Currently reading and still loving the heck out of Game of Thrones. Political drama, battles of lords, conspiracies, and general awesomeness all in a fantasy setting. So good.
A Game of Thrones is excellent (albeit not something you'd want a young child to read).
A Clash of Kings is very good.
A Storm of Swords is okay.
Just like with A Wheel of Time, I'd recommend stopping after the third book and reading plot summaries of the remainder of the series.
A Feast for Crows tends to drag on.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through A Dance With Dragons and I'm not planning to read any more books in the series. I'll read plot summaries to find out what happens to my favorite characters, but the "mature" elements that set the first book apart from most "sanitized" fantasy epics have grown tiresome and repetitive, the plot is spread across too many characters and those characters' pieces of the overarching story seem to proceed at a snail's pace, and I've lost interest.
Again, the first three books are well-written, but once Martin split his characters across two books (most of the events in A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons run in chronological parallel), the story slowed drastically.
Yes, Martin is a very talented writer, but so was Robert Jordan and I dropped the Wheel of Time series after the sixth or seventh book (I don't recall exactly which). Martin and Jordan aren't alone in the trend, either; Tad Williams has a similar gift for writing and a similar nasty habit of drawing things out.
Just as Frank Herbert's Dune is a fantastic book but I warn people the remainder of the series doesn't live up to the promise of the first, I recommend ducking out after the third book of A Song of Ice and Fire.
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