>Yep, as I suspected: Sounds perfectly revolting.

Well, it isn't revolting, at least, not in the way something like Birth of a Nation is. It's just... well, it's a tragedy. More than that, it's a tragedy written using the structure and tropes of epic fantasy combined with the structure and tropes of the insane dynastic wars of Europe during the High Middle Ages.

Now, to some people (me) that's gonna be utterly riveting. Other people are not going to want to sign up for that sort of emotional wringer.

It's worth noting that the structure of the narrative itself is studiously neutral. The books are written third-person limited, which means a long string of unreliable narrators who are wrapped up in their own internal value systems, logic, and rationales. It's a neat trick; it lets the author convey factual information to the readers wrapped in a strong emotional payload (because if you don't do that, what you have is a very dry history book, not a story) but doesn't assign authorial or narrative imprimatur or judgment to that information; the reader has to come up with that themselves.

It may or may not have quite succeeded; George Martin is on record as sometimes being a little afraid he's glamorized evil too much, a common problem in writers who set out to create complex villains.

-Merc
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