A Dance With Dragons And Dwarves And Daggers

Yay, boo, yay, boo, that is my feeling on finishing A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, book #5 in A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Yay 'cause I finally got to catch up and know what everybody else knows, boo 'cause now I have to wait for a zillion years with everybody else for the next book to come out.  At over 1500 pages this was another long read, but went by much quicker then A Feast for Crows, but still not as awesome as the first three books.  I will try and sum up per character as best I can then ramble for a while, you ready?  Great, then as always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Since the book jumps all over the place I will sum it up per main character and try and fill in the rest the best I can.

Jon Snow/At the Wall-Our buddy Jon is continuing to try and hold the Night Watch together under horrible conditions.  Stannis Baratheon has brought his red priestess Melisandre (the amount of people being burned death has increased 1000x in this book because of her) and his army to help fight the wildlings and then decided to stay.  Jon struggles with maintaining his neutrality as the Commander of the Night Watch. Stannis takes most of his army and leaves to try and reclaim Winterfell from Roose Bolton and his bastard son Ramsey.  To this end Jon makes a deal with the wildlings and allows them to all come in from the North above the wall and make a home in the area's surrounding the Wall.  This horrifies the Stannis's Queen Selyse who is stuck at the Wall as well.  Melisandre continues to try and win Jon to her side, telling him the things she see's in the flames.  A note comes for Jon from Ramsey telling him that he has crushed Stannis and his army and has wed Arya Stark.  Jon decides to break his oath and ride to rescue Arya.  This does not sit well with the already disgruntled Night Watch and the book ends with Jon being stabbed multiple times.

Theon/Winterfell-Theon, who has been reduced to a fragile, broken, tortured soul is called Reek by Ramsey Bolton, the bastard son of Roose Bolton who has claimed Winterfell for himself.  Theon is cleaned up and use to help marry Ramsey to Arya Stark to try and legitimatize his claim to Winterfell.  Of course the girl Ramsey is marrying is not Arya, but Sansa's little friend Jayne.  Both Jayne and Theon are afraid of what would happen if anybody found out she is not Arya so they play along.  Much chaos ensues and Theon is enlisted to help spirit "Arya" away.  Theon is successful at the cost of the rest of his companions and Roose and Ramsey slaughter Stannis and his army who have been severely weakened by the oncoming winter.

Bran-Bran has traveled with Meera and Jojen in the company of a strange man, who appears to be one of the undead.  Bran has learned to inhabit the mind of most living things, using his new skill to ride with the slow witted Hodor or his direwolf Summer.  The three children end up under the mountains in the company of the Children of the Forest, long thought to be extinct.  They inform Bran that he is able to become a seer like entity, becoming one with the earth, animals and the weir trees.  Bran then learns to "ride" the weir trees and is able to see through various points in time.

Daenerys/Slaver's Bay-Our girl Dany has made a name for herself by freeing the slaves of Meereen (remember that about a thousand books ago?).  She is now the Queen of Meereen and is trying her hardest to keep the peace and settle the city before she takes of to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.  This is proving difficult as pretty much nobody wants her there.  She is beset upon by all the surrounding cities who just want slavery reestablished, and from within the city itself.  This is compounded by the fact that her dragons have graduated from eating sheep, to eating children and a bloody flux that is killing everybody regardless of what side they are on. Dany is forced to cage her white and green dragons to prevent further killings, but her biggest dragon the black Drogo escapes.  To try and keep the peace, and make things safe for her freed slaves, Dany agrees to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq a noble of Meereen as a concession to the nobles there.  As a wedding gift Dany reopens the fighting pits.  Hizdahr zo Loraq brings along a feast for Dany and her retinue, resulting in the poisoning of Strong Belwas one of her body guards 

when he ate all the honey locust meant for Dany.  During the fighting Drogo flies in and kills a whole bunch of people.  Dany then hops aboard and flies off, leaving the city of Meereen in chaos.

Tyrion-Oh my how I have missed my witty little man, he is by far my favorite character in this series and to go a whole long book without him sucked.  He is back with a vengeance, on the run after killing his father he makes his way to the Pentos where he is assisted by Illyrio, the same man who helped Daenerys and Viserion.  Tyrion is let in on a plan to bring Daenerys back to Westeros and assume the Iron Throne.  At this point Tyrion is on board with any plan that disposes his sister the Queen Regent Cersei.  He ends up on a boat with a group that turns out to include a young Aegon, who was just an infant when Robert Baratheon led his uprising and was supposedly killed by Tywin Lannister.  Turns out they were able to switch him out with a low born infant and was smuggled of by a knight loyal to the Prince Rhaegar until his death.  Tyrion is all ready to help Aegon until he is kidnapped by Jorah Mormont to take back as a gift to Queen Dany to prove his loyalty.  Along the way they hook up with Penny, a simple dwarf girl who performed with her brother at the then still alive King Joffery's wedding.  Her brother had been beheaded as a result of Tyrion's escape leaving Penny alone with her dog and pig.  The motley crew are then captured by slavers, the result being Tyrion (known as Yollo) being forced to do a comic act with Penny, jousting from the back of the pig and dog (I cannot wait to see this on the TV show).  Eventually our friend talks his way to not only his freedom, but the freedom of Penny and Jorah as well.  Meanwhile Aegon, his loyal night and a couple of companies of sell swords have landed in the Seven Kingdoms to begin their conquest.

 Cersei/Kings Landing-Queen Cersei is still imprisoned by the High Septon on charges of fornication and treason.  The Queen finally realizes the only way to see her son again is to confess at least to the lesser charges of fornication.  She does and her punishment is to walk shorn and naked from the sept, through the city to the castle.  She does this, humiliated and broken, but able to be with her son again.  She has been humbled, but her spark is still there.  As for the charges of treason, she is able to request a trial by combat, with a giant, unknown man as her champion.  She is allowed to dwell in the castle with her son until the trial is complete. Margery Tyrell has thrown herself on the mercy of the church and will have a trial by faith.  Cersei's Uncle Kevan is now essentially running the show, trying to maintain peace and balance as well as he can.  The book ends with him being stabbed by Vary's as he is told that all the secret council wants to do is maintain peace, and Aegon and Dany are the best hope they have of that.

We also get quick glimpses of Jamie, Arya, Davos, Brienne, the Martells in Dorne, Asha, Victorion and about a zillion other quick characters.  Some live, some die, some are left up in the air.

Okay that was a long synopsis and that did not even cover hardly any of the book, but again the book was 1500+ pages so we will leave it at that.  I have mixed feelings about this latest installment.  On one hand compared to the snoozefest of the A Feast for Crows this one actually had some action to it, on the other hand compared to the first three books  it is still overly blah.  I think these last two books suffer from too much detail.  The author describes in detail EVERY SINGLE THING.  If a lord walks into a room with his nine courtiers, all 9 of them get described in as much detail as the main guy...and then we never hear about any of them again.  I am all for adding bits of detail to round out a world, but after 5 books all clocking in at the 1000+ page range, I don't need to know what everybody was wearing.  The author also does a lot of redescribing, I got the first three times he told us that Jayne has brown eyes not grey like Arya, but every

single time she is mentioned, so are her eyes, it is just overkill. This especially happens with places, I know what the Wall looks like, I have known what the Wall looks like since it was so well described in book one, unless something changes  don't need to spend 3 pages at the beginning of each chapter the Wall is in being described to me.  I know this sounds petty, but I am pretty sure we could loose at least 300 pages if this was edited out a bit.  I don't know if I am just getting jaded, or I am nit-picking, or what, but these books are starting to get repetitive. A king/queen arises, they join the fight, sometimes they stick around, sometimes they get killed, minor lords are either super loyal or super evil and stuff happens accordingly, lather, rinse, repeat.  I guess I am just read for this epic story to go somewhere.  Now on to the things I really enjoyed.  Tyrion, every word of his story makes me smile.  His perspective is so different from most of the others, his attitude and the way he deals with things is refreshing.  Making him a slave for a little while and getting him out of Kings Landing just made me happy.  I still love Arya's story now that it has taken her to Braavos and am glad that she got a couple of chapters.  Reminding us that the overthrowing of the Targaryens is super recent and that a good chunk of the population was not only alive when it happened, but actively participated in it is so different and awesome when compared to most stories where it is if not ancient history, at least a couple of generations have passed. My favorite reveal in this book is the existence of Aegon, with Dany I thought we had our Targaryen faction, but this adding a legitimate contender for the blood line that can either be a rival or an ally for Dany is kind of exciting.  I am excited to see where we go from here as far as the story goes, this book did a lot to sweep away a lot of the little petty factions, and set the tone for a Targaryen comeback, if that actually happens we will have to see.  I hope these last two books concentrate on wrapping the story up, not everything has to be resolved, I just want it to quit dragging.  Hopefully the next book will be out before I forget what I have read in these five books.  I give this book 6 out of 10 Pretty Pigs.

Who is your favorite character in this series?  What do want to see happen?  Do you ever edit books in your head as you read them? Are you like me and very glad to have the e-format for giant books like this?

A Feast Of Meh

First off I just want to say I LOVE DR. WHO SO MUCH!!!!!!!  This actually has nothing to do with today's post but I thought I would throw that out there any ways :-)  Mostly I am stalling because I just finished A Feast for Crows and should be doing a review on it, but it was kind of really boring.  So we should just talk about how cool Martha is and how I thought I would never get over Rose, but a kick-ass female doctor as a companion, what is there not to love...oh wait right the review...sorry.  Ok here we go, as always

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert

We start this book with a prologue in Oldtown, home of the Citadel where the maesters forge their chains.  We hear a bit about dragons and meet some novices and of course somebody dies.  Moving on. The iron islands are up next and here is what is going on there.  Balon Greyjoy has died leaving no male heirs.  His daughter Asha wants the crown, but she is female so has very little support.  According to law the iron crown should go to Balon's next brother, the man they call Euron Crow's Eye.  The priest of the Drowned God  Aeron Damphair thinks that it should be the next brother Victarion, who keeps to the old ways.  Aeron decrees that a kingsmoot is what will determine the next king of the iron islands, trusting that his Drowned God will crown Victarion.  Euron Crow's Eys ends up with the crown and promptly starts raiding and pillaging all the surrounding lands, amassing an enormous fleet and becoming extremely formidable on the sea.  Brienne, the lady knight of Tarth is off with the sword "Oathkeeper" which Jamie gave her to go find Sansa Stark and take her someplace safe.  This would fulfill both Brienne's and Jaime's vow to find her and keep her safe.  Along the way Brienne runs into Podrick Payne, the Imps faithful squire and he comes along on the quest.  She also acquires another companion in the form of a knight by the name of Ser Hyle Hunt, not that she is all that thrilled with his company.  They continue their search for Sansa.  By the end of the book all three of them are in the process of being hung by the zombie Catelyn Stark...oh did I forget to mention that? Yep we get a whole 3 pages where we finally figure out that Mamma Stark has been brought back by as a zombie, why?  I have no idea, this book isn't big on answers.  Speaking of our dear Sansa, she is now known as Alayne Stone, the bastard daughter of 

Peter Baylish, who will as you remember in the last book, pushed his wife the Lady Lysa off a mountain and assumed the protectorate of her lands.  Little sickly Lord Robert Arryn, has taken to Alayne and will only follow her directions.  When we leave them, Peter has made plans to marry Sansa off to the heir to the Vale and tells her they will reveal her true name at the wedding, uniting two great northern powers.  Sansa's sister Arya Stark has made her way to the city of Braavos, to join the temple of the god of many faces.  Here Arya becomes Cat, a girl who sells clams and mussels on the docks and continually tries to become "nobody".  She is set the task of learning to control her face, and her words. She only succeeds so far and when we leave her she has awoken blind.  Samwell Tarly is sent to Oldtown with maester Aemon, Gilly and her baby, and a singer who ends up dead at the hands of Arya Stark (which is probably why she ends up blind.)  Maester Aemon dies on the voyage, Sam finally gets it on with Gilly, who he discovers is not escaping with her own child, but rather the son of Mance Rayder.  Jon Snow sent the child away to try and protect him from Melisandre, who wanted to burn him for on of her rituals.  Sam ends up at the Citidel to become a maester himself.  Back in King's Landing, Cersei is desperatly trying to keep control of the kingdom.  Margaery Tyrell has married the young boy king Tommen and is trying to use her influence to become the head honcho queen.  Cersei is of course having none of it and does her best to plot and scheme the little queens downfall.  Cersei authorizes the rebanding of the Poor Fellows, essentially religious holy warriors, which puts her in the new High Septons good graces.  Cersei manipulates various cronies and eventually finds a way to get Margaery accused of treason, fornication and adultery, which is punishable by death.  Unfortunate her plans go awry and she finds herself thrown in a cell, accused of the same things.  Jaime is off trying to set the country back to rights, including taking Riverrun without shedding any Stark or Tulley blood as he had promised Catlyn Stark when she freed him in the last book.  He is fairly successful at his task.  He is also secretly learning to use his left hand as his sword hand, hoping to regain some of his former skill.  Across the sands we see the country of Dorne and witness the princess Arianne attempt to crown the Princes Myrcella queen of the Seven Kingdoms.  She is found out and captured by her own father the Prince Doran, who is a more cautious man.  He has also had to imprison the daughters of his brother Oberyn who are intent on starting a war and avenging their fathers death.   We get a few other little vignettes from people we have never heard of before, half of which are dead by the end of their chapters. All in all this is about all that happened.

A lot of people loved A Storm of Swords  and did not find this book up to par.  I must confess I have to agree with most reviewers, especially in comparison this book just did not hold up at all.  After so much happening in the last three books, this one felt incredibly slow.  In fact most of these stories could have been told in one or two chapters.  I thought Brienne's chapters were especially overly long, and that she had many more chapters then she needed to get to where she was going.  I appreciated that the author was trying to give us some different perspectives, but sprinkling them into the main characters would have worked better for me.  One of the things I missed the most in this book was a sense of caring where the characters were concerned.  As a reader, in the previous books I had a vested interest in most of the characters, even the evil characters usually had their sympathetic moments.  In this book, eh I really did not care what happened to anybody.  By completely cutting out ALL of my favorite characters I found myself wondering what they were up to instead of paying attention to the story at hand.  This book wasn't all bad, and if I didn't have the last three books to compare it to, I may have enjoyed it even more.  I liked most of Cersei's chapters, watching her get more and more desperate was fitting, again it was drawn out longer then I cared, but at least it was a continuation of the previous books.  What I did really enjoy was Arya's chapters and getting to visit Braavos.  I loved the idea of the Many Faced god, and her conflicting desires make Arya a great character. Also the Venice like qualities that Braavos has makes me happy.  I liked seeing Dorne as well, it was nice to finally have an idea of all seven kingdoms.  I also just finished watching Season 2 of the TV version of this show, which corresponds to the second book Clash of Kings (which was awesome!) and it makes me excited for the next season, but it makes me wonder how they will film this book with all of it's main characters missing.  Overall I feel this book could have easily been edited down to about 10 or less chapters that could have been incorporated with another book.  I give it eh 5 out of 10 ruby covered swords.

What did you think of this book?  Were you disappointed or did you find more in it than I did?  Have you been watching the TV show?  Why is the author so obsessed with clothes and flags?

A Storm Of WTF!

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
Just in case you're wondering I will be spilling all kinds of secrets about A Storm of Swords so if you haven't read it yet, or don't want to know big secrets before you watch the TV show then STOP RIGHT NOW!

Ok so I'm assuming everybody who is reading has either read the book, or just can't stand not knowing so here we go off to Spoilerville.

 This so far is my favorite book in the series of A Song of Ice and Fire.  I have heard that from a lot of people so I am apparently in good company.  I'm not going to rehash the book like I normally do because A) Those posts get extremely long and this is a really long book and B) There just so much going on I don't think I could put it together in a coherent post (not that my post are known for coherency anyways).  So pretty much I'm going to ramble about the moments in the book that made me holler things out loud at completely inappropriate times.So the biggest thing about this book is how many people end up dead...which really shouldn't surprise me considering that is kind of what these books are known for, but part of what I love about the writing is how I am still caught of guard by the crazy turns the story takes.  On to the body count.  The biggest deaths to me were Robb and Catelyn Stark, yep they are killing of the poor Stark clan in droves.  Looking back I should have seen it coming, but again the writing does a great job of misdirection. The deaths are actually foreshadowed back in A Clash of Kings when Daenerys goes into the House of the Undead.  Let's see who else, Oh yes a death we can all get behind, the brat king Joffery Lannister was taken down by some poisoned wine at his wedding to Margeary Tyrell (I've got to keep checking the spelling of these names, if I screw them up, please don't kill me!) I think I may have actually cheered.  Tywin Lannister also gets taken out...on the pot no less and crazy lady Lysa meets her end through the moon door. Oh yeah and Yigrette gets killed as well :-( I liked that girl. 

Moving on to less deadly reveals.  The reveal that was the biggest twist to me was finding out that Lysa killed Jon Aryn, yep crazy lady Lysa killed her husband and blamed it on the Lannisters all to get Peter "Littlefinger" Balish to marry her. So pretty much 2/3 of this series is set into motion by a crazy lady who couldn't get over a childhood crush.  Sansa Stark gets married off to Tyrion Lannister who in turn gets accused of murdering his nephew and then goes ahead and kills his father.  Arya and the Hound end up traveling together for a time (some great scenes there) before she heads of to Braavos.  Daenerys takes on the slave cities and does a pretty good job of it all while finding out Jorah Mormont is/was actually the spy keeping Kings Landing informed of her doings.  Stannis continues to follow Melisandre and the Lord of Light, but redeems himself slightly by being the only "king" to go help defend the wall against the wildlings and eventually things much worse.  Sam steps it up and ends up as a protector to the wildling Gilly and her baby.  Jon makes it back to the wall in time to help defend it, get accused of treason, then voted in as commander.  Sansa gets spirited away by Littlefinger.  Theon continues his bumbling ways.  Jaime makes a weird friendship in the form of Brienne the manly woman knight, oh and Jaime loses a hand. Bran and Rickon continue there mysterious whatever they are doing.  Hmmm I think that about sums up this giant tome of craziness.

I loved the book, took me a while to get through it, but it was totally worth it.  The writing remains high quality and interesting, and so far I have been able to keep track of most of the story lines and characters.  As long as the writing stays at this level I am in it for the duration of the series.

What did you think of this book?  Who else could they possibly kill off? (wait don't answer that, most of my favorites are still alive) What did you think of the reveals?  Are you watching the TV show? How long can a rambling post get?

A Clash of Kings and Books and TV

In case you haven't heard the second season of Game of Thrones starts soon, so in honor of this auspices occasion I thought I would share my thoughts (and probably a couple spoilers) on the second book in this EPIC series.
I really enjoyed the first book in A Song Of Ice and Fire series Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.  He set up the world and characters very well, made you care in some way about pretty much everybody (even if it was just to hate them!) and then...He killed a bunch of them off, including Mr. Ned Stark who appeared to be the main character in this series!!!! (sorry if I'm spoiling this for everyone, but you were warned).  So on to the second book
A Clash of Kings which starts us off with Stannis Baratheon, younger brother to the late King Robert, and older brother to the lovely and popular Renly.  We are introduced to Ser Davos the Onion Knight and learn of a little of Stannis and his idea of justice.  Ser Davos was a smuggler who saved Lord Stannis and his army during a siege by braving the cordon and bringing salt fish and onions to the troops, which kept them alive long enough to prevail.  As a reward he knighted Ser Davos...after he chopped his fingers as punishment for smuggling.  This story illustrates and important trait in Stannis and really shows his sense of what he feels is just.  This is one of my favorite things that Mr. Martin does, he really seems to try to give all of his characters, even the ones we don't particularly like, a motive for their actions.  This adds a lot of depth and characterization to a series that could very easily fall into repetitive cardboard characters divided into good and bad guys.  Wow this is gonna be a really long post...if  you all want to go get coffee I'll wait (humming Jepordy theme song)...you all back?  OK back to pontificating.   We are also introduced to Lady Melisandre and her god the Lord of Light who plays an integral part in the events that follow.  We quickly learn the extreme extents the Lady in red will go through to further her own goals and before the prologue is over we have our first death!
We start the next chapter (still wonderfully named after the character they are about) with Arya and her adventures as the undercover boy Arry.  She joins a rag-tag group who are being recruited as soldiers for the looming war.  One of the boys she is with is an older boy called The Bull who we find out is the boy from the blacksmith the our dearly departed Ned Stark was talking to in the previous book.  Sansa is still stuck with the Lannisters, being the only Stark left in Cersei and the cruel boy King Jofferys clutches. She is quickly learning to keep her place or suffer at Jofferys hand.  I think Joffery is the only character with little to no redeeming quality to him, which is sad considering how young he is, but even Joffery is given reason and motivation for his actions one of them being how young and spoiled he is.  Tyrion our favorite anti-hero (and quit possibly the only sane character in this series) is named Kings Hand, and using his new authority quickly starts to undermine Cersei and strengthen the city all while avoiding the spy's and assassins sent from every other character in this book...it also doesn't hurt that his brother Jaime is still in Robb Starks custody.  I found Brans storyline to be extremely compelling, I have the feeling he is going to be pretty important to the overall story...or end up horribly dead in the next book, who knows?
  Bran is left with his youngest brother Rickon to be take care of Winterfell, quit the task for a young crippled boy.  Bran makes friends with with a brother and sister from the marshlands Meera and Jojen who quickly prove there loyalty to the young Stark boys.  Theon Greyjoy is another character I find very very interesting.  We get to see him go home after many years as the Starks fosteree/hostage.  He does not quit receive the welcome he expects and is made the butt of a joke by his sister Asha (who I kinda love!) Turns out nobody wants to support his grand plans to become King.  Eventually Theon commits some heinous acts that result in the apparent death of Bran and Rickon.  I admit I almost teared up when I thought the boys were dead and he kept up the suspense up until the very end.  Theon does however kill ALOT of characters I have come to love, but even then Mr. Martin gives him motive, and thought process and I still can't completely hate him.  Daenerys is kind of a cool story line because it feels like she is so far removed from everything that is going on and yet she is obviously very much in the middle of it. 
Her dragons continue to open doors for her that were previously closed and we get to see some new places. They end up in the merchant city of Qarth and here she tries to raise an army with very little success.  Daenerys visits the house of the undead in a last desperate attempt to get some help.  After her trek through some seriously creepy halls and such she comes to find that they are essentially powerless.  Renly raises his own army, but seems to be taking things for granted.  He is mysteriously killed by what Catelyn Stark can only describe as his own shadow.  Brienne the newest knight in Renlys Rainbow Guard (even if she is only a girl) is accused of his murder and must flee with Catelyn back to Riverrun and her son Robb.  Robb in the mean time is having a bit of luck and is using his brains to win him some battles putting him in the lead for the crown.  His half-brother Jon Snow is not having as good a time however deep in the north past the Wall.  Winter has set in hard and cold and Jon is assigned to see what is going on in the forest beyond the wall.  He and his team run into some bad luck which surprise surprise leads to more death!  We learn a bit more about the crazy wildling Mance how he was a ranger before he left to lead his band.  We also learn that he is gathering the various tribes and is preparing to march to breach the wall.  Stannis marches on Storm's End and uses Melisandes powers to kill Ser Cortnay and take the keep.  As a grand finally there is a huge fierce battle at Kings landing with MORE dead people, it was pretty epic.
Alrighty then so this is obviously an extremely quick, short itty bitty bit of what actually happened in the book so if you want all the gory details you will have to read it for yourself.  I really liked this book, I think even more then the last one 'cause I am very invested in the characters.  I like how nothing is simple (except the chapter labeling) that human nature is fully explored in all it's various incantations.  I am about to start the next book and I really hope it is as quality as this on was. Phew now I am exhausted and I'm sure you are as well so I will let you go and watch your mailbox for the DVD of season one that I know you have all pre-orderd, I know I am looking forward to watching it myself!
What do you think of these Epically epic books?  Do you think it is possible to have any more blood, sex, death and characters in these books?  Are you more excited for the next book or the next season?

Game Of Thrones...So This Is What All The Hype Is About

I have to admit that I had never heard of A Song of Fire and Ice series ,or George R. R. Martin until the TV show (which I have not seen yet) came out.  This is a little bit embarrassing as I am usually a snot about the whole TV/Movie/Book thing.  Normally I am the one in my family who likes the...darker books, but my Mamma (who is not at all into blood and gore) actually got into these books ahead of me and was surprised I hadn't read them yet, so off I went to get and read the first book A Game of Thrones. 

My first reaction to reading this was " I can't believe my Mamma liked all this blood and gore!"  My second reactions was "I can't turn the page fast enough!"  I usually have mixed feelings on epics that feature a billion characters and a zillion story lines, but Mr. Martin has formatted the books exceptionally well.  It almost feels as if you are reading a lot of short stories that all end up coming together without too much thinking.  He has broken up the book into chapters that are focused on a single character in the book, the chapter is named for that character so you know exactly who and where you are in the story with out to much trouble.  For example if you start with a chapter called Arrya, then you know you are in her part of the story.  The world itself is pretty cool and the history is given out through each character so you get the idea the characters actually live there according to what is important to them.  The story is a bloody mess of murder and mayhem.  Essentially the throne was taken from a mad king in recent history and this series chronicles the King that took it and all the people trying to take it for themselves.  It's pretty cool, there are dragons and sword fights, and the author writes in a surprising amount of clothing and jewelry detail considering that he is a guy mostly writing about people getting there heads chopped off and everybody getting laid as much and in every way possible.  I think besides the format one of my favorite things about these books so far is that he keeps you on your toes, main characters get killed off on a regular bases so you learn not to get attached to anybody, I think at least three major characters, including one you don't ever expect get killed before the book is even 2/3 over.  He has no problem killing off children, animal, women and yet amidst all the yuckiness and getting-it-onness a really riveting story is told.  OK so that is my extremely long winded thoughts on the first book in this series.  I am sure I will come back to it later as I progress through the series.  What I really want is to hear some discussion of it in the comments for those of you who have read it, why you love/hate it. Or if you haven't read it why you wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole :-)