The title of my review says everything. I must admit that I gave up on finishing the book for a while. It nagged and nagged at me because the book was a real page turner. Great plot, well rounded, flawed characters. I’m currently reading another book in the same series and it’s just amazing. Not a letdown like so many second books are. Totally worth reading!

I found this book while looking though lists on Amazon.com. It recieved high praise there and for good cause. I checked it out from my local library and am hooked on the series. The characters are three dimensional, the plotline is not predictable and there are no long lags in the story. I found that a few times as he switched from character to character the story would slow and he built the scene, but then the pace would soon quicken and make the respit worth while.
A very well written fantasy novel, from an author I had never heard of.

I had avoided the entire fantasy genre my entire life until somebody made me read this book, and I hate myself for having shut myself off from it (and others like it) for years. I shunned books with maps in teh front and dragons on the cover, but I am now making my way through the Song of Ice and Fire series, relishing the fact that each book has more maps than the last, and lamenting the lack of dragons on the covers.

It had been years since I spent hours at a time reading, not wanting to do anything else but read and read, but this book brought me back to that. I agree with the person below, that it is frustrating having to wait hundreds of pages to get back to the best character plot things. But this book.. I love this book. :D

Most people talk about this book taking a few chapters to get into, but it took me 500 pages. However, once you hit a point (mine was a little man getting cocky), you’re hooked. Additionally, I’ve never read any fantasy before, except for tidbits of The Once and Future King. My main complaints are that Martin is overly verbose and the pacing ofting falters. Some characters are duds (Bran, Sansa at first), some aren’t (Tyrion, Arya, Daenerys), but when you are captivated by one it’s irritating to wait 100 pages to find out more while Bran ponders life on his horse.

Although Martin is verbose, once he gets going it truly is a captivating piece of work with (mostly) well-drawn characters.

It took me a few chapters to really get into this book, but once I did, I didn’t want to put it down. (I did have to put it down, several times, since it’s a long book!) It’s sort of a light fantasy genre, it’s about a different world, in which magic and magical creatures exist, but aren’t very common. I was kind of surprised that I liked (loved!) this book, since it involves two elements which I usually don’t care for: (1) a lot of politics, and (2) storytelling following many different characters. I usually find (2) to be too confusing (especially in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series), but the characters’ stories are all closely intertwined so I was able to follow along quite well.

I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books in this series!