A Dance With Dragons sends George RR Martin flying into charts | Books | guardian.co.uk
I am going to have to plead a little bit of ignorance here. I was completely unaware of George RR Martin before the HBO series cropped up on Sky Atlantic, which I promptly did not watch, as I am a Virgin subscriber and disallowed from seeing said channel.
In the weeks since that series was launched, however, and perhaps because there is a general sense that with Harry Potter coming to its conclusion in the cinema that JK Rowling has, in a sense, left the building, George RR (do the initials stand for Rolls Royce?) has been cropping up with the sort of regularity you associate with Scandinavian Crime Noire.
Now the Guardian have run this article claiming that the fifth book in his long running series has cemented his position as the American Tolkein. That it really is very good. And that despite its 1000 pages in length it is set to be one of the biggest sellers of the year. If not the biggest.
So by my reckoning I've got some catching up to do. Because I hate to think of such a successful and apparently entertaining series trundling along out there without me being involved with it.
The only thing is.... can I really read it all? Is there an abridged version? Should I get the DVD box set and skip a couple of books?
If you've read it, or at least just a bit of it, I'd love to hear what you think.
Like you I only came across this series because of the hype around the HBO adaptation (which is amazing!) and I'm now up to book two and my boyfriend is up to book 4. We're both loving it and I can't wait to get up to his latest work. I can't say whether it'd be an issue skipping it but I'd recommend sticking it out for the long haul and reading the lot. I've relished every page so far and while the series has been really accurate and true to the book it does miss out some of the smaller details, especially about characters and relationships.
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