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I've just started Song of Ice and Fire, and I'm most of the way through the first book. It's long, which is nice, but highly frustrating at times. The "villains" are mostly brainless, gutless fools who I want to see destroyed in painful ways, but there are many bad guys who aren't nearly so clear-cut, and are far more dangerous. And it's not clear at all that all the protagonists are actually striving for the same ends. Many of the good guys are set up completely at odds with each other, which makes for a very complex story.
All of the protagonists and point of view characters are quite appealing, except for that snivelling witless idiot Sansa, who is obviously on track for a rude awakening and eventually coming into her own, which seems a bit cliche to me, but I already trust this author to handle it well.
Martin's style is really good. He's got an excellent sense of the epic in his timing, and damn can he turn a phrase. His description, through Ned, of a knife as "sharp as the difference between right and wrong" in an example of his ability to completely raise the dramatic stakes in a scene with only a few well-chosen words.
My only other gripe is there are some scenes that seemed just a bit too pedo pedo. I found myself wondering where Mr. Martin's desires lead him.
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