I cannot apologise for A Game of Thrones! This is a book that got me: courtly intrigue, scary things beyond the wall, the promise of dragons! Yes, there's a lot of questionable material in here, but it goes with the territory. Here, at least, Martin does not seem to be turned on by the sexually charged scenes, although he does unfortunately twice refer to a woman's vagina as "her sex", which has always been tacky.

I might go more into this later, but seriously what got me most about this was how dang exciting the wind down was. Every one of the last chapters setting up for great things to come! "Excitement" is a factor I frequently don't get out of a book, so when I find and recognise it, BANG! The definition of a good read.