Book Review: A Clash of Kings

Title: A Clash of Kings
Author: George R.R. Martin
Rating: 5/5 Stars
Series: A Song of Ice and Fire (Book 2)

I am in love with this series. The first book was amazing, and the whole second-book pitfall was avoided! I generally do not have good luck with sequels because they always seem repetitive to me... but this seemed fresh, original, and it advanced the plot!

I'm finding it so hard to review this series, mostly because a) it's insanely complicated and b) I can't just point at one thing and go "I LOVED IT" like I love the book as a whole, and so trying to find the little itty-bitty details are hard.

But I'm going to try anyway.

SUPER-LOVES:
+ No one magically gets healed. One of my pet peeves is when someone is dying of an obviously fatal wound but somehow magically are like "I'm okay!" and then go off to win some gigantic battle when 30 seconds ago they were struggling to breathe. Like I get that it's fantasy but let's have some realistic elements please.
+ Also, no one is safe. NO ONE. Martin kills/harms/destroys anyone and anything that he pleases. Who cares if you've had 20 million chapters, when your time has come you're dead! I'm on the edge of my seat the whole time just because the character deaths aren't predictable like in most books. It doesn't matter if it's a main character or some random person who has two lines of text in the whole book and never talks, they could die at any moment. Suspense much?
+ The plot twists are A+. Like one second I think I have everything figured out and the next second someone is giving birth to a shadow on a boat. (Seriously though, what the heck even was this? Like... Just... Help.) You can never settle into this comfortable rut because Martin is continuously throwing bombshells at you, yet it's not so rushed that I have to leave the book and go calm down in a corner because the overload is real. There's like this super tiny line between too much and too little action, and this book walks it PERFECTLY.
+ Betrayal is a major thing, which I guess ties in with plot twists but man you can't trust ANYONE in this book. Like ever. Because if you do you'll wind up with no head. Literally.

Teeny-Tiny List of Dislikes (In tiny font because I'M SO CREATIVE)
- Why did Daenerys have like two chapters in this book and that was it. This was something that bothered me in the last book and instead of getting more chapters I got less! Also literally everybody just wants her for her dragons. Like all of her conversations with people go like:
                      Person: Hey I like you--
                      Daenerys: Awww thank you!
                      Person: --r dragons let's get married so that I can have them.
Seriously I mean I get it it's DRAGONS but still.
- The battle at the end went on WAAAAYYY too long for my tastes. Fire death boom ship ahhhh I GOT IT.
- The whole birthing-shadows scene I just don't understand...

This was still an awesome book, and I still stand by my statement that everyone should read this awesome series. And by everyone I mean everyone in appropriate audiences like not a 10 year-old or anything that would probably not end well.

See this review on Goodreads.