Excellent epic high fantasy. Martin created a rich world with several huge factions with interesting characters and keeps the tension between them high. There are a couple of fantastic creatures but mostly it's about people and armies.

There were times where I had to keep reading but I didn't want to, because I knew it was going to hurt. Here is an author with the huevos to torment his characters for the sake of the story. Most of us are too scared or too attached to our characters to really make them suffer.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series started out well, like this, but after the first few books he lost control of the story. Now he has too many characters and the chronology is a mess. I hope Martin can keep it together, because I just started the second book in this series, A Clash of Kings.