I found the GRR Martin books to be fairly crappy too (I got up to the point in book 3 when it got to this vomitous scene where it started describing an erect dwarf penis in detail before he was going to rape a 12 year old girl - this turned me off of not just the series, but the entire American fantasy genre.). No memorable characters, and the story seemed to rely on very forced tragedy and trashiness (like trying to be edgey with gratuitous pedophilia) in an attempt to keep it interesting for people who like that sort of stuff. Essentially, whenever something good happens to someone, it always means something terrible will soon happen to that character.
It's the fantasy genre's answer to Twilight.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
