Book Beginnings: A Clash of Kings

Every Friday Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays. What you do is share the opening line(s) of the book you are currently reading and briefly discuss what you think about the opening line or the book or whatever else inspires you. Make sure to share your entry with Rose City Reader and in my comments below.

Here's my book beginning:

"The maester stood on the windswept balcony outside his chambers. It was here the ravens came, after long flight. Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls of the ancient fortress."

-A Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin

Amber at A Morose Bookshelf is reading A Clash of Kings as well, and she beat me to the punch with her blog post, so I decided to share the next lines of the Prologue. If you want to see the first lines you'll have to visit Amber's blog.

These lines are a good example of the details Martin likes to include in his novels (droppings on the gargoyle statues). A Clash of Kings starts off quickly, after the cliffhanger endings of A Game of Thrones, but slows down a bit before picking up again. I'm at the halfway point and some exciting things have happened. The very first lines of the novel as you'll find in Amber's post, about the comet, are important because as you read along you find that everyone has a different idea about what the comet represents, and everyone thinks it is a sign that favors them. Of course, not everyone can be held in equal favor when their goals oppose one another.