George R. R. Martin is an asshole. And you know what? I knew after finishing the first book (Game of Thrones) in the Song of Fire and Ice series. I remember being 14 years old and, (grievous spoiler, in case you’ve neither read the first book nor seen the HBO series) when that fateful moment came where our righteous and heroic Lord Stark was killed, walking up to my mom aghast saying “He KILLED the hero. You can’t kill the hero.” He was true to the series most quoted saying, then: Winter is coming.

He is just as true to the saying with the latest offering. A Dance With Dragons picks up where the last one ended off, and once again R. R. Martin remains the only major fantasy writer that has produced sequels where the quality of the writing and the storytelling does not degraded with each new entry. The novel is a turn-pager. I got through the plus-1000 page hardcover book in less than 5 days, and that is despite the fact that I had other things to do. I could not help myself. The book just kept pushing me back.

I won’t spoil any moments in the story, and to be honest, that is the draw of this series. Once again, R. R. Martin paints us a world at once fantastical, where some people can change their faces and others possess animals, and starkly real; characters are just as likely to die of sickness brought on by overpopulation and old age than they are in some glorious fight or by the hand (paw) of some monster or another. Once again we are brought into what serves just as much of a deconstruction of the fantasy epic as an epic itself, and once again the end result is one of the best things the genre has ever produced.

Now lets hope he has an easier time writing the next installment and that it does not take five or seven years to write. But even if it does, I’m sure the end result will not disappoint.