The Most Dangerous Game

I recently read A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire series. For those of you who aren’t familiar with these books, A Song of Ice and Fire recounts, in harrowing detail, the battle for the Iron Throne of a medieval fantasy world called the Seven Kingdoms. It is a grotesque and pernicious tale of treachery and lies, where greedy egotists manipulate the weak and unwitting, often turning them against each other, in order to consolidate their own wealth and power. It is tough slogging to be sure, and not for the faint of heart, but it is also an allegorical tale of the universal battle of good against evil. And there is always hope.

Normally I don’t read such books, but I took them up as a means of escaping, if only for an hour a day, from the dangerous and depressing truths I was uncovering about the real world while researching Little Black Lies — about how the very essence of Canadian society is being dismantled, piece by piece, by Big Oil and its faithful servants in Ottawa and Edmonton. It wasn’t until today that I realized how Martin’s exploration of the abuse of power was playing out before my eyes right here in Canada, in the battle over the future of the tarsands and a nation.

Read the rest in today’s issue of FFWD.