PLEASE PUT PLOT DETAILS IN SPOILER TAGS!
Okay, I just finished the first book and I've seen half the Game of Thrones TV series, so now I'm only 4 books and 5 TV episodes behind the rest of the world.
My take so far: The appellation "Harry Potter for grown-ups" is accurate, imo. J.K. Rowling is not the world's greatest writer, but she created a world that's absolutely absorbing. Martin is also not the world's greatest writer -- he tends to overexplain one minute and then cram a handful of crucial details into offhand dialogue the next, and he could stand a thesaurus (if I had to hear about this one more @#$% time -- ) Daenerys doing something "protectively" about her "soft swell"
But he's got two big things going for him. One is the realism of all the intrigues -- so far, nothing's come across as arbitrary; the tangle of personal relationships, group and individual goals and ideals, big and small deceptions, and logic overruling emotions (or vice versa) has been entirely authentic to me. The other is that there are almost no clear good guys and bad guys. Nearly every "bad" guy has some admirable or even likeable quality, and every "good" guy has some great flaw or awful secret. E.g., no matter how much you hate the Lannisters, you can't help but root for Tyrion a little bit. And
even though Ned tries so freakin' hard to be the good guy and do the right thing, he's so persistent and naive about it that he blatantly endangers his family and eventually gets himself killed.
What do you think? Are you reading the books or watching the TV show? How do you like it so far?
