After a long, long hiatus, the latest book in the greatest series of books ever written, the Song of Fire and Ice, was finally published. (Note: no spoilers!)

I read it about as fast as I could, but 1,000 pages takes a minute or two. Now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and think on it for a second, all I can say is, “Wow.”

I’m on record with my appreciation for George R. R. Martin, but the quality of his writing is simply amazing. I’m not exaggerating when I say this series is the best series of books I have ever read, by far. Better than Harry Potter, better than Twilight, better than Lord of the Rings, better than Dune, better than the Sword of Truth, and about a million times better than the Wheel of Time (don’t get me started on that one). The world building is amazing. The characters are a study in character development. The plot twists are unprecedented in their twistiness. Do you get the impression I like the books?

The only knock on the books whatsoever is the *looooong* wait in between installments. I think it was something like 6 years between this book and the last one. That’s a pretty long time, and it puts you in a compromising position, since you can’t always remember what happened in the previous books, but you don’t have the time to re-read the monsters. And by the way, that’s 6 years of anticipation for the next book, which you would think would almost doom it to fail, since it couldn’t live up to the hype.

Well, it did. It’s as good as any of the books in the series, and probably better than the last book.

I’ve always maintained that Mr. Martin can take as long as he wants to write them, as long as the quality is good. I don’t know what kind of writing process he has, but it’s obviously working, so I’d rather have him stick with it. However, as time wore on, and promises about deadlines began to pile up, I began to worry that perhaps success had gotten to him and he was knuckling under all the pressure, unable to finish or even proceed for fear of letting everybody down. Imagine my relief at finding out I was worrying for nothing.

Furthermore, writer John Scalzi makes some very good points I hadn’t considered concerning my expectations about how long it *aught* to take to write a book the size of a Dance with Dragons:

Add all those up, and I’ve written roughly 440,000 words worth of novels since 2005. A Dance With Dragons, so I am told, clocks in at 416,000 words. So, in terms of total novel words written for publication since 2005 (and omitting excised material), there’s a 5.5% difference between the amount that I have written for novels and what Martin has. If we’re talking about the actual words published, written since 2005, there’s a 13.5% difference — in Martin’s favor, because my 2012 novel won’t be published until, well, 2012.

In other words, maybe it just takes 6 years to write 416,000 publishable words.

I promised no spoilers, and I won’t include them since I know several people who are dying to read the book but haven’t yet. But let me just say that there is a cliff-hanger at the end of the book that is going to kill you. Especially since it is entirely likely it will be 6 years before we get to find out what happens!

I am also aware that HBO has turned the series into a tv show, Game of Thrones, and it’s killing me not to watch. From what I’ve seen online in terms of clips and reviews, it seems like it does as good of a job at living up to the books as could be done. Thanks, in no small part I’m sure, to HBO’s history of making some fantastic television, and Mr. Martin’s heavy involvement in the project (and he knows a thing or two about writing for a television series). Alas, I am waiting for the DVDs, since we don’t have HBO.

Get the book. Pick up the series. You might not like it as much as me, but if you like high fantasy even a little bit, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like it.