This series and TV show has been hyped for so long and my friend happened to own the book so I decided it was high time to read it. Clearly from my rating I enjoyed it, but did have a few issues with it here and there. 
 This book reads as a Tolkien book - very similar to Lord of the Rings. This, however, I thought was better than Lord of the Rings because Martin doesn't spend ages describing the different colors of the leaves, grass, and items of clothing worn seen (and sometimes unseen) by the characters in the story. This plot is so intricately woven between characters hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of leagues away from each other and I'm excited to see how some of the events that have happened in the first book begin to unfold in the next book. 
 I think I may have to wait a little while before beginning with the second book though because this was very draining in some ways. It is definitely high fantasy with a complete creation of a new world, new cultures, and in many cases, newly created languages. These all made for times when I felt like I needed to stop, pause, and just think about what I had just read. While I love the plot and characters (love/hate relationship with some of them), at times it became a lot to take in all at one time. 
 This book is split into chapters that are told through multiple characters points of view. There were some characters whose points of view I loved reading through (Tyrion, Arya, Bran, and Jon Snow) and others that I really couldn't stand (Sansa!!!). I definitely felt as though I needed to keep reading from one chapter to the next due to some of the cliff hangers that the chapters would leave you on. I loved this form of storytelling as it felt natural to switch between these characters' points of view (third person limited) instead of an ever changing first person which I could see becoming very confusing over time. 
 As for why I felt I couldn't give it the 5 stars: there were times that I definitely felt myself thinking that this was reminiscent of a Tolkien book. When Martin would go on for nearly a full paragraph about the family lines, their titles and where they were from, and friends of families, their titles and where they were from, I would get restless and bored and feel like I would be fine to either skip over the paragraph until I were to come to a part where there was more talking, or feel like putting the book down entirely. I was also very surprised at the amount of death in the book. I definitely don't have a problem with it, but I felt really sad about the deaths of a few characters that I had grown to love over the course of this 800+ page book. 
 If you don't like fantasy this may not be the book for you, but I will definitely continue to read on in the hopes that Martin doesn't kill off all the likeable characters. :)