La espada leal : una novela de la serie Juego de tronos

There’s nothing very noticeable about this simple story, a fact that serves to accentuate Martin’s talent. Seldom do I experience the magic of a rapid page-turner these days. My interior imagery is loaded with too many books to feel as excited anymore (sometimes it happens...).

But this man

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issues words from his fingers that are pure literary nirvana.

I can’t quite determine what it's that makes his writing so addictive. Sentences, paragraphs and pages collude to urge you to read on and on and on.

Martin’s genius seems to lie in his ability to tie one up to his story. One begins his books as reader and consumer and one ends them as slave...

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Summary: These novellas are set in Westeros approximately ninety years before the A Song of Ice and Fire series, when the Targaryens still held the Iron Throne. "The Sworn Sword" takes place about a year after "The Hedge Knight", and finds Dunk and Egg sworn in service to a landed knight, Ser

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Eustace Osgrey. Ser Eustace only has a minor holding, but when Dunk discovers that its water supply has been cut off by a dam built upstream by the much more sizable Coldmoat castle, he is honor-bound to report it and attempt to sort out the consequences. But when he encounters the Red Widow, the formidable mistress of Coldmoat, and she tells him some unpleasant truths about Ser Eustace, it will fall to Dunk to determine how much his sworn word is worth, and where exactly the path of honor truly lies.

Review: "The Sworn Sword" is just as good as "The Hedge Knight", and provides an interesting look into the more day-to-day lives of people of lower station than the POV characters of ASoIaF. It contains a few good twists - nothing like the shocks near the end of "The Hedge Knight", but I'm so used to GRRM's characters having a baseline level of deviousness (except poor, dumb, doomed Ned), that it's interesting to have characters actually acting out of motivations other than pure self-interest. We also get more of a look into the history of Westeros, particularly the Blackfyre Rebellion and its aftermath, which was fascinating, but I had to look up the Targaryen family tree in the middle of the story and kept referring back to it, since their dynastic naming system means that I have a really, really hard time keeping all of the branches straight.

Recommendation: These stories should be enjoyable fans who like medieval fantasy in general, and obviously for fans of ASoIaF in specific. I think reading the main books is not essential for understanding the stories, nor vice versa, but they really do enhance each other.

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