A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

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Submitted by garion 
(Sep 15, 2010)

George R.R. Martin was doing a HBO interview and he said his books are for adults. That why some kids and very young people don't like his books. Most adults love his books because we know the good guys don't always win. The bad guys wins just as much as the good guys in real life. And we know that everyone who start off good don't always stay good and everyone who start off bad don't always stay bad. And NO one but God himself is completely good. That's what I love about Martins books. The Heroes don't always die a heroes death. Just like in real life. Thousands of soldiers (true heroes) most of the time don't die heroically. They die from roadside bombs or freely fire or just fall off their tank and break their neck. When I read a book, I like to know that no character is safe. It's no excitement if you know who's going to win... That's what make sports so popular. There is always a favorite but we all root for the underdog...

The most important part of any book for me is the relation of me as the reader to the characters in the book. Characters may be described a little flat in books, a little two dimensional, but in order for me to like a book I must like at least a few characters. Cheer them on. Be happy when they are, suffer with them through the bad times, cry if they are killed, cheer those who are left alive on, and so forth, until the book's end.

George Martin has a funny way of killing any character I even remotely started to like. After he killed the last person I liked for no good reason, I thought to myself, why bother? There isn't a single character left there I could get interested in, to follow his/her path, so why bother reading on? Who am I suppose to cheer for? The bad guys? Who cheers for the bad guys anyway?

This is one fantasy series I have never finished reading, nor do I intend to. This book is for people with no empathy, little or no ability to relate to another being, who like blood and sex and cheer for the victory of destruction. It's sad to see how many of them there are.

all i can say is that george rr martin is up with the absolute best like R Feist,Steven Ericksson,Tad williams, R jordan and yes not a critics favourite but one of mine Terry goodkind (tolkien is nothing compared to this lot) martin is possibly one of the best i have read up to now it excited me all the way through its a lustful dark but still colourful book super fantastic DEFINATLEY No 1 at the moment looking forward to the hbo series due out in 2011 a must read!

all i can say is that george rr martin is up with the absolute best like R Feist,Steven Ericksson,Tad williams, R jordan and yes not a critics favourite but one of mine Terry goodkind (tolkien is nothing compared to this lot) martin is possibly one of the best i have read up to now it excited me all the way through its a lustful dark but still colourful book super fantastic DEFINATLEY No 1 at the moment looking forward to the hbo series due out in 2011 a must read!

I SO very much have to agree with the very first poster. I too thought the first book was very good indeed. It definitely warranted reading of the second, or so I thought. The only thing is, that by the time I reached the middle to last part of the second I was beginning to become disenchanted.

While for the most part well-written, it was getting pretty boring and implausible in that although (of course) you know you are reading a fictional series, you still expect it to have somewhat of a basis in reality, and to be honest, it seemed very unrealistic to me that almost every single good guy, good / better characters in the book get killed, die, have the most unfortunate series of events befall them (yes, even for a work of fiction) while the 'bad' guys just meander about getting new characters to be bad to.

Despite all this, I also picked up the third book, thinking that the author may have just wanted to drag out the series for more money and that the second book was just an older but okay-tasting snack to tide you over until a nice meal is in front of you. With this in mind, the third book was even worse! Did anyone ever tell this guy that good guys can win, at least every once in a while? Did anyone ever tell him that not everyone is evil and that evil characters should not ALWAYS win ... I mean at least not in a book that is meant to keep this reader interested.

Finally, as the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you; foll me twice ... yup! You got it! I picked up the fourth book and here is where I had to draw the line. It became unbearable to just re-read the same things without ever really moving forward or moving toward a satisfactory feeling of having been at least a little fulfilled. Then, the biggest slap was the closing statements by the author (and I paraphrase): "Hey fools, wait a minute. I know some of you may be saying “Wait a minute, wait a damn minute - I just read four immensely idiotic books and the author is milking them and yet ... where is this chracater, or this one, or that other one? WHAT HAPPENED??? That can’t be all of it. . . . Well, no. There’s more to come. Another book as big as this one ..." I felt like taking a plane to George RR Martin's hometown and playing with his TV in that I would turn it off before any program or movie he was watching could end, so he too would be wondering "hey, what the heck just happened"?

Needless to say, not one more penny from me nor another hour wasted on this series. In fact, I found this webpage by doing a serch for "a song of fire and ice stupid".

Save yourself the effort.