What can I say? I don't think words can describe how quickly and absolutely I fell in love with these books and the world G.R.R. Martin has created. I devoured all of the books in a short space of time, and am impatiently waiting for the 6th. It took me a few chapters to get used to the style of writing, but the use of the omniscient narrator and the multiple point of views really sets these books above the rest, in my humble opinion. I'm not a big fantasy fan, and I'd never heard of Martin unti...

If FEAST OF THE CROWS were the first title of the Song of Ice and Fire Series, I'd never have read the quadrilogy. The previous sequels were on the edge of your seat exciting and hard to put down. FEAST OF THE CROWS is the carrion of the lot. Characters of import that you'd expect to see, such as Tyrion, Lady Catelyn, Bran and Daenerys Targaryen were MIA, replaced by long-winded, minor characters, who are long in discussion and short on action. For the first time in the series, my eyes glazed ov...

The writing, setting, and intrigue are fantastic. However, Martin methodically kills off every "good" and likable character. We're left with a work that is, at best, grey... And at worst, one full of black characters.I have read and loved many bleak books (The Road, Black Company) but no author seems to take pleasure I killing off characters like Martin.

I am given to understand that G.R.R.Martin is an accomplished and beloved author. And I admit that these four books are the only G.R.R.Martin books I have read. So take this review with that in mind.G.R.R.M. appears to have no concept of formulating a story arc around a central character (or characters) around which the plot (or plots) revolves, spanning problem to resolution and ultimately reaching some sort of conclusion. Instead, he seems extremely fond of creating lists of extremely detailed...

This author has been compared to Tolkein. Not even close. Tolkein wrote great characters, good and evil and in between. This guy makes up and kills off people so fast all you know about everyone is that they are "craven" or a "raper". The violence and raping is an overwhelming part of this book, not the story of the characters in the book. I am a persistent almost obsessive reader and I was mildly interested in a few of the characters so I actually finished all 4 of these books. I will not be re...

Just finished Storm of Swords. WOW!Never have I read a series with more intricate layers of the past affecting the present plot lines. The past is very slowly revealed to us, and motives and explanations take a while to surface. I can't believe we still don't know the full back story by the 3rd book, nor do we even have the events of the first book adequately explained by the third book. (But we're getting there...)Never have I ever read a book where the character's wounds actually affect them f...

8/19/17 - Rereading for the second time, starting with Volume 1, _A Game of Thrones_. Following comments were from my first reading in 2012.* * * * *I loved the mini-series, and the books are exactly like it. Dialogue for the most part is verbatim. Sooo exciting!Wow, so good. First volume was finished 7/12/12. Now I'm starting on the next volume. The first was over 800 pages long, and the second is over 900 pages. I hope I live long enough to read all of these.8/28/12 - Finished the second volum...

"A Song of Ice and Fire" is well written. The problem is: the "evil" people are the heroes and the "good" people fail and die. I see enough of that in the real world, I don't want to encounter the same depressing state of affairs in my fantasy worlds, too. Also, it sets a bad moral example encouraging readers to be morally corrupt and behave in a way that ultimately destroys societies. (I guess that's why Hollywood has leaped on the chance to make a movie series from it).Another issue: while the...

Finally, after three years of perseverance. I finally finished the first four books of A Song of Ice and Fire also known as the Game of Thrones TV series on HBO.Unlike most readers on Goodreads, I am not a fast reader (unless a book is incredible). Let me tell you, when I started with book one: Game of Thrones, I hated it! The book bored me to tears and I kept on saying to myself, "There’s MORE?"Whenever I’d see the name Catelyn pop up in a chapter. I died a little on the inside wonder why I was...

Ok. Read the 4 books. Liked it less the more I read. The only people of virtue are destroyed one after the other. Everyone else is corrupt and SO vulgar. There are about 100 too many characters and I got bored with all the minute details about each unimportant one.... When you have to have a 30 page compendium of names and allegiances at the back of the book to make sense of it all, that's just too many... Sufficiently curious to see how it all ends, but will be checking them out at the library....

the characters are shallow and hollow. they are presented with only one or two qualities and those are pushed at every opportunity. sam the coward, cersei the crazy bitch, ned the honourable, etc. Or you have others that are talked up a lot but dont present any of the qualities they are alleged to have, like tywin. the main plot mover is the death of characters and introduction of new ones which really gets old. and some of the deaths are really lazily done. birthing shadows to kill off some peo...

truly enjoyable read, some books are better than others but that can be expected. i hate reading about Sansa and cat they are so boring and really hard to get through. It's a huge book series with so many characters and people to like and dislike. my only dislike of the books are a lot of the stories are taken from history or other authors work and that takes away from the story.

After putting off starting this series for a month or so (I mean, really, these books are WHOPPERS), I decided I was finally ready to give it a whirl. Now, with more than half of the first book (A Game of Thrones: Song of Fire and Ice) under my belt, I say, "Where have you been hiding, my dear? It seems I've been waiting for you my whole life!" Like any new romance, it is constantly on my mind, and I find myself wishing there were more hours in a day, so it could fill those too. I read when I wa...

As a woman, the first several chapters of ASOFAI were very disturbing to me; the lack of a strong female character and the violence against women made me nearly put the books down.I'm glad I didn't.Martin invests himself in every character he writes, and it shows. The men and women in the series show strength, resourcefulness and really grow as characters, and to give up early is to miss the process of maturation the characters themselves go through, especially Danaerys. Dani begins the series a...

I admit it, I started watching the HBO series first, fell in love with the story and decided I had to read the books. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time for fun reading (I teach) but I'm still trekking my way through what is proving to be a hard book to put down. Not sure yet which I enjoy more since Peter Dinklage's interpretation of the Tyrion Lannister character is SO incredibly good (he has definitely earned all the awards he has been winning for the role) ... and then there are the im...

Nearly five thousand pages and Cersei Lannister is still not dead.

It feels a little insane to review this entire series with one swing, especially considering that each book is like 800 pages, depending on the book and the format. But they are really intended as one big piece of work and I don't feel like writing a review of each separately anyway, so here goes (for the record I have read all 5, though for the first 3 books it was about 10 years ago).In the 1990's, disgruntled TV writer George R R Martin decided to shake free of the budgetary restraints and ce...

Dear George R.R. Martin (if that's your real name),It is known: You are one sick, sick mofo. With "A Song of Ice and Fire," you have fleshed out and made explicit everything that was probably happening behind the scenes in "Lord of the Rings," the night being dark and full of terrors and all. The things that tweedy, Norse epic poem-lovin' J.R.R. Tolkien probably didn't even think about. The things that probably DID get written about in the early days of BBS slash fiction. Which you yourself were...

I feel like this series speaks for itself. I mean, there has to be a reason over a million people have read it and it’s still one of the bestselling series out there. The complexity and characters and diversity of the world George creates is simply unexplainable. The whole thing is magical and ridiculously overwhelming in the best way. I know everyone is upset with his delay in releasing the 2 final books in the series but once you read these, you can understand the time and effort it must take

*Spoilers in review are indicated*A Song of Ice and Fire is a complicated series. The differences between the first and last books are so vast it's almost impossible the review the series in one singular thought, with one cohesive rating. The analogy I've always used when comparing the series to someone who hasn't read it is the first book is a bullet, the last a painstakingly slow bulldozer. The first book I turned page after page, not putting it down, reading 600 or more pages in a day, and fi...