Customer Reviews

George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows (Song of Ice & Fire)

5 star:		(477)
4 star:		(90)
3 star:		(62)
2 star:		(37)
1 star:		(136)

 

 

I stumbled across this page and saw a handful of 1-star reviews that left me puzzled. Then I realized that all of them were regarding the supposedly-poor quality of the Kindle version. Well, I can't tell you anything about the Kindle version. I'm one of those old-school guys, so I bought the paperback set, and it's undoubtedly worth the money. Obviously, the content is 5-star worthy (see the reviews for each individual book), so I'm going to limit my review to the box set itself. This set contains each of the first four books in the Song of Ice and Fire Series (that's A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows), with all-new cover artwork. Out of all the versions released, this is the most visually enrapturing artwork yet. The novels are brightly colored and contain designs that are brilliant in their simplicity. The outer box contains some high-quality shots from the upcoming HBO series.

Highly recommended for:
-Someone who's never read A Song of Ice and Fire. This is the place to start, and a great value too (4 loooong books for $23).
-Longtime fans whose old paperback copies are worn from reading and re-reading in anticipation of A Dance With Dragons.
-Hardcore series collectors who want to own the best versions.

I lent my older copies of this series to my ex-girlfriend, and since I never got them back, I decided that this box set was a worthy purchase. I'm so satisfied with it, I can honestly say that I don't miss the books I lost, not even one bit. I've posted some pictures of the box set so you can decide for yourself if you like its look enough to drop the money.

I'm not sure why everyone is complaining about the formatting of this bundle -- my copy has a TOC at the front with links to each book and has a separate TOC for the chapters of each book -- so it seems like everyone else's probably has this too. When you open the bundle for the first time on your Kindle, it doesn't take you to the actual beginning of the book (I've found this to be true of basically all Kindle books -- what it considers "the beginning" skips the cover, table of contents, forwards, etc.). If you use "Go to" on the menu and then choose "Cover" (again, something I do at the start of every Kindle book), you will be brought to a picture of the box set. Three page turns brings you to the Contents page, which has links to the cover pages of all 4 books, as well as the bundle cover, title page, and the bonus material at the end (including the excerpt from A Dance with Dragons). If you don't choose a link from this page and instead turn 4 or 5 more pages or so (through the title and copyright pages), you'll come to the TOC for the first book. I would think that it probably doesn't give TOC as a choice on the Go To menu because there is more than one table of contents to choose from!

In addition, as you can see on the bottom progress bar, the start of each book is marked with a dot on the bar. So you can judge your progress through a particular book by seeing how far away you are from the next dot. Also, from the cover pages in the beginning, if you hit the right arrow on the directional pad, you will be taken right to the cover page of the next book. Hitting the left arrow takes you back to the start of the previous book. This will work from any cover page. If you are in the text of the book itself, hitting the left or right arrow takes you to the start of the next or previous chapter. If you have a Kindle 2, you would push the 5-way controller left or right.

I haven't begun reading this bundle yet (though I have read all the books previously -- twice), so I can't comment on the text of the actual bundle -- though of course the books themselves are fantastic! I have browsed through it, though, so I can tell you that the maps are all there as well as picture covers for each book as well as a picture of the box set. The beginning pages of each chapter all have an illustrated border at the top, and the text itself looks great (no problems with text formatting that I can tell).

I also can't complain about the price, since I preordered this for $17.99, which was a great deal for all 4 books. I would agree that the price is kind of high now, but it's really pretty much the same as the 4 books separately in Kindle editions. As it says at the top of the product page, the price was set by the publisher -- not Amazon.

So, in summary, I really don't see the problems that the other reviewers are pointing out. If you are wanting all 4 books for your Kindle, either because you haven't read them before or because you want your next re-read to be in Kindle format, this is a great way to get them!

Edit 3/31/11:
Amazon has updated this book set, and there is now a link in the Go To menu for table of contents, which brings you to the page at the front with clickable links to each book. This page was already there, but now you can get to it from the Go To menu instead of having to go to Cover and page forward.

I received this book set the day it came out. Love this series! I would recommend looking at book #3 "A Storm of Swords" because I am having to replace mine as a result of publisher error. It is missing pages 561-592 and it has a double inclusion of pages 593-624. Make sure that your book set doesn't have the same publisher error! Otherwise, I am very happy with this purchase.

Especially Angela Thiesfeldt and various others claiming that there's no call for a 1-star review.

You may have not have noticed, but this is not a literature-board. This is a marketplace. More precisely: amazon marketplace.

Here, we do not review an author's skill with prose, metaphors, worldbuilding etc. - here, we rate a product. This consists, yes, of the author's skill with her/his work - but in addition to that: with the form, in which the product is presented. So far, this product -in it's various presentations- has the following issues:

Book version:

- pages are missing
- pages are misplaced
- pages have been cut so unprofessionally that the two bottom-lines are missing for several chapters in a row
- the binding breaks
- the font is so small, that people with imperfect eyesight have trouble reading

Kindle version:

- pages cannot be tagged
- ToCs cannot be accessed for every volume, reverts to the first ever chosen ToC seem to be the norm
- locations cannot be indexed/re-addressed
- search does seem to give out when directed over all volumes


As far as this special product is concerned, these are serious issues. Every one of them. Please remember, all the people you chastise, are PAYING customers.

It does not really matter, whether you have to read the 'American Tokien' on a book missing pages or trying to get a sandwich made on another product sold by amazon and failing.

This particular product seems to be sloppily made and lacking in quality.

Paying customers are well in their right to complain.


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I am editing this on July 15th, 2011.

First: I thank all of you for your valuable comments. It has been a pleasure reading them.

Second: I gather from your replies, that there's a serious mix-up with reviews "on content" and reviews on "product quality". I can see (on a daily basis :( ) that this is a problem; still: my opinion stands: this here is a market-place and we rate products, not author's qualities.

If you have any idea, how we could get amazon to either separate the topics (and thereby the reviews) or make it otherwise available that customers can voice their complaints about mere "technical" issues, please let me know. I'll try any way you can come up with.

Still on the first book. Very absorbing and all. But this particular printing - the physical book itself - is ridiculously poor quality. Without even breaking the binding, individual pages came loose and fell out! The entire cover came off completely, and the binding broke in half. A brand new paperback - pages falling out?!? Totally unacceptable quality.

Terrible book quality. Missing pages, issues with binding. Worst of all, the first book has pages 300-370, twice. Was reading through it and realized that it went from 470 to 310 - 370, back to 570. annoying and probably the worst printing of a book I've ever seen.

I had to ask for a refund on this!! This bundle format it's very bad, I cannot chose the book I want to read, and there's no main table of content, it's just one huge Big Book all messed up.

I'll be getting each book individually.

I was willing to forgive the outrageous price for the four-book Kindle bundle due to the convenience of not having to cart an enormous paperback with me ... but there's no convenience at all in trying to read the Kindle edition of the bundle. To start, the maps are tiny. More importantly, the menu does not work. When I've tried to bring up the contents, it takes me to the Book 4 contents. "Beginning" takes me to the beginning of Book 4. And then, of course, it's almost impossible to find the "location" I was reading because my "last page read" is wrong. Finally, since all four books are in one file, it's impossible to loan them one at a time. And who could read the whole 4,000-page file in the two-week loan period? I'm really tempted to return this and just borrow the books from a friend--the price is right and I know the "technology" will work!

So far, the books are great! The TV series got me hooked, and the books do not disappoint. Unfortunately this box set does. Avoid it. Some of the books are fine, but the pages are lopped off for some, rendering the third book in the set unreadable for me. What is the point of buying a book you cannot read, however well written? Get another copy.

I agree a Kindle is much easier to carry than even one book. However, $10 more than Costco for the bundle and only $1 less for (e.g.) Game of Thrones is appalling to me. The cost of delivering a Kindle (or any e-reader) book has got to be a fraction of the cost of printing/distributing a physical book - yet consumers are not seeing much in the way of savings - even after spending $100+ on a device. Something needs to change.

Also, very disappointed to hear about the formatting/access issues.