A Clash of Kings

Book 2 of A Song of Ice and Fire

By: George R.R. Martin

Narrated by: Roy Dotrice

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 CLASH OF KINGS is the second volume in the series.

Throughout Westeros, the cold winds are rising.

From the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding lands of Winterfell, chaos reigns as pretenders to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms stake their claims through tempest, turmoil and war.

As a prophecy of doom cuts across the sky – a comet the colour of blood and flame – five factions struggle for control of a divided land. Brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night.

Against a backdrop of incest, fratricide, alchemy and murder, the price of glory is measured in blood.

©2011 George R. R. Martin (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

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

"I read my eyes out. I couldn’t stop until I’d finished and it was dawn." (Anne McCaffrey)

"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)

Roy Dotrice is the grandmaster

Roy Dotrice is the grandmaster of audiobooks' performance. Having listened to some non-fiction before, I was at first reluctant to buy fiction audiobooks, but Roy makes the experience so compelling I sometimes felt I was living inside R. R. Martin's legend. Absolutely remarkable!

Narration takes some getting used to

A song of ice and fire is by far the best fantasy series I have ever read or listened to. A clash of Kings is a master piece. The only difficulty is the narration can be a little jarring and some of the voices and accents used are terrible. Once past that however its hours of enjoyment

Awesome

It’s a perfect reading. There’s less then ten words that differ from what’s written in the hard copy book.
My only concern was with the pronounce of the Velaryon family name. Somewhere in there there might have been a confusion with Valyrian (from Valyria)

Incredible, In-Depth Story Lines, Need More

Absolutely a fan of these books. I love the detail that they’ve waded into for the characters, their journeys and the paths they are all on leading you through the war. It felt as if it was over as soon as it started in the show but this really fed you more, and more as you went along. Next book loading.

Totally engaging story read wonderfully

Would you consider the audio edition of A Clash of Kings (Part One) to be better than the print version?

Complimentary to the print version - and also to the TV series

Who was your favorite character and why?

All of them - this is truly ensemble cast

Which character – as performed by Roy Dotrice – was your favorite?

Bran

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

It's already been done!

loved it

I'm hooked on the story after the show, about to start the next book. What's dead may never die!

Great

Can't wait to get to a storm of swords, though I fear for the fate of Westeros.

superb!

it is amazing! one ting only, could be better with more than one narrator😀😁 but Roi doitrice is brillant on his own😀

Amazing story,, but a challenge for the narrator

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I'd certainly recommend this to a Game of Thrones fan looking to catch up on the next instalment, but I would not necessarily suggest this is a better option than the hard copy - the narrator has strengths but clearly struggles with some aspects of the text in a way which anyone familiar with these books will find quite irritating.

What other book might you compare A Clash of Kings (Part One) to and why?

I will skip the easy answer of Lord of the Rings (which is not quite true) - I think it is more like Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" crossed with the first two of the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake. There's a Gothic nastiness about some of it that is missing from Tolkein.

What aspect of Roy Dotrice’s performance would you have changed?

Eeek. I recognise what a difficult book this must have been to narrate, with so many different characters, and made up names. But some of his pronunciations were infuriating - not just Martin's made up names (Dotrice says "Bry-een" for Brienne; and "P'tiah" for Petyr) but common everyday words, like "litchen" for lichen. Also his use of accents made no sense - why does Tyrion sound Welsh when Cersei and Jaime speak BBC? - and he obviously found it very difficult to know what to do with the voices of women, which is only to be expected of a reader with such a rich, masculine voice - it would have been an attractive voice to listen to, if not for the above.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

The Wars of the Roses, with Magic! And Dragons!

Any additional comments?

This is not a stand-alone; it will make no sense if you read it without already having read "A Game of Thrones", and it contains no resolution, either - so I will have to decide whether, for Book Three, to persist with the flaws in Dotrice's narration or download the Kindle version - I'm really not sure which to choose. Audiobooks are my preference, but I don't know if I can bear more of Dotrice's mangled pronunciations and inappropriate accents.

Great

Love the story and the reader makes great voices for different characters that makes it easy to follow.