Game of Thrones UPDATE 2

While reading Martin's Game of Thrones, it amazes me at how well these characters are developed. I think I can safely say that this is the first time I have ever actually cared about what happened to the characters in the book. The shear amount of detail that Martin uses to tell each character's back-story and tell of the very rich history of this made up world really is remarkable. I've read the Lord of The Rings trilogy and Stephan King's The Dark Tower series and I find that, while all three of these series are great in their respects, Martin's, to me, is the most well defined. I find it interesting how he jumps from one character's situation to another's in each chapter. I will read one chapter and, "get in the groove", if you will, of that character and what is going on, then int he next chapter, Martin switches to a completely different character in a completely different area of the world. Through all of this, he still manages to tie all the the character's stories together. In fact, it is fairly early on in the book that it is evident to the reader that all of these characters are tied together in a very interesting way. This constant switching actually drives me a little crazy at times,because I'll be reading and want to just continue with tat one character until their story is finished, but I feel that this book and the whole series really would not be as rich as it is now if Martin had written his books like any other regular story out there today.