Needless to say, I was so disgusted at the “plot progression” that was spoiled in that wiki (which, in my mind, wasn’t progression but instead a way to hit the reset button totally) that I had to stop reading the book. You know, in a weird way I think that spoiling some of the upcoming storylines saved me a great deal of reader’s anguish.

All of that aside, I’ve been reading Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule and it’s really good so far. I’m 115 pages into it and I’m eager to continue reading – the exact opposite of how I felt about both A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings.

I tried, folks. I really, really tried to read the second book (A Clash of Kings). And whereas with A Game of Thrones I was taken aback at the relatively unimpressive writing style, with A Clash of Kings, the writing was downright poor at best. I managed to suffer through the first hundred pages (with little-to-no meaningful or logical storyline progression) and then I told myself that enough was enough. However, as I was still interested in the story of Dany, I flipped forward in the book to read the chapters that focused on her storyline progression (what few, scarce chapters there were, that is). And even though she was the character with the story arc that I found the most interesting – it was a struggle to read her chapters. Martin’s writing is just not up to snuff with A Clash of Kings.

Anyway, I tried. I really tried to get through that second book, but at this point I’ve put it on the shelf and moved on. Plus (and I know a reader shouldn’t do this), I went online to a Wiki focused solely on this series to try to get a physical image of the various characters. While I was on that Wiki I happened to glance and read some future plot points and there was one major point that deals with nearly all of the main characters (and lesser characters) from one family getting killed off in one fell swoop. If this was a sitcom or a television show (wait a minute…), the fans would rise up and revolt over that type of poor writing – the type of writing that relies on major events like a mass slaughter to totally reinvent the story.

It’s a pathetic storyline progression – and it’s not worth my time.

At some point in the future I might decide to pickup A Clash of Kings again and finish reading through it. In the mean time, though, I’m focusing on reading Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. I heard good things about Goodkind so I hope his writing is up to snuff. Lord knows it would take a real effort for his writing to be worse than Martin’s writing!