Game of thrones book five reviews

Bran, the Stark boy who learns too much and is crippled as a result, could have an interesting arc if it weren't so slow and drawn-out. The hints of genuine pathos-inducing story are definitely there. They're also present in the chapters focused on Catelyn, who is the closest Martin gets to a truly nuanced character. Ned Stark, Catelyn's husband, is supposed to be the noble one - too bad his 'nobility' comes off as stupidity instead.

Are you secretly a fourteen year-old girl writing horrendous anime fanfic or something? Answer: no, and the comparison is insulting to fourteen year-old girls.

Arya is by far the most entertaining of the Starks, but only because she fulfills all sorts of rebellious-noble-girl-learns-to-fight tropes that I'm quite fond of. Sansa 's chapters made me set the book down for days on end; she is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most insipid, annoying, airheaded character I have ever read and she has not a single whisper of a redeeming quality.

Tyrion Lannister is what Jon Snow could have become without the heapings of Gary Stu in his youth: a bitter middle-aged man with father issues who turns to sex and crudity as his only defense; somewhat akin to Catelyn, he had the potential to be interesting and nuanced if his behavior hadn't been played dead straight.

And there's one more: Daenerys Targaryen. Oh, Dany, Dany, Dany. I could write a dissertation on Dany and everything that went wrong with her story - but I don't have that kind of time. For those of you not familiar with this most epic of George R. Martin's characterization and plot failures, here is a summary: oh and spoilers, but I honestly can't be bothered to tag it.

When we first meet her, Dany is thirteen years ond and about to be sold effectively into marriage with Khal Drogo, a warlord of the Dothraki people, by her abusive and not-a-little-bit-crazy brother, Viserys.

Viserys has convinced himself that Drogo will help him take back 'his' kingdom - this being the Seven Kingdoms where the rest of the book takes place - hence the whole 'selling his sister to be raped by married to someone he obviously sees as a barbarian' thing. The marriage occurs, and then the wedding night in truly squicky half-detail.

There then follows a long journey across the plains to a Dothraki city, during which Dany is raped and no, I will not call it anything else by Drogo. By her fourteenth birthday she is pregnant. When they arrive in the Dothraki city, Viserys makes such an ass of himself that Drogo kills him by pouring molten gold over his head in the middle of a feasting hall.

Robert, the current king of the Seven Kingdoms who the Targaryens see as a usurper, sends assassins to kill Dany - naturally, they fail - and Drogo gets so angry at this that he decides to commit all his people to attacking the Seven Kingdoms in retribution. They leave the Dothraki city at this point Dany is heavily pregnant and go out to wreak havoc across the countryside on their way to conquest. In one such battle Drogo is wounded; because he refuses to care for the wound properly, it gets infected.

When it is clear that he is going to die, Dany appeals to an old woman to perform forbidden magic to save him; the rest of Drogo's people do not approve and try to cast Dany out. End result: Dany loses her child to create a Drogo-zombie, which she then smothers. When his body is placed on the traditional pyre, she adds in three supposedly dead dragon eggs given to her as wedding gifts and which any fool could see hundreds of pages off were bound to hatch and, surprise surprise, they hatch.

To which my primary objections are: 1. The blinding obviousness of the ending 2. The fact that this single plotline - this single POV among eight - is so far distant from and so barely related to the others 3. The fact that Dany being raped is never treated as what it is, and that the relationship between her and Drogo is portrayed as love.

The first two are self-explanatory; the third, of course, is the big thorny problem. Now, I can sort of understand the perspective which argues that Dany is taking control of her sexuality - she comes to enjoy sex and even to initiate and control it at times. There's a reason that such a concept as an 'age of consent' exists - there is an age at which teenagers are genuinely immature and probably shouldn't be making life-changing decisions like, say, things that could get them pregnant.

Now, I understand that in the medieval times like those that this book is based on, girls were getting married and having children a lot earlier, and that people in general were more mature at an early age. However, Dany shows none of that maturity until after she's been with Drogo for weeks - if not months.

When she's married to him, she is if anything unusually innocent for her age. It's a little hard for me to accept the idea that she's taking control of her sexuality when she's so young and clueless that her first sexual experience is a choice only inasmuch as she chooses not to fight back. Not fighting back, by the way, doesn't mean it's not rape, particularly in the situation that Dany is in vastly younger than Drogo, vastly weaker, browbeaten by her abusive brother and told over and over that her obligation is to do whatever her husband wants.

Nor are her later sexual experiences ones of choice; in fact, it is explicitly stated that even when she had horrible saddle sores and could barely walk, she was expected to be available for sex and treated as such.

If anything, her eventual enjoyment of it seems more like a psychological block put up as a survival tactic than genuine pleasure in the act or love for Drogo. Yet, despite the fact that this situation is obviously, beyond a shadow of a doubt, rape, it's never addressed in-text. If anything, it's portrayed as a positive experience for Dany, one that makes her stronger and enables her to stand up for herself. Stupid me; I thought that the cancerous expansion of rape-as-love was limited to abusive jackass love interests in YA paranormal romances; clearly, I was wrong.

It's everywhere, people. We are all completely fucking doomed. Which brings me to one of the other major frustrations I had with this book: the sex. I thought reading some of the V'lane bits of Darkfever while sitting next to my mother on the plane was uncomfortable; to my utter shock, that was nothing compared to reading the sex scenes of this book alone.

No worry about someone looking over my shoulder and reading about MacKayla Lane getting hot and bothered - and yet even more awkward. Well, as one reviewer put it and I wish I could remember who to give them credit , they're written kind of as if they're these tremendous mythic events. I cringe at the very thought of quoting them, but to give you a little idea of what they're like Just to be sure you feel my pain.

This book felt male-oriented in a way that is so painfully forced that it made me distinctly uncomfortable. I don't mean that women can't enjoy it - obviously, as all the reviews I linked back at the top demonstrate, they can and they do. I mean that the book itself felt as if it were written for the most stereotypical male audience imaginable. As Tatiana described it, it reads like a soap opera for men.

Because MEN want lots of violence, sex, swearing by female genitalia, and paper-thin motivations, right? Which is exactly what Martin dishes up. I thought at around the halfway point that I'd finish the book and be able to watch the HBO show to get the rest of the series without suffering through more awkwardly described sex scenes not to mention the rest of it. By the time I finished, though, I had developed such a virulent hatred for this book, its author, and everything related to either of the above that I start grinding my teeth just reading praise for it.

Watching the show would be vastly to my detriment - mostly because neither my hand nor my bank account would do well after I put my fist through the screen of my laptop.

It's more than half the reason he's so beloved. His female characters disdain male attention, are always smarter, faster, deadlier, and braver than any of their male counterparts. Everyone I know had seen and loved the shoe it read and loved the book. I hated it. I expected greatness and got trash. This is in part because I am apothesexual but really? Half of it was just.. Catherine Delorey Thank you so much for writing this review.

I could not agree more. This is one of my least favorite books of all time, and any time someone hears I li Thank you so much for writing this review. Those conversations never end well. Jul 29, karen rated it it was amazing Shelves: icky-sex. Nov 07, Mark Lawrence rated it it was amazing. I rated this in In it's time I actually use my words. Here's my long overdue review of A Game of Thrones. I was looking at the current reviews. Apparently we do. Well, sadly all I have to offer here is a less exciting set of praise fo I rated this in Well, sadly all I have to offer here is a less exciting set of praise for the genius and importance of this book.

The first bit of genius is that on paper GRRM writes in not only the opposite manner to me but in a manner I profess to dislike. Wait … I like how he writes on paper … you know what I mean. Things he does that should annoy me: I Lengthy descriptions of … everything, especially food, clothing, and architecture. Normally I hate wading through that stuff to get at the story. II Large numbers of point of view characters. I normally find this makes each of them rather shallow and stereotyped.

GRRM is magnificent with characters and brings even the throw away non-point of view ones to life. III Huge, expanding story lines. I tend to like some sort of focus but every corner you turn in this series can end up leading you down a seemingly endless rabbit hole of minor noble houses, their retainers, local squabbles, history etc.

For many people, indeed for a decent chunk of a whole generation of fantasy authors, George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones was a step change in the genre. For me and a lot of other authors Martin's work opened our eyes to what felt like a whole different world of what fantasy writing could be, and we've run out into those new territories eager to try to copy not the style or substance, but the quality.

In my youth when we entered a fantasy land we were expected to suspending our belief about magic and alternate worlds, but not only that. They didn't feel like actual regular humans, bound by the same fears, worries, ambitions, aches and pains as you and I - they felt more like actors in roles, cogs in a plot engine, icons and ciphers. They were too good, or too evil. Fantasy had its conventions and we played within them, reader and author exercised a mutual understanding regarding the rules - rather like ancient Greek theatre, or a musical where for no reason the cast can break from the story into a rousing song.

Of course I exaggerate. And this isn't to say that authors didn't weave fascinating and compelling stories within those conventions. The fantasy of the 70s and 80s kept me very happy and some of it was written by writers of surpassing genius. Even so The step I'm talking about may be entirely artificial or demonstrable fact.

It may be that in the 90's when I was reading very little fantasy the genre moved smoothly into what it is now. It may be that GRRM is talked of as a step change by so many simply because his success meant that A Game of Thrones was the first book that fantasy exiles actually picked up after their absence, and thus they saw in it a 'sudden' significant difference Either way, what he did was to present us with real people. I'm not talking about the 'gritty realism' that is of late so hotly debated in some quarters of the interwebs - I'm just talking about the strength of his characterisation, the creation of real people with everyday weaknesses, wants, ambitions, set in a world that feels like it has a genuine past that matters to them, both on the grand and small scales.

What he did drew many people back into the genre, as readers and as writers. His work was both a challenge and an invitation. He showed what fantasy could be.

Real people who didn't carry a particular flaw around like an attribute rolled up in a role-playing game, but who were complex, capable of both good and evil, victims of circumstance, heroes of the moment.

Heroes in gleaming mail could suffer from corns without it being a joke. I don't write anything like George RR Martin. I don't lay claim to any significant portion of his talent. But I do count myself as one of his many inheritors in this game you can inherit without requiring the other person to stop writing!

And what I inherited was the desire if not the ability to put it all on the page. Fantasy no longer feels like an acquired taste, a club where you have to learn the conventions, the forms, what the masks mean, what the short hand is for And I love it.

Join my Patreon Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter prizes View all 49 comments. Oct 30, Miranda Reads rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobook. Okay - I am SO incredibly late to this party but hey, I made it! And the hype was real! Winter is coming. Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark lives with his family in a world where the seasons are thrown completely off - summers last decades, and winters are equally long. His five children, plus his bastard son Jon Snow are on the way back to their home, Winterfell, when they stumble upon and subsequently adopt six direwolf pups the symbol of the Starks , with the albino runt going to John.

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. Upon returning home, King Robert Baratheon, an old friend of Ned, recruits the Lord to replace the adviser to the crown. At first, he was hesitant but upon learning that the Queen Cersei Lannister may be behind the death of the previous adviser, he decides to go in order to protect his friend.

Unfortuntately, before he goes, Bran Ned's youngest son discovers that view spoiler [ the Queen is having an affair with her brother hide spoiler ] which results in Bran becoming crippled. Ned must leave his grievously injured son and travel with Sansa and Arya Ned's daughters to the King's Landing Meanwhile, tensions increase between the Starks and the Lannisters, especially between Joffrey, the crown prince, and the Stark children mount. And tensions further rise when it's discovered that Tyrion Lannister's dagger is the one found near Bran Meanwhile, Jon Snow volunteered to go to the Wall - a barrier surrounding the Seven Kingdoms made of ice an magic - under the impression that it is a brave and noble occupation.

Nothing burns like the cold. After a period of rough adjustment, Jon finds his place among the recruits only to discover something distinctly Other lives beyond these walls.

Fear cuts deeper than swords. Across the way, there is revenge on the air. Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen are the last living Targaryens - the old ruling family before King Robert Baratheon overthrew their father, murdered their family and banished them to poverty. Viserys is dead set on getting his kingdom back, and soon betrothed Daenerys , his thirteen-year-old sister, to Khal Drogo, a nomadic warlord with the promise of an army in exchange and three petrified dragon eggs for Daenerys.

Daenerys is terrified at first, but soon embraces her role as Queen of the nomadic tribes, even finding the courage to stand up to her brother. When Khal Drogo is injuried, Daenerys is forced to make the ultimate decision And, I finally get the hype but gosh dang, this one was a challenge to follow at times.

The plot jumped place to place to place, weaving together such an amazing world in such an exciting way Even then, I was absolutely hooked by the complexity of both the characters themselves and the intricate politics that accompanied them I loved the plot of Daenerys - the way she overcame her situation and ultimately ruled the clan was absolutely enthralling. She was a small part of the overall plot, but I'm so excited to see where her character goes.

The politics, at times, became too much but every time I would get the least bit bored the plot would pick up and there'd be an absolute insane twist.

Such a good one - so excited for the next! Fabulous tone and pacing, good use of emotion. View all 84 comments. There is no middle ground. So in one weekend I finally finished the book I picked up and put down about ten years ago, and watched the final episode of the TV series I have loved for eight years. How odd that the book ended up better than I expected, and the TV show, um Warning: I will be talking about the depiction of rape in this review.

I think I was more ready to commit this time around. I'd already watched th "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. I'd already watched the show and become invested in the characters, so reading pages about them didn't seem so unattractive. I think it's quite well-written, especially the dialogue, which is where Martin shines. It's also just entertaining for the most part. The bloody vicious backstabbing kind of entertainment that, apparently, I do like.

It's also an amazing feat of world building. I was blown away by the amount of thought and detail that has gone into this-- and it's just the first book. Martin has considered details that would never have even crossed my mind - little sayings, folktales and quirks particular to the people of certain regions or certain houses - but it all serves to make a very rich and complex world that is all the more believable for it. He has created a whole new universe from scratch, one with thousands of years of history, and many different peoples and cultures.

It's breathtaking, honestly. Unfortunately, it's not all good. Saying nothing of the show's finale, there are many strong and smart women in this series with fantastic story arcs, and yet the book and show cannot shake some of its misogyny. Tatiana covered this well. I got further than I remembered. It was that moment during Dany and Drogo's wedding when a woman is raped. It wasn't the rape in itself. Though of course I find rape deeply disturbing, I also know that it has been a horrible but true reality in many wars and societies.

Showing that it happens does not seem unrealistic. What I found truly awful about this one scene, though, was the way the woman was barely described as a person. We don't know what her name was, what she looked like, what her reaction was, or what her fate was.

This woman being raped was so throwaway, with the focus of the scene being the Dothraki who were raping her and fighting over her. The only thing that kept me reading this time was knowing that there are so many amazing female characters in this series who are treated with empathy and - for the most part - respect by the author.

It seemed like a very odd decision to have year olds leading wars and revolutions. This would be a good series if you're a fan of gory historical fiction. You know the kind with bloody battles, political upheaval, and despicable people? It's like that, but with dragons. Blog Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube View all 45 comments. Sep 01, MJ Nicholls marked it as getting-even. We HATE this beyond belief. View all 33 comments. I tried reading this a long time ago and gave up very quickly.

I know many love it but I think from the start I knew it wasn't for me. Looooong fantasy series never have been, for some reason. And, even though I will never return to this series, can we all just take a minute to admit that how I spent my weekend is kinda cool And a sneaky bonus for Torchwood fans! Just so you know, all the cool people totally close I tried reading this a long time ago and gave up very quickly.

Just so you know, all the cool people totally close their eyes during at least one photo truefact View all 78 comments. Shelves: fantasy-scifi , reading-it-again , the-sweeping-epic , my-very-best-reads , owned , books-reviewed. I've read over a different fantasy authors in my time. So, when I came back to fantasy I read the usual: Goodkind, Jordan, etc. Here are the reasons to choose GRRM. After reading this over and over, it gets old.

Or, a hero does die but magic brings him back. This sometimes carries to minor characters where even they may not die, but most fantasy authors like to kill them off to show that some risked the adventure and perished. Unlike other fantasy novels, one side, usually the villain, is stupid or not too bright. Interesting tidbit is that you get their perception of events or truths.

But, if you pay attention, someone else will mention a different angle of truth in the story that we rarely see in other novels. Lastly and most importantly, GRRM doesn't try to tell us which person is right in their perception. He purposelly leaves it vague so that we are kept guessing. We never get the entire story but only bits and pieces; something that other fantasy authors could learn from to heighten suspense.

Almost flawless flow. What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love.

That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. My mother died birthing me, and he's never been sure. Most of them are. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king. Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north.

This is one of the reasons why each novel is between pages. This is especially true of Jaime in book three. But, if that isn't your style, you shouldn't be reading it. He kills off several, not just one, so be warned. I suggest Feist or Goodkind or Dragonlance if you want a more straight forward story with strong archetypes.

Some are still going on; some have been resolved; others have been created and are moving on. You wont' get much of this in GRRM with the exception of one or two characters. In that case, look for shorters works as this is biiig. View all 81 comments. View all 8 comments. Apr 07, NReads rated it it was amazing. You can find the full review and more about this book on my blog! These are some things you get from reading this book: Smart You can find the full review and more about this book on my blog!

View all 24 comments. Shelves: favorites. A totally magnificent start to a seminal epic fantasy series. Upon finishing the A totally magnificent start to a seminal epic fantasy series.

Fast forward to now, years have passed since my first attempt at reading A Game of Thrones. Not so much. I have watched all the episodes in TV shows, and I pretty much know what the general plotline of the main series is all about. A Song of Ice and Fire achieved something much greater instead; it has practically shaped modern fantasy. Instead of writing a high fantasy comprised of magical battles and creatures, Martin did the opposite; magic and fantastical beings were relatively minimal, and unbelievably, he successfully nailed it.

A Game of Thrones is not a story of good versus evil; it depicted a realistically grim story where the characters were morally flawed, grey, and the evilest beings in the world may not be The Others or dragons, but human after all. Martin explored this deeply and brilliantly within the bloody dispute and politics over the Iron Throne—the seat of the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. And get this, the majority of these authors claimed Martin as one of their main inspirations.

This meme compared George R. Martin to Steven Erikson. Sometimes, I even eye-rolled when he killed off a character in the second half of the series; Erikson had an obsession with this particular plot device, and I was proven right over and over again. What exactly is the biggest reason to read A Game of Thrones after watching the first season of the TV show?

However, I was simply too immersed in this read, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of reading it. Every character in the book was extremely well-developed. Reading A Game of Thrones brought a clearer and better understanding of the characterizations. Martin colored his characters with distinctive voices terrifically that every single dialogue and action felt like an addictive dance of inspiring and memorable words.

Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you. I do, however, believe that the complex and sprawling world that Martin created is somehow quite accessible to many fantasy readers.

A Game of Thrones is an absolutely stunning beginning to an incomplete legendary fantasy series. But I doubt I need to; practically every fantasy reader these days knows about the existence of A Game of Thrones. The worldwide fame of this series speaks for itself already; quality stays. I recommend this novel with all my heart to every epic fantasy reader.

The intricacies of the plot, characterizations, and world-building are worth your utmost attention; the maximum depth of them can only be achieved by reading the book, nowhere else. This edition is beautiful; each chapter begins with a black and white illustration done by highly praised artists in the industry. But this is also the main problem of this edition. Not to mention that a lot of the colored artworks are placed on the wrong page.

Because of all these, I think it would be best if a complete newcomer to the series read the text-only edition. Pictures are taken from her Twitter account and official website. You can order the book from: Blackwells Free International shipping You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel Notions I also have a Booktube channel Special thanks to my Patrons on Patreon for giving me extra support towards my passion for reading and reviewing!

View all 47 comments. Jan 17, Sean Barrs rated it it was amazing Shelves: fantasy , love-and-romance , 5-star-reads. Okay so I read it again. Plus, it gives me chance to share this review once more and tell my personal reading journey to any followers I might have picked up since Original Review A Game of Thrones changed my life. Prior to reading it I had no interest in books whatsoever. I was on course to be a forensic psychologist; however, I began reading this wonderful s Okay so I read it again.

I was on course to be a forensic psychologist; however, I began reading this wonderful series. Suffice to say, it threw me of course ever so slightly: I am now studying a degree in English Literature. One day I'd like to teach it. A Game of Thrones kindled a fire within me that erupted into a love of books.

I began to read other novels across the genres. I then went onto other fantasy novels and historical fiction, which distracted me from my degree work. I found myself reading Tolkien and Ken Follet when I should have been doing my degree prep. I then went onto classic authors such as Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Books became my life. I now spend countless hours reading literature of all varieties from Austen to Shakespeare, from Phillip Pullman to Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, I find myself immersed in the plots, sympathising with characters and becoming engrossed in book after book. A Game of Thrones is not the best fantasy novel that has been written nor is it my all time favourite novel or series, but, it will always be something special to me because it was the first book that turned me into a reader; thus, I'll read it once a year, every year, to honour it.

Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones: Season 5 Review. By Matt Fowler Posted: 21 Jun pm. Warning: Full spoilers for Game of Thrones: Season 5 follow Even before Game of Thrones' fifth season began, many fans knew this would be the trickiest road, to date, to navigate.

The last two Song of Ice and Fire books of the five released thus far were A: not considered the best of the pack, B: filled with quite a few new main characters, and C: crippled by a weird, fold-over timeline that made it so that almost every big, shocking moment happened at the very end of the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons. Truth be told, these two tomes were one book that Martin strangely separated into two by characters, not chronology. So what were the solutions?

Firstly, a lot of the new characters introduced in the books were eliminated or delayed and their stories were handed off to existing characters, many of whom had storylines and arcs that dwindled dramatically in the books at this point. And secondly, new off-page moments were created to keep the thrills going throughout the season, so that these 10 episodes didn't wind up being completely end-loaded though that sort of happened anyhow. Cersei and Jaime Lannister engage in an incestuous relationship.

Tyrion falls in love with a courtesan. Barely in her teens, Daenerys Targaryen enters into a sexual relationship with an older man before marrying him and becoming pregnant with his child. Sometimes such encounters are described in graphic detail.

Think of a swear word, and it's probably used in A Song of Fire and Ice at some point, from "damn" and "bastard" to "c--t" and "f--k. Martin , of which only the first five volumes have been published as of April Set in a magical version of the Middle Ages, it chronicles the exploits of the Stark, Baratheon, Lannister, and Targaryen families as they struggle for power in a deadly civil war. Violence percolates through nearly every scene, including sword fights, beheadings, rapes, wolf attacks, death by molten gold, and more.

Sexual content includes an incestuous relationship between a brother and a sister, the marriage of an older man to a teen girl, and a prince's love affair with a courtesan. The language is predictably rough, ranging from "hell" and "damn" to "f--k" and "c--t. Add your rating See all 14 parent reviews. Add your rating See all 51 kid reviews. After his predecessor is murdered, Eddard Stark reluctantly agrees to serve as "the Hand" to his good friend, King Robert Baratheon.

His honorable decision has far-reaching consequences for his family. After King Robert dies, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are plunged into civil war, thanks to the plotting of the Lannisters, and the Stark children and their mother are scattered in all directions.

Each must find a new way to survive in a rapidly changing world, even as magic grows stronger, a new peril approaches the Wall that protects the kingdoms, and the threat of the ultimate weapon -- tame dragons -- grows in the East.

Martin is a master plotter, moving his huge cast of characters from one harrowing situation to the next and keeping readers anxious and surprised again and again. Some of the first five volumes work better than others A Feast for Crows leaves many readers disappointed , but all add new elements that only increase the complex richness of the narrative.

This book series is certainly not for sensitive readers. The language is rough, the violence is brutal, and the sexual content sometimes veers into the perverse including brother-sister incest.

But readers with the maturity to handle adult material will be amply rewarded. Martin is a serious storyteller of the first order, and A Song of Fire and Ice is his masterwork. Families can talk about why fantasy sagas have become so popular in books, in movies, and on TV. What aspects of them appeal most to readers and viewers? Why do some writers choose to include profanity in their dialogue and descriptions? Does it add a sense of realism to emotionally charged situations? What role does violence play in the story?

Would some of the characters be better off if they had not resorted to violence so quickly? Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners. See how we rate. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization, earns a small affiliate fee from Amazon or iTunes when you use our links to make a purchase.

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