George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire: the Good, the Bad, the Debauchery

Let it suffice to say that perhaps Martin doesn’t always do gritty realism as well as it could be done (yet at times he does indeed), but it is a cut – a detailed, bloody one from groin to collarbone that causes bowels and other assorted entrails to fall out – above the standard bookshelf fare when it comes to quote-unquote realistic fantasy.