Bout a quarter of the way through and despite knowing ""everything that's gonna happen"" it's still phenomenal. I seemed to recall that the exposition was overwhelming when I tried reading this book way back when, but maybe I was just too restless for it.

I'd also announce my own bias because, having watched the show a few times through, I have better mental models of even the fringe characters now, whereas going through this raw as a first time exposure would be pretty tough. I'm able to better appreciate the nuanced differences between the show and the books, and there's already a bunch of small differences that wildly change dynamics between characters (like Catelyn Stark encouraging Ned to leave for King's landing rather than begging him to stay – changes the whole trust/mother of a bastard relationship that's pushed in the show).

So far, I'd give it a 9.5, but I think I'm going to have to "tax" my scores by like minus 1 bc of privileged knowledge which makes it less dense

The pacing of book 1 is a bit odd. S1 follows pretty identically, but as a book, it's just all ramp? I don't care at all since –again– I know that there's a forthcoming Book 2, BUT I GET THE FEELING THAT GEORGEMATHY HAS A HABIT OF QUEING UP THE N+1 AND MAYBE EVEN N+2th BOOKS during the Nth book. So, for that reason I do penalize another half point leaving this at a measly 9/10.

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