A knight of the seven kingdoms (George R.R. Martin)

A knight of the seven kingdoms contains the three novellas The hedge knight, The sworn shield and The mystery knight that all follow a young knight called Dunk and his squire Egg on their journey through Westeros.

"A falling star brings luck to him who sees it, Dunk thought. But the rest of them are all in their pavilions by now, staring up at silk instead of sky. So the luck is mine alone."

I absolutely loved all of the three stories, which are each about 120 pages long. I enjoyed George R.R. Martin's writing as much as I did in all his other books I've read so far. The story has a way lighter tone to it than the A song of ice and fire series, which is so much darker, so reading this was a nice change and an amazing opportunity to visit Westeros without having nearly all your favorite characters killed off.
The plot wasn't extremely intense, but still very exciting with some twists as well. Because of the little time jump between the three stories, we get to see different locations for each one.
The best part are definitely the characters, both major and minor ones. I absolutely love Dunk, it's so refreshing to have him as "hero", since he's just an ordinary young man, who's neither royal nor noble, and has to work hard to achieve anything. He's actually more of a loser, he struggles most of the time and often things go very wrong for him. That doesn't only make him a pretty realistic character, but also allows him to show his personality, which is beautiful. While Dunk's maybe not the smartes guy in Westeros, he's definitely one of the most honorable, positive and kindest one. The second main character Egg is just so cute! You can't help but totally adore his bright and also quirky nature. The relationship between them is simply beautiful. Reading about it made me so happy, and I loved everything about it. I would've loved to see more of the minor characters like Tanselle, The red widow and Lord Bloodraven, but hopefully we'll get to see them in future Dunk and Egg novellas.
When I heard that there's going to be artwork in it, I was honestly quite sceptical at first, probably because I associate books with pictures in them with children's book, even though that's obviously just stupid. But when I started reading and took a closer look at them, I enjoyed them so much and actually found myself pretty much always looking forward to the next drawing. The art is incredibly gorgeous and definitely did add something to the story and made this book a quite new reading experience for me, since basically all books I'm interested in don't have any kind of art in them. (The drawings you can see underneath are some of the biggest in the book, most of them are smaller, but amazing nonetheless.)

 A knight of the seven kingdoms is set a bit less than 100 years before the events of A game of thrones, so they obviously don't spoil anything for the A song of ice and fire series, but I'd still advise you to read these books before A knight of the seven kingdoms, since I guess it's really confusing without the knowledge of the world, it's history and the great houses. Of course you can give it a try anyway, even though I think you won't enjoy it as much.

Rating: 5/5 ✹

I'm so sorry for writing way too much, but I just love the world of Westeros so much, so I can't stop talking about (and obsessing over) it. At least I'll try to shut up about it on here until The winds of winter will be published. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this slightly longer review!

Leah

Game of thrones tag

I just wanted to take a quick break from studying for school, so I only have time for this short tag. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
And I'm kepping this tag spoiler-free, so even if you haven't read the A song of ice and fire series (yet) or watched HBO's Game of thrones you can still continue reading without any worries. Also, I'll answer the questions for the books, so I might mention characters or places we've never seen in the tv show.

1. How did you discover the books?

My brother started reading them (in German) about two years ago and absolutely loved them, but told me I should wait at least another year and a half before I read them (which was honestly such a great advice, because I probably wouldn't have liked them very much if I was any younger when I started reading them). When he got the books in English for his birthady in April this year, I finally started reading them and they're some of my most favorite books now.

2. Who is your favorite house apart from the Starks and Lannisters?

"Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken." 

 Definitely the Martells! They're my by far most favorite house because of their attitude towards women and bastard children. And I absolutely adore every character from house Martell we've met so far: Oberyn is such an awesome and badass fighter, Doran is really smart and a great schemer and I enjoy Arianne's and Quentyn's POV chapters so much! Of course, the sand snakes are incredibly amazing as well (and I'm still sooo mad at the writers of Game of thrones for making the sand snakes so awful and crappy in the show!). And let's be honest, they have the by far most awesome and badass house words.

3. Who is your favorite character from the House of Stark?

This question is actually quite difficult. I totally love Arya, but I also have such a huge crush on Robb! So I guess I'll just go with both of them.

4. Who is your favorite character from the House of Lannister?

First of all, the Lannisters are one of my least favorite house, the only one I hate more is probably house Greyjoy, and except for Tyrion I dislike every Lannister in some way (of course, Tommen and Myrcella are pretty cute, but we haven't seen that much of both of them). Even though I learned to love hating Cersei and got some weird affection for her through that and probably enjoyed her chapters in A feast for crows, simply because they are satisfying af, so much more than Tyrion's in A dance with dragons, I'll still pick Tyrion as my anwser.

5. Who is your favorite character?

There are so many! But just some randomly chosen characters I absolutely adore are Missandei, Strong Belwas, Dacey Mormont, Shireen Baratheon, Tormund Giantsbane, Wylla Manderly, Alayne Stone, Willas, Garlan and Loras Tyrell, Renly Baratheon and a lot more.

6. Who is your least favorite character?

Ugh, I don't even know where to start! I could give you a list with more than 20 characters I absolutely hate, because there are so many horrible people in this story. Some I loathed from the very first time they appeared are Viserys Targaryen, Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Snow, Craster, Theon Greyjoy (basically all Greyjoys, maybe except from Asha) and Shae.

7. What are your thoughts about the show?

In my opinion, season one to three were absoultely amazing, I still liked season four, but season five was just horrible. Apparently the writers of the show tried to create their own story and changed so much from the books and just failed miserably. They changed storylines so nothing would make any sense and killed off random characters without any kind of purpose.

8. If you could be one of the characters who would you be and why?

I probably would have said Danaerys Targaryen because DRAGONS and she also has the coolest squad ever (well, except Jorah and Daario), but now that I think about it a bit longer, I guess I'd be Bran Stark. Of course, he's been through so much shit, but I think having the powers he has is so cool and I love the relationship between Bran and his wolf Summer, and having such a special connection to your pet (or animals in general) must be awesome, right?!

9. What is your favorite book?

I LOVE all of them so much, but right now I probably like A dance with dragons best, because it focuses a bit more on politics and scheming than the others do.

10. Who is your Game of thrones crush?

"Love's not always wise, I've learned. It can lead us to great folly, but we follow our hearts...wherever they take us."

Like I mentioned before, I have such a big crush on Robb Stark. He's compared to most of the other characters truly nice and honorable, but still (mostly) smart enough to know what to do in precarious situations. And his age is also really close to mine, which makes having a crush on him a bit less weird (at least I hope so...).
(The quote above is one of my favorites, said by Robb Stark in CATELYN II, ASOS)

11. What are you most looking forward to in the upcoming book?

Everything! But what I'm currently probably most excited about is the storyline in Oldtown and the opportunity to learn more about the maesters and the citadel in general. I'm also really interested to see what's going to happen with the current situation in Meereen. And of course, I'm dying to see what's gonna happen especially in Dorne and King's Landing, and I'll be seriously so happy if we get to see the Manderlys again!

I hope I did fangirl enough to keep my mouth shut about A song of ice and fire for the next few weeks here and obviously hope you enjoyed this little tag. Have a nice day,

Leah