I've gone through all five books in the original A Song Of Ice And Fire series, and I think this is the one time where an adaptation actually surpasses the original work — in this case, the TV series Game Of Thrones surpassing the original books. It's not bad if you can stomach GRRM's use of colorful language throughout the books, but I think the books take too much time trying to set up things that you don't know whether they will come to pass or not, whether a character will survive or get killed in one book. Also I'm not a big fan of having the older Stark children and Jon and Daenerys being in their early teens, because that seems to encourage male teen fantasies of underage "passionate hugging". (The TV series ages them appropriately for their roles.) I don't know whether GRRM will ever actually finish the book series and complete the story we're given, but it's not something that I'm going to return to very often.
Good, but the TV series is better
I've gone through all five books in the original A Song Of Ice And Fire series, and I think this is the one time where an adaptation actually surpasses the original work — in this case, the TV series Game Of Thrones surpassing the original books. It's not bad if you can stomach GRRM's use of colorful language throughout the books, but I think the books take too much time trying to set up things that you don't know whether they will come to pass or not, whether a character will survive or get killed in one book. Also I'm not a big fan of having the older Stark children and Jon and Daenerys being in their early teens, because that seems to encourage male teen fantasies of underage "passionate hugging". (The TV series ages them appropriately for their roles.) I don't know whether GRRM will ever actually finish the book series and complete the story we're given, but it's not something that I'm going to return to very often.