heh I could say the same about historical books. Where is the time jump and why don't I have problems with ants? So far game of thrones is more historical than fantasy. Thus the glorious 3 part south park.

I do enjoy the historical parts (although the persistent spelling "Ser" drove me up a damn wall for some reason). I enjoyed Tyrion's POV chapters the most, I think, and Catelyn's the least. Some of the Wall stuff kind of lost me, and I got frustrated with the pages-upon-pages of this-guy's-suddenly-important, striding around castle keeps with endlessly complicated points of intrigue.

Daenarys' chapters seemed like an odd juxtaposition, like a random Turkish exile for a former Western European royal.

But still, my key point here is not that the book is shit (it's not, really, at all, and to me it felt like it was written in the same style and approximate catchiness as the Clan of the Cave Bear series), but rather that people are fucking morons for being taken by surprise by any plot twist in the TV adaptation. As I said, the events covered by the current seasons of the show were PUBLISHED FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. You can get the whole damn set for $27 in a nice box of trade paperbacks.

For those looking for a stronger dose of fantasy in their reading diet I recommend the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. It's deep high fantasy that boasts some of the best written action on the shelves today, however, the characters are a bit flat and the dialogue is hokey at times but if you can look past that it's worth a read.