Award-winning novelist Margaret Atwood writes about her love for Game of Thrones

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist famous for such books as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, has written an essay over at The Guardian extolling the virtues of Game of Thrones. Over the course of her lengthy career, Atwood has published a great many novels (several of them in the fantasy and speculative fiction genres), short story collections, and books of poetry, all while racking up a mountain of literary awards. To top things off, her own MaddAdam book trilogy, about life in a post-apocalyptic world, will soon be adapted by HBO as a TV series, so it makes sense that she would be a fan of fellow HBO adaptee George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books.

Apart from generally praising Game of Thrones for its realistic approach to character development (“real people, every murderous one,” she writes), Atwood cheerfully free associates in her essay on the possible inspirations for the show. She finds links to works as disparate as Homer’s Illiad, the fantasy novels of author Ursula K. Le Guin, and Harry Potter. She also singles out English history, with its warring families and backstabbings and civil conflicts, as an obvious influence. Atwood’s deep knowledge of literature and characteristically breezy use of language makes some of her passages, like this one about the literary predecessors of Daenerys’ dragons, worth quoting in full.

The past thousand-and-a-half years has given us a range of dragons, from the lucky dragons of China, to the tussling red and white dragons of Welsh lore, to the dragon of St George fame, substitute for Satan, to the Zen-ish, wise, riddling dragons of Le Guin’s Earthsea, to the hoarding, miserly dragons of Beowulf and The Hobbit. George RR Martin’s dragons are more like superweapon bazookas. They’re aesthetically attractive – more so in the books than in the series, where they have less delicate pink tracery and more scaly pterodactyl beakiness – but, so far, they don’t talk.

The Guardian article also samples the opinions of other notable Game of Thrones fans who reveal that they love the show for a variety of different reasons. The presence of textured, powerful female lead characters comes up multiple times, as does the show’s complex portrayal of good and evil, the excellent production values, and the tight storytelling. Also, more than one person interviewed mentions that it’s awkward to watch the sex scenes with family members, so maybe stop doing that.

The article reminds us that there are an enormous number of reasons to love Game of Thrones. It’s what’s made the show such a success, and why we can’t wait for it to come back.

• Published on 03/23/2015 at 4:50 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:06 PM CDT