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A Game of Thrones

Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire

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A Game of Thrones

By: George R.R. Martin
Narrated by: Roy Dotrice
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About this listen

ONE OF THE TIMES’ 25 BEST AUDIOBOOKS

HBO’s hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R. R. Martin’s internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A GAME OF THRONES is the first volume in the series.

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.

As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.

The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.

 Action & Adventure Dark Fantasy Dragons & Mythical Creatures Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Historical Royalty Mythology Game Funny Feel-Good Scary

Critic reviews

‘A Game of Thrones grabs hold and won’t let go. It’s brilliant.’
Robert Jordan

‘Colossal, staggering… Martin captures all the intoxicating complexity of the Wars of the Roses or Imperial Rome in his imaginary world… one of the greats of fantasy literature.’
SFX

‘Fantasy literature has never shied away from grandeur, but the sheer-mind-boggling scope of this epic has sent other fantasy writers away shaking their heads… Its ambition: to construct the Twelve Caesars of fantasy fiction, with characters so venomous they could eat the Borgias.’
Guardian

‘Such a splendid tale. I couldn’t stop till I’d finished and it was dawn.’
Anne McCaffrey
All stars
Most relevant
A fantastic book and well worth it, however a bit of a con from Audible to split it into two parts, (needing to pay for each). It is only one book and should be sold as such. It is on iTunes and works out as cheaper there! Wish I'd noticed that earlier.

Brilliant, but...

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I have listened my way through this book several times now and it just keeps getting better, Roy Dotrice's narration manages to bring each character to life and I could now pick out each by his narration alone. It's been a long time since I found a book so engaging.

Love It

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This is a wonderful story and I couldn't reccomend George R.R. Martin's tales of Westeros highly enough. As good as the television series is, this is better. More fleshed out, more characters, more body.

Somehow the author has taken a story about dragons, magic and myth and woven them into a gritty and realistic narrative . Stunning work and despite his assertions to the contrary, better than Tolkein's body of work about Arda, in my opinion.

However....

The reading of this book by Roy Dotrice is BLOODY AWFUL! He gives the weirdest and most inappropriate voices imaginable to the characters. Tyrion Lannister for instance, who of anyone in this should have had a cut-glass RP accent, is given a voice by Dotrice that sounds reminiscent of Dick van Dyke trying to play a Hobbit. It's an outrageously stupid cod Westcountry accent. Ned Stark on the other hand, a man who should have a quirky accent, being as he is, a fantasy version of a cross between a medieval Northumbrian and a Viking lord, is given Dotrice's own RP-ish voice. Many other characters are similarly badly voiced, some of them so badly done (as opposed to the voice simply being inappropriate) that it genuinely sounds like it is being done for comedy effect. I'm reminded of Hugh Laurie in the second series of Blackadder, comically imitating the voice of a Tudor serving wench.
'Will you 'ave another piece of poy, moi lawd?'
But worst of all, the crowning piece of corn on the turd of voice actor ineptitude, is the way he doesn't so much murder the pronunciation of people's names, as hang them, cut them down while alive, draw their bowels out with a two foot hook and then quarter them into pieces to be displayed on spikes.
It should be obvious to anyone reading these books that the names are mostly ordinary ones, save for those that originate from exotic languages, such as those of the Targaryens. (Who he all gets spot on, rather weirdly.) Some of these names have quirky spellings, such as Petyr Baelish's. It is obvious that this should be pronounced the same way as "Peter". Yet Dotrice turns it into Peh-tire. And after a few hours and several dozen repetitions it gets REALLY bloody irritating. Worse than listening to people calling the letter Aitch "Haitch" irritating. With Joffrey he repeatedly, but not always, calls him Geoffrey, interspersing this with the correct pronunciation. On at least one occasion he calls the spiteful Lannister boy both Joffrey and Geoffrey in THE SAME SENTENCE!
I have never in my life heard a worse reading performance. He also often gives the impression of someone who's run out of breath midway through a sentence and has to pause to recover it before finishing. At the least this is distracting, at the worst it is majorly annoying.
I know Roy Dotrice has done the audiobook recordings for all five of the Song of Ice and Fire novels published so far. By the time George R.R. Martin comes out with The Winds of Winter (if he can extract himself from all his more profitable side projects for long enough to actually do it) I sincerely hope they have a different reader record it. This one is so awful, you wonder how he ever got the job. And how did anyone at Audible never pick up on how third rate his performances are?

Hit and miss.

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Worth getting into if you liked the show. There are some distracting changes in the narrators pronunciation of names however. It catches your attention and in my case miss some detail when figuring out who he's talking about. Also some of the chants and sounds are a little jarring. But overall a good voice to listen to.

Great book, some distracting reading

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I read the 1st of the Ice & Fire series last year at the beginning of August and finished the 5th book by the end of the same month. Given that each book approaches a 1000 pages that is some going. The brutal world of Westoros is absolutely convincing in detail and absorbing in its grand sweep. I will download every part of this series although it may take me years to listen to it all as I love the books so much.

However; the choice of Roy Dotrice as reader was in my opinion a poor one. He lacks range my dear. Tyrion is a dwarf not an ancient Leprechaun and Arya is a teenage girl not a wizzened old lady. For such an important series why not choose a proper voice artist?

I'm hooked

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