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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1721153" data-attributes="member: 12744">While I recognize that we're really talking about two things, I still saw the part where [spoiler]Jamie, having been caught in the act of incest with his sister, throws the young Stark heir to his near death, along with the Stark's abject dislike of him, set him up as a very dastardly bad guy, until a later book where you soon realize that he is not so 'bad' or inhuman, but possibly even made that decision in a point of panic or merely because he is not entirely evil, just flawed. You know, a person. I get the feeling by the end of the last book that he has been entirely misread by everyone who knows him/knows of him, and that while he has done grand and terrible things, they are mostly no less terrible than things done by almost every other character in the books (with some exceptions, of course), only made so much worse or grander by the hype surrounding him[/spoiler]. So to me, that is one of the good examples of what I was saying. Only the next book will hold whether that is actually true or not. I disagree *just* a little... I felt that Ed Stark and subsequently his Children were the central characters, especially Ed, until the end of the first book. That is when I realized, truly, that Martin was not playing around. But the buildup during the first half of the first book looked very much like a small set of very likable characters were going to drive the story throughout the series.   Oh, it started becoming obvious it was different, but again the end of the first book was what truly punctuated that for me, made me realize completely that I was reading something entirely different. After wading through so much fantasy cliche, here was a guy who was not afraid to have the story be driven by the story, not the characters, which is something that the long-standing tradition of protagonist/antagonist in fantasy literature has not very often done in quite that complete of a manner, or at least in one that didnt seem disjointed and fragmentary, IMO. Don't get me wrong, I have often enjoyed well done stories of a hero or heros who, while maybe flawed, struggle against impossible odds while growing and making mistakes, etc.  You don't cheer for heroes or boo bad guys in Martin's book. You grab onto the story and try to hold on while it twists and turns and tries to throw you off. Oh, I agree, though I still say it as a nicely done break away from the typical fantasy novel. However, it's pretty obvious in the first book that it is not the typical fantasy novel. I guess I'm not very bright <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />, because it took me most of the first novel to figure out just how different it was going to be.</blockquote>

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