Put on your plate armor, kiddies, I have the book for you

After a completely intentional and unpanicked sabbatical to choose and prepare for graduate school (completely unpunctuated by cursing, helpless weeping, and the wild flinging of various objects that refused to fit into suitcases), I am completely back to the Land of the Bloggers! Hopefully I'll be posting weekly.
This week's book is A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin. It is the beginning of an epic series entitled A Song of Ice and Fire. If your first question is whether or not Mr. Martin wears pajamas with Tolkien's face on them to bed, the answer is I don't know, but it's a good guess. If your second question is where such pajamas might be acquired, the answer is I don't know, but if you find out you should tell me because that company might make Dostoevsky pajamas too. Who doesn't want to fall asleep wearing a depressed Russian? No, that was rhetorical, don't answer.
Anyway.
A Game of Thrones is loosely based on the Wars of the Roses, which would have been produced by HBO if HBO had existed in the 15th century. Since it didn't, HBO is settling for producing A Game of Thrones, so keep your eye out for it next spring if you like despair and death by nasty things. Which, being a medievalist, I do. Otherwise I would have majored in Frolicking, or possibly Philosophy.

There are so many ways for this book to go wrong, so perhaps the best thing about it is that it avoids all of these. Martin uses the history without boring the reader or fussing with unnecessary accuracy (as deadly a pitfall as eschewing accuracy completely), and clearly appreciates Tolkien's legacy without bashing his readers over the head with it. Each chapter is narrated by one of a handful of characters, which makes for gripping, cliffhanger-ridden reading, and allows for an impressive amount of plot arcs without being too overwhelming. Refreshingly, he isn't shy about killing off some of these supposedly key narrators, so watch out.
Finally, I like this book and expect to like the rest of the series (I'm most of the way through the second one now and haven't been disappointed) because they are just so darn medieval. Martin clearly has a thing for Heraldry, which has always fascinated me; he peoples his fictitious "British" realm with names, ranks, and symbols which are a breath away from the real thing. He has clearly done his research and done it well. There are castles and sieges and rigged tournaments and vats of political intrigue, and even a possibly murderous uncle who just happens to be a bit odd-looking and devious (sometimes I have to stop myself from chuckling and reciting "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer..." in public).

The only reason I would caution readers about getting into this series is because it seems to have stalled a bit. Martin plans for 3 more books, one of which was supposed to be published in 2007, and has been pushed back until Martin feels like finishing. There is something to be said for fastidious perfection, but at this point that something might be "Robert Jordan." However, as each of these books is roughly 1000 pages, you may not have to be held in suspense very long by the time you want to know what happens next.

The long and short of it is, these books are satisfying to both the historian and the fictionista in me, and I would recommend them to anyone else who wants to have that cake and eat it too.

Except don't, because it's probably been poisoned.