I’m not reading any of the above because I’m only 1/2 way through the third book. I’m liking the books for the most part. Just enough magic and magic beasts to make it interesting without getting too crazy.
Hundreds of interesting characters, way more than necessary. Another long description of the appearance, armor, weapons, devices, relations and personality quirks of some guy that is going to die next page and I may scream. Martin must have a million fully formed characters in his head. Hardly any of them are particularly likable.
I’ve had my fill of both gang and statutory rape, thank you. Sure, these things are great fun in moderation. After about the hundredth semi-graphic description, not so much.
I’m starting to tire of the device he uses where he jumps from character to character. This works when there aren’t too many character but I’m starting to lose track of what each person was doing a 5 chapters ago.
He rarely directly describes events. Big events are always presented as a garbled memory by the person who’s chapter we are reading. Some of this is good but when every event is presented this way I feel like I’m missing something.