I've been trying to get through this. I really liked Game of Thrones, but I feel... lost here. I'm not sure why. There's just too darn much going on, maybe.
Because. Nothing. Happens. They just walk. And walk. And walk. Book three is okay. Book four is even worse than book two, and I quit mid-way through. Mark me as one of those who don't get the popularity at all.
Speaking of confusing popularity, I finally went to amazon and "read inside"
5o shad3s of gray. While I did have the urge to pick up the blue pencil and remove 25%, that chunk wasn't as awful as I expected. I wasn't moved to read the rest, but it wasn't that bad. But then I read about 10 or 15 of the most popular 1-star reviews, and that was the most entertaining reading I've done in a long while. (Oh please, writing gods, if my novel gets published and it's popular enough to have people hate it, let them hate it in that funny a manner.) I loved, in particular, the first reviewer, by approval rating, who had done text searches and discovered 150 incidents of "shrugs" and "sighs" and the sort of thing I've removed entirely from my draft already. Not only is that hate, that's dedication to hate that I had to admire.