The episode was really good in my opinion. I liked the added Rober/Jaime/Selmy/Lancel scene very much, it has a purpose to establish Robert's drinking habits even more, and also to show his resent for the Lannisters. Also, we got introduced to Lancel, who is going to be kind of important later on. The scenes on the Wall were my favorite for this episode, specially those involving Tyrion. I really loved how he puts Jon back on Earth when he says he is better then the rest of new recruits. Also, Dothraki language is great. It sounds like a real language, and the actors use it really good, it sounds as if they were using it all their lives.
wulfy42 said:
That aside, do you like Wheal of Time more then A Song of Ice and Fire? I haven't read WoT, but it looks like a promising series, since it is being mentioned everywhere.
The first bunch of books in the Wheel of time series were great. I enjoyed all the characters and the story as a whole. As the series progressed it started to break up, sort of like Game of Thrones, with individual stories that didn't connect that much. That took like 6-7 BIG books before it happened though and I would re-read the whole series each time a new book came out.
Eventually I really ended up only liking one main character (Mat) although I still cared about Rand for a long time as well. Still it takes a long time before the series seems to go downhill (in my opinion of course) and it's very worth reading up to that point.
If you have not read the Belgariad series by David Eddings and the Riftwar series by Raymond Feist I would highly recommend them. The Song of Ice and Fire series is very popular. I like to mix up my fantasy with science fiction to some extent (urban fantasy I guess you'd call it) which often involves including werewolves, vampires or magicians in modern (or futeristic) times. If you like that type of book you might want to try Jim Butchers Dresden series (also made into a TV series awhile ago) or Laurrel K hammiltons Anita Blake books (the early ones are very good until the author decides to start just writing porn for some reason).
If you like dungeons and dragons at all you might want to try Margret Weis and Tracy Hickmans Dragonlance books (and quite a few other good series as well), and you may have already heard of The Drizzt Du Orden books by R. A. Salvator (he writes quite a few other good books as well which in some cases eventually intertwine).
For science fiction I'd recommend reading Orson Scott Card (he has some fantasy as well but Ender's Game and some of the later books in it's series are awesome).
L.E. Modesit Jr also has a few great series to read (recluce and Corean Chronicles to name a few). If you like Star wars at all I'd highly recommend reading the books by Timothy Zhan which directly continue the original series (and in my opinion are much better).
I think my main problem with the type of writing in Game of Thrones etc is I'm a very old school science fiction/fantasy reader. I've been reading non-stop since the mid 70's and I like my story to not jump around that much. Even if I do like all the characters and all the stories being told, I don't like jumping around from one story to another (I like to get into a story and just devour it....often reading a book in 1 night). Books that jump between characters break that up for me as I have to switch to another persons perspective and series of events. If I don't like the other story/character.....well then I just skip it so I can keep reading about the ones I do.