I want to find a book with a title similar to Game of Thrones, but not the one by Martin, I know there is a way to search on google with a glyph signifying not to include a term, like “game of thrones” %martin, with the thingy in place of the percent sign.
Help =)
I use a minus sign when I want to do that. -Martin
Well it sort of worked, but not entirely.
mrAru mentioned he had read a novel called Game of Thrones written in the years before about 92-93 not by Martin, and we were wondering what it was - all we can find online now is the Martin/HBO stuff.
I did Game of Throne -martin -hbo - television and it still pulled up nothing but ice and fire books, merchandise, hbo crap and such.
Le Sigh.
Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for “Game of Thrones” doesn’t have any mention of anything other than derivative works - nothing predating A Song of Ice and Fire. That’s hardly definitive, of course, but it’s suggestive. I personally suspect mrAru is misremembering something. Either the title or themes were similar and he’s conflating his memories of the book with the later “Game of Thrones” franchise, or he’s misremembering when he first encountered Martin’s work, and is misremembering it as an earlier unrelated novel.
In any event, without more information, I doubt Google or similar searches are going to be useful - anything with “Game of Thrones” or similar is going to be swamped by references to Martin’s work.
I was wondering if it was something by Saberhagen.
The Color of Magic, The Hero and the Crown, The Mists of Avalon, Pawn of Prophecy, Daughter of the Empire, and Master of the Five Magics are some titles that come up when I search on “fantasy books of the 1980s”. Pick a time period X and search on “fantasy books of X”. See if anything mentioned sounds right.
Book of Swords-speaking of Saberhagen, *The Belgariad or The Mallorean by David and Liegh Eddings *. The Belgariad would be the closest IME.
I will make the suggestions to him. He is the one that brought up the pre 92-93 reading of a book with the title of Game of Thrones, he said he picked it out of the book locker on the boat, so who knows where it came from [paperbacks being so damned ephemeral, might only be able to find it in a publishers back catalog somewhere. Daw maybe?]
But do we know the book in question was fantasy?
Try to get him to remember how big the book was. Was it normal sized or doorstopper? That can help a lot with fantasy.
(Note that these are names of series, not individual books).
A Google Advanced Book Search for books with ‘game’ and ‘throne’ in the title, published prior to 1996 turns up absolutely nothing.
The first volume of Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series I mentioned above is called The Dragonbone Chair. Chair=Throne, maybe?
Gameplayers of Zan?
Does MrAru remember any plot details at all?
He says SF not fantasy, hardback which was unusual for the book locker, he vaguely remembers in a group of city states a number of families were vying for overall control of the confederation, one protagonist was crippled and used a float chair.
He’s not thinking of Dune is he? Though the floating throne was only in the movie, not the books.
Nope, definitely not Dune. It was very specifically a longer book title that he says was A Game of Thrones.
He did add after about half an hour of thinking that it was similar to Italian city states, with the manuvering being political and financial rather than military fighting.
The more I hear about the book, the more I want to read it.
Could the A Game of Thrones part be perhaps a subtitle? You know, the thing like Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates?
Thanks. Doesn’t ring a bell with me, unfortunately, but I’ll think more about it.
The Snow Queen, The Player of Games, Shards of Honor, The Peace War, Lord Valentine’s Castle, God Emperor of Dune, and The Sword of the Lictor are some titles that come up when I search on “science fiction books of the 1980s”.
Given what we know, I think your list has two probable matches, with my first being Lord Valentine’s Castle, and God Emperor of Dune being (a distant) second. LVC has the more fractured government, definitely with Italian-style city states, and the Pontifex in a life support throne/chair. Lot’s of political (and quasi-mystical) efforts with only a short military effort at the conclusion. It does have an element of political family fighting that leads to the action of the book, but it isn’t central to the actual story. I wouldn’t personally consider it similar to Game of Thrones, but it matches the vague memories @aruvqan dug out of his friend.
GEoD is a weaker match, but does include multiple factions (although in no way city states) trying to manipulate all parties involved, and a float platform (and float chair), with political, scientific (first gen Ixian no-globes), and financial manipulation, but . . . . absolutely more of a stretch.