[HoneyBadger]

A Game of Thrones was revolutionary, to me anyway, in that every single fantasy trope got turned on it's head, while still being set in a fantasy setting that lived and breathed and was intriguing. The hero of the story was a deformed midget, the princess was being sold as a slave to a bunch of barbarians, and nobody rescued her, her brother, the rightful king, was vile, and died 2 seconds into the book, the dragons were all dead, the villains were pretty much a matter of opinion, atleast at the time, and the overall theme was mature and dark and-atleast for the first book, full of intricate characters and machinations and elements which intrigued, rather than annoyed. It stood out to me, strongly, and made me want more-and then ofcourse the sequils disappointed and disappointed again. But for a time, for that first book, it was extraordinary to me, even the pornographic scenes, the confused and askew moral compass, and the character slaughter. I hadn't seen those things before, and they did make the world the author was creating more real. And there's no real reason that those elements couldn't have continued to make for a great series. It was the fault of the author that the series has fallen apart, not the content that he was continuing.