This review is actually for the audiobook of The Hedge Knight. 
 A novella set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, this is set around a hundred years before the events in Martin's huge work and is slighter in every way. The Hedge Knight of the title is Dunk, a young man raised by a poor masterless knight and trained in the ways of combat and chivalry. We meet him as as he sets out into the world following his elderly mentor's death, heading to a tourney to prove himself. 
 The tale lacks the intricacy of plot that characterises A Song of Ice and Fire, although things of course do not run smoothly for the would-be knight. Martin's achievement in all the books is create a living, breathing world in the classic fantasy faux-medieval mold and divest it entirely of the romantic gloss that usually lends such literature a rosy glow. Combat is brutal, even for men covered in heavy plates of steel and linked mail, and peasants without training or proper weapons have no chance. Life is nasty, brutish and short for all but a favoured elite, and even they are subject to the natural shocks and the treacheries of power. People die, not because of some all controlling destiny or plan of the gods or the universal balance, but simply through bad luck. The mood is often reminiscent of some of the grittier takes on the Arthurian legends, like the movie Excalibur or T.H. White's The Once and Future King 
 Yet the world view is not necessarily bleak. Dunk, like many of Martin's heroes is a truly moral person, who does the right simply because it is the right thing to do. He believes in the true code of chivalry - that the strong should protect the weak and not abuse their power, that promises and bonds are to be kept, that someone with the ability to stop wrongdoing should not stand idly by - even when he sees that his social superiors do not act that way. If good does triumph, it isn't because it is good but because there are people willing to fight for their principles. 
 This book also helps to fill in a little history of the later saga. We get to see the near ancestors of some of the great houses ad understand more about how the political situation at the start of A Song of Ice and Fire came about. 
 This novella and the ones that follow it are a nice, light introduction to Martin's world for those who don't yet know it and an interesting snack for those of us waiting the next table-straining course.