I get depressed just thinking about how great this story is, and how badly we need Martin to finish it the way it’s meant to end-not the rushed, bungled ending of the TV show. But the books are better and it’s not even close. The HBO adaptation was- up until the last couple seasons-a really great attempt to adapt Martin’s work. But his magnum opus remains unfinished and the clock is ticking. It just feels like such a loss, such a missed opportunity. I’m starting to think I’ll be 50 when-if!-we read the next one. That is what makes me so damn sad about the endless waiting for The Winds Of Winter. Even some of my very favorite fantasy series, like Joe Abercrombie’s wonderful First Law books, fail to quite capture my imagination the way Martin’s works do.Īnd that is the real tragedy. There’s simply nothing else quite like them. Martin is simply one of the best writers in the fantasy business, and listening to the book reminds me why I fell in love with these in the first place. His major character deaths always serve a higher purpose and aren’t just there for shock value.

Whether it’s a bloody battle or a tense exchange between Lannisters and Starks, Martin reels you in.

Martin’s prose is rich and evocative, his dialogue tight and nuanced. And the stories are so rich with history and lore and backstory, with little clues to the past and its trove of mysteries, you can’t help but get lost in it all (in a good way). Westeros is so much more well-drawn than most fantasy realms. The characters he’s created are real and complex. Listening to the novel as an audio book for the first time, and diving back into Martin’s fiction for the first time in years, reminds me just how absolutely brilliant he is as a writer and storyteller. Now, my daughter, Aria, is 15, a year older than Jon Snow and six years older than her namesake, Arya Stark, was in the first book. I am now 41, six years old than Eddard Stark is (again, in the books, everyone is older in the show). I was 19 years old-just one year older than Theon Greyjoy in the books-when I found that copy of A Game Of Thrones. In other words, between 2000 when A Storm Of Swords came out and right now, 2022, we have only progressed the story’s chronology the length of one book. Martin split A Dance With Dragons from it, and the result was two books that came out years apart ( Dance in 2011) but took place across the same timeline. In any case, I read through all three of the first brilliant novels in the series in short order and then eagerly awaited the next. A prequel set much closer to the events of 'Game Of Thrones' than 'House Of The Dragon.' Credit: HBO

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