It’s easy to hate House Lannister.

After all, they murdered the rightful King. They throw kids off roofs. They behead main characters. They are mercenary and cunning and bad to the bone.

And now Queen Cersei has planted her slightly bastardinous (if not incestuously-created) son Joffrey on the throne.

Judging from the number of self-crowned kings that spring up (four, at least, not counting Daenerys lurking off in the east with her three dragons), I’m not alone in hating them.

Oh, we have battles galore, small skirmishes, sieges, and expeditions beyond the northern wall. We’ve got politics. We’ve got intrigue. And we’ve got so many characters that there are dozens and dozens of pages outlining who’s who in the back. All this in a brisk 728 pages.

That explains why I’m calling in guest reviewers.

Anyway, Martin continues his usual format, a chapter for each of the half-dozen or so major characters we’ll track, following displaced little princesses hiding in the scullery to short dwarfish connivers riding into battle. Usually I’ll become so locked on a character that I’ll groan at the end of a chapter, not wanting to leave them. But then it’s on to the next, and soon I’m viewing life through a different set of eyeballs.

Gotta say I really like this, even through the book is big enough to prop a wheel if you ever need to change a tire.

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