What's bugging me more is that I'm almost done with the 4th book and I still don't know what the hell these books are about. It just seems to be a bunch of things that happen to a bunch of people, most of it seemingly random. I mean, can someone explain to me what the plot is? I keep hearing people say that the author, George R. R. Martin, is the "American Tolkien", but the LOTR had at least some sort of direction, a plot that spans all the books and ties everything together. So far in these Ice and Fire books there hasn't been anything like that. I don't know who is suppose to do what or what the end goal is or where it's going. Instead it's like Character A wants to get to Destination C in-order to accomplish Objective B, but gets sidetracked to Destination D where they either get killed or they get sidetracked somewhere else to accomplish some other unrelated objective that they never actually accomplish before getting killed or sidetracked somewhere else. Gah. This is the first time I've been tempted to just stop reading a book or series of books without any care to ever finding out how it ends. If they cancel the tv show, I really won't care at all, since nothing actually happens... yet, anyway.
The only saving grace is the story line of Daenerys Stormborn, which actually has a real plot that it maintains for more than 25 pages. She wants to return to Westeros and claim her rightful seat on the iron throne and everything she does in the books is working towards that goal. Well, there is something going on in this forth book that has me a bit worried, but I haven't gotten through it just yet.