I took a long break from reading fantasy fiction, but currently have a craving for the flavor.

I’ve just started reading George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. The prologue uses probably the most exhausted cliché in fantasy and action/adventure fiction. Cocky lordling leads veteran soliders to their death.

Still I’m really looking forward to getting into this book and the rest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It has been recommended to me numerous times.

I hesitated previously because I don’t like to start series that have not had their endings written. I made that mistake during high school in reading the first 8 tomes of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series — and I mean tomes, each book comes in around a thousand pages of tiny print. Twelve books and twenty years later, the author is dead and the story is still unfinished. I can’t see myself revisiting that one.

A Song of Ice and Fire has 4 books written and 3 more planned.

What has forced my hand a little is that a HBO adaption is imminent. But mostly no other highly recommended books comes to mind.