Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin

I felt it was time I finally sit down and put in my two cents on this series by George Martin that has grown in popularity in the last couple of years due to the HBO series based on these books. This review will be based on the first four books. There are plenty of long and drawn out novel type reviews available so I'll keep mine short and sweet. First of all, I went into this series knowing that it was not yet completed. No big deal, right? Well, actually in this case it is a big deal. The auth...more   I felt it was time I finally sit down and put in my two cents on this series by George Martin that has grown in popularity in the last couple of years due to the HBO series based on these books. This review will be based on the first four books. There are plenty of long and drawn out novel type reviews available so I'll keep mine short and sweet. First of all, I went into this series knowing that it was not yet completed. No big deal, right? Well, actually in this case it is a big deal. The author takes his time putting out new books in this series. I believe the last one took five years for him to publish. So, if you are a reader who gets a tad bit impatient for that next novel to come out then you "might" want to consider waiting for the author to finish this series before you give it a go. There are also some necessary warnings going into this series that some of us (like myself) might have issues with or would like to know before beginning. There are some eyebrow raising moments such as the 13 yr old girl sold to a Barbarian savage in marriage. Thankfully HBO was smart enough to age this character for their show.  My opinion of this series is quite negative based on this one issue alone. But, that's not all. There are many scenes throughout this series involving rape and/or gang rape. Most of these instances are very young girls and in most cases did not add anything to the story itself.  This further increased my negative feelings toward the series in general. And lastly there is incest. So, there are your warnings. Proceed with caution if any of these issues might bother you. If you are able to disregard the issues of rape etc... that I mentioned above, the story itself is quite good in the beginning. I was intrigued by the wolves and their connection to the Stark children. I loved the idea of the dragons. There are some very cool story lines and some really interesting characters. The problem is that there are so many storylines and so many characters that it takes a really long time to get around to everyone which inhibits the timely progression of the story. I read the first three books and by the time I got to book four I just grew tired of the series. Too many characters... everyone dies... and everyone is miserable! And there was little to no progression in the story itself. When A Dance With Dragons came out I didn't bother buying it because I no longer cared what happened. I rated book one a four because it was pretty good but the ratings just go downhill from that point. I actually prefer the show on HBO to the books themselves but I am curious if they are going to wait for him to finish writing these books or just proceed on their own path with the story. Time will tell... ~ K