This series is what reignited my love for reading. It has Kings, Queens, Lords, Ladies, Knights, Eunuchs, honor, betrayal, incest, wars, Direwolves, Giants, Dragons, a massive wall of Ice and an Iron Throne. Just about anything you would expect from a superbly written fantasy series.

George R.R. Martin is magnificent in his character descriptions and building the suspense for the many gripping story lines within this series. There are characters that you absolutely love to hate and ones that you will hate to love. Through out the series you find yourself rooting for certain characters and eventually rooting for their enemies.

The twists that you would never expect make you question the author's state of mind and then he flawlessly keeps the story moving in a way that you cannot possibly deny his brilliance.

With the unending list of characters it can sometimes become frustrating distinguishing between them, however, with The Game of Thrones HBO series you now have faces to put to the names, which does make it easier.

The only negative thing I can say about the series is the long waits in between books. When I started reading the books I refused to read anything else, afraid it would take away from the series, but eventually I had to give in, having to wait years between instalments. But it is undoubtedly worth the wait!

Bet you can't read just one.

This series has truly spoiled other fiction for me. Since finishing the 5th book, I just haven't been able to get into any other books because they don't compare. Regardless of the wait between books, Martin is a master and I'll wait for however long it takes until the 6th book is ready!

This is by far one of the best series I have ever read! It astounds me how true the HBO series is to the books. Although I have not finished the series yet, the books I have read have been mesmerizing. Martin really makes you feel for every character (whether that feeling is love or hate) and provides constant surprises that make it very difficult to put it down. I would highly recommend this to anyone; even if this isn't the type of genre you normally read, it may just be the series that changes your mind!

I just finished this series. I came into this series after the first season of the HBO show and began with A Clash of Kings. Both of Cash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, were very good books. Even A Feast of Crows well well written. My main issue with the series is not its length, nor how in depth it goes, my issue is how slowly events in these books seem to be moving, however until A Feast of Crows this was an issue that was not actually noticed. Broken down individual, each of the story lines is well written and all seem to serve a purpose (with the possible exception of The Onion Knight, who in my opinion is a completely useless and annoying character as well as the events surronding the Greyjoy clan). However towards the end of the final book. I realized how little the story line had actually moved foward. One would assume that Martin knows how he wants this series to end, who he wants to ultimatly win the Iron Throne, and the ultimate fate of all of many many characters he has created. My question is, will all of the characters introduced into the books, be playing a significant part in the series, or will some of them be useless. Martin, at the point in the series has about 200 characters we see in the books on a fairly continueous basis, along with some 50 odd characters we see and hear from briefly. Are all of the characters really truly important to the growth of the series. All of these characters are beginning to simply bog down the progression of the story line. In my opinion there has been no significant growth in the series since about half way through the third novel, (those who are read the series will know what events I am speaking off) I feel that at this point in the series things should be moving a little faster, Martin should be beginning to cut out some of the more useless characters and focusing on the way the series will end. To me it feels as though the story has gotten out of his control and is in danger of going sailing off the tracks. With now 5 of his planned 7 books completed, I wonder if book six will somehow wrestle the story back on track. A lot of people are also wondering if it will take Martin as long to complete book six as it did book five. I don't care if it takes him 8 years and the book is 1500 pages long, as long as the story lines moves, or rather flys ahead and stuff get done and storylines are resolved. I know I don't think I can take another 1000 or so pages like books 4 or 5. That being said, This is a series I do enjoy reading, Martin has a unique gift for making every single one of his many characters and story lines seem important and making them all very interesting. This is why I can't sit back and say many of the lesser characters with their own chapters in the novels are useless and should have been cut, because not one of them SEEMS to be useless, they are serve a purpose, with again the exception of the Onion Knight and the Greyjoys, who anyone who reads the books knows they don't stand a chance at winning. Overall this is a series I recommend especially to fans of the HBO show who just cant wait to find out what happens next.

When I got to the end of Book 2, and hit next page, it just loops back to end of Bk 2; I can't get to Book 3. I called CS Aug 5, and after trying 2 suggestions, they referred it to Tier Two CS. So far (as of Aug 20) I have not even received an acknowledgement from them. I called regular CS twice, but neither I nor they can actually speak to this mysterious Tier Two. I suspect that when they see a credit request in the offing, this is where they send complaints to die! Absolute worst CS I've ever encountered! Too bad because it's a great book.

Update Nov 23/11: 1 wk after this finally got email from CS with a workable, if not ideal, solution to the problem. And a 50% off coupon. At least I finally got to finish the books, and used coupon for the 5th book.

I have read the first book in this series and I got hooked! I bought the ebook version of this set last night. I have started in on the second book and I am looking forward to continuing the read!

One thing I was sort of disappointed with is that with this eBook set the books are combined in to one big book and so the table of contents is very large and you have to watch carefully when going through to see where once book ends and the next begins. I would have preferred it to come as 4 individual books.

So a great read, but I would rather individual files.