beautifully this is done. Simultaneously it makes you get HYPER invested in a lot of characters and still you're constantly on the edge of your toes wanting to know more about minor characters that keep appearing in other people's chapter, so you may know their actions and listen to their lines of dialog but you may never get to know what's going on inside their heads (speical mentions here: Joffrey, Robb, Cercei, Gendry, the Spider and so on and so on... luckily at least one of them is going to have chapters in A Feast for Crows and I am BEYOND HAPPY OMG).

I am not even sure what this piece of post is supposed to be. A review? Not exactly. As you can see beyond clearly I am not even able to articulate what I feel about the series as a whole I'm not really in the position to give you a detailed report on the last 1128 pages I've read in the last 5 months (as mentioned somewhere far above).

But WHY oh WHY is reading this - as you claim almost perfect high fantasy saga - taking you that much time? Five months appear to be such a long time for someone who is supposedly "obsessed" with the series? And this is the part of the post where I can't really can't offer any logic explanations. Because there aren't. Reading these books takes me to a place far away and it is sometimes a rather slow and sometimes a rather fast-paste experience. Overall I presume I'm not the fastest reader anyway, so when a character-driven over-1000-pages book is on the menue this feature prevails even more then normally. I once stated in a conversation with a friend that I enjoy spending a lot of my time on this series, it makes the experience more special to me, you know, carrying the book with me for such a long period of time. Although this is true nonetheless, I don't claim that being the actual reason, it's more the outcome of it. Maybe spending so much time with the books makes me love the whole journey even more. It sounds legit since my brain probably needs something to hold on to when it decides to spend so much of my life time on it. And yes, I speak of my brain in the third person and blaims it for all the things I don't really feel in control of. Creeps.

This is rather me talking about my reading experience with A Storm of Swords then reviewing it, I sense now. So sorry if you're acutally interested in the plot or anything ABOUT the book ITSELF (please transfer to something along the lines of its amazon page, goodreads or your local bookstore now). From my opinion, the only thing I can tell you is that the books are getting better with every new book: clash of kings being better then game of thrones and storm of swords being better then clash of kings... the depth of my "review" is breathtaking, isn't it?

If by now you're doubting whether the article/post is worth spending your time on, let me tell you: I am not telling you how much time I spent on this series in vain! What I try to convey by it is that it doesn't matter how many books I miss out on reading during the time it takes or how hard it is sometimes to keep on reading, it is worth all the same. And in the end (like now after finishing one), you're most likely hungry for more. Although reading the first two novels directly after one another didn't work out that well for me since I kind of fell into an ASOIAF-overdose-state afterwards meaning not wanting to touch the next book for the next couple of months I found back to the series and consumed the last one even faster. So that's what I'm gonna do with book for: read directly after the third since I feel full of energy to consume it whole (or at least that's what I am telling myself). 

Oh my, this turned out to be a whole lot of me rambling. Perhaps I should consider recording a podcast, a medium that tolerates rambling a lot more I guess (or so I hope). Anyway, you're stuck with this text for now. If this was indeed an interactive podcast I'd now ask you ladies and gentlemen to express your thoughts and feelings toward the correlation of time it takes you to read a book and the amount of love you have for it - not necessarily implying that there is one of course.

enjoy read- WAIT! There is no possibly scenario in which I publish ASOIAF-related content without expressing my enduring love for Jon Snow. He is my precious baby and his chapters are everything to me. Oh lord, I do sound weird. Better stop writing before I elaborate on my deep feelings for Sansa Stark... oh well... maybe another time! (And oh hey I survived without a single "Winter is coming")

enjoy reading & love hemmingway