Cheers, I'll most likely be placing a preoder on the book collection available via amazon for release. Can't wait to get my mitts on it, but I think I'll read some Terry Pratchet for now, that mans humour is ingenious.

1/4 of the way through the 5th book.

Mt favorite character by far is Tyrion. That is one hillarious midget. Hope he lives till the end.

The books are great. So far I only read the first two, but the others will follow. The characters are what makes this great. And the ability of MArtin, to kill interesting characters sometimes a little unexpected. Many authors have problems to kill of a figure they had put work into to flesh out. This seems not the case with Martin. Although I suspect, he likes Tyrion, Jon and Arya too much to kill them. Let's see.

The books...they are not very good. you see the problems stem from mr martin being an unimaginative sick fuck.
you dont read much, so you may not find even realize the issues. plenty of people seem to like the books for some unfathomable reason that tends me towards an even worse view of humanity.

the only real plot development in the books comes from people dying. and sometimes there isnt a logical reason for them to die or he just gets tired of writing them...so he does things like having some bitch shit a shadow from her cunt to go off and kill people. you want some deaths of course in a book. it creates concern over the characters, because you are uncertain of whats going to happen to them. but in this case...you get to a point when you expect everyone to die. oftentimes for no reason at all.

almost all the characters in the books are very one dimensional. almost parodies even...

ugh...i see now you are a pratchett fan...i shouldnt have wasted time warning you... just writing down the most random absurd thing you can think of, regardless that it doesnt even make sense in any way...is not funny.

sorry for wasting any time you took to read my previous post.

I'd have to respectfully disagree with most of what you said.

The characters that die always do so for the purpose of either moving the story forward or moving the development of another character forward. I won't go into a lot of detail because I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't read all 5 books yet, but the deaths of major characters is one of the things I really enjoy about these books. I love that no one is safe, regardless of how much the readers get attached to them. That sense of actual danger and supense for each and every character is what sets Martin's books apart from other fantasy books like LoTR where you feel no suspense at all because you know that everyone you like is going to live. Instead of the usual case where I'm waitng to see which characters are going to die at the end to create emotion, I'm anxious to see who is actually going to live.

And to say that the characters are one dimensional is a little absurd. Almost none of the characters are black or white. Everyone falls into a gray area where they do both things that you admire and despise.

At the end of the day I can understand why you feel the way you do regarding all of the deaths in the series, but I for one enjoy the fact that it breaks away from the fantasy norm where all of the good guys live except one or two. In fact, there really aren't many characters aside from 1 or 2 that could even actually be conidered "good guys". 

As I've said, GRR Martin is fantasy for the Twilight generation; there is a lot of negativity that goes on in the story - he shoe-horns it in like some teenager attempting to write a tragedy story. He also adds in a lot of gratuitous scenes (like when the Dwarf character was about to rape the 12 year old Stark girl); and this is the sort of stuff that fans will mistakenly call "depth" and "edginess". 

For the people who like it because of all the death in it, and wondering who's going to suddenly die next, have I got a movie genre for you! Start with this one:

lol at the venom in here because Martin killed off your favorite character or something.  The books are fantastic.  Game of Thrones might drag on a bit if you've seen the first season of the show since it was pretty much a beat by beat adaptation.  A Clash of Kings is where the TV series started to diverge more.  Even so, I'd recommend starting from the beginning since there were a few plot points left out, plus some of the characters were removed/merged/renamed in the TV series.

No pics?

The first book draws a lot from shakesperean clichés and makes use of some plot devices that make no sense at all once properly analised. However, it is still far above your average fantasy title. The characters are probably some of the best in the genre.

The second and the third books are the best in the series, specially the Westerosi part, since the Essos storyline drags a lot and makes use of more senseless stuff. A Storm of Swords is hailed as an excellent book, the best of the series, due to it's daring plot twists and overall sense of grandiose.

A Feast for Crows and a Dance with Dragons aren't quite in par with the previous two books but are still as good as the first one. It's main flaw lies on the needless points of view and threads of the story that go nowhere.

Compared to the other juggernauts in the fantasy genre, ASOIAF certainly stacks up as one of the best. It's plot and characters are better than Malazan's, though the world is less original, and certainly stands far above Wheel of Time and, may this series rot in hell, Sword of Truth. You'll spend a lot of time speculating about the future of the story and your favorite characters.

Anyways besides the minor flaws over the series - every book has these but I felt the need to comment them nevertheless - ASOIAF holds possibly the worst fanbase ever. Think LOTR levels of fanatism up to eleven mixed with clueless, enthusiast gamers who think they know everything about the world and violence and things dark and edgy is where the stuff's at.