I recently bought the entire collection of A Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Martin and I'm only on book one but I wanted to say that so the story has been really great.

I do love Fantasy Fiction but I haven't gone through as many books of the genre as I would like to. However, without having much to compare this to, so far the characters have been very well depicted and the build-up is intense. I've read a lot of Terry Goodkind's books and a few other authors (for some reason I am terrible with names of authors and books but I remember stories intricately).

For those of us in India, the link to the book collection is out here: FlipKart

I am about to start ready the fifth book in this series called "A Dance With Dragons" and I have to say that so far these books have been a real page turner. Each of the books has been close to a thousand pages and the third book was split into two parts because each part was a thousand pages.

I love this series. Insanely amazing!

So, Ash, I finally got around to giving this a try. I know how insanely popular this series is. I got a sample on my kindle. Right off the bat, it has an element that absolutely will turn me off a book within the first chapter or so…too many characters being introduced to early on. I want to be entertained and not to have to juggle a cast of thousands, lol. I might give it another try later on but I have my doubts about liking it.

By the way, Stephen King released a NEW Gunslinger novel: The Wind Through the Keyhole! That is going to derail any further efforts to memorize all the many lords and their relatives in Song and Fire and Ice.

Yes, there are many many characters - too many and as the books progress the character list only increases. It is thoroughly complicated on that front because these characters are geographically separated. You got the barbaric lands in the south sea with their own problems as the dragon queen assembles her army, you have the southern lords sandwiched between the battle on the main continent and their struggle to find the dragon queen. Additionally you have the actual fighting within the 5 kingdoms….and to top it off there are islands on either side (Iron Man Islands) that want to carve the main continent. And if all this isn't enough you have the zombies assembling in the north to destroy the entire continent.

To be honest, the only parts of the books I've LOVED are those pertaining to the North. Zombies, Wildlings, Trolls, Giants…omgggg Nerdgasm!

I did not know about this Stephen King book. I'm gonna check this out on Flipkart right now. Thanks, E :-)