re: #406 yasharki

I don’t see how you can compare SoIaF to Tolkien’s work. Lord of the Rings never descended into elaborate descriptions of sexual practices (with a hint of pedophile tendencies), or necrophiliac scenes. Instead he presented us with a meticulously modeled world, with it’s own vivid population, languages, history, gods, geography, etc. Something GRRM fails to deliver…

The star of the Middle Earth books is Middle Earth itself. Tolkien can’t write dialogue to save his life and his characters are not exactly the most multidimensional. Then again they are not meant to be. I am not bashing Tolkien one bit.

All I am saying is that once you have read the third book in Ice and Fire you might be a much stronger supporter of it than you are now, much like it was Return of the King (and the appendices to it) that made the Tolkien series for me. Then again, My fav Tolkien is the Silmarillion… so that should say something about my tastes.

Ice and Fire has a very meticulous world, but it is utterly character driven in a way that Tolkien never managed.