They've said this is the season they wanted to get to more than anything.

Can't wait. It actually irritates me that I have to.

It's like 'can't just film the whole saga right now and put it on an endless loop somewhere?'

GRRM just read excerpts from two new Barristan Selmy chapters from WOW at a show over the weekend. The battle of Mereen has begun...sounds like it should be awesome!

Here is a link to descriptions of the chapters he read from:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php...ers-barristan/

Amazon just dropped their price again to $29.99, so make sure they price adjusted it for you. Amazon is supposed to automatically drop the price for you, but sometimes you have to give customer service a buzz if it falls through the cracks.

In fact, i just noticed they are still charging me $34.99, so I am contacting them now.

So a friend of mine told me to watch these & downloaded the first 2 seasons, which I just finished. Holy crap. I'm hooked.

Going to go buy the books in the next week or so.

You won't regret it.

Been told more than once that they're ridiculously long. Not that it bothers me, but I guess I want to get all my other reading out of the way before I start.

If you haven't read them yet, you want to stay out of this thread. There are too many spoilers in here, and half the fun is going through the rollercoaster without being spoiled.

You can skip straight to book 3 if you want to, but there are some differences from the first two books versus the first two HBO seasons that you would need to have explained to you. My wife did that and she has been fine once I explained a few differences to her.

It's worth reading them though. In my experience, the first three books go by very quickly, especially book 3 which has a LOT of action and events. Books 4 and 5 drag a bit and are very long, but they are still good books and do have things set up such that Book 6 should be epic!

I prefer reading books 4 and 5 together (like they were one large book) as I think the story flows much better that way and it is MUCH easier to get a sense for the timing of different parts of the story. In case you didn't know, Book 4 and the first half of book 5 take place at the same time but focus on different characters. I didn't really like having several of my favorite characters disappear from the story for all of book 4, and I never really got the proper sense of timing on events in different locations reading them that way. I did a re-read as my wife was reading them, and I liked them better switching back and forth between books 4 and 5. There are some chapter lists on-line that tell you the suggested order if you decide to go that route.

Martin is just very detailed. You'll notice that if/when you read them. A lot of the length is due to his describing the scene, wardrobes, expressions on characters faces, all the way down to the food that they are eating. How you picture it in your head is very similar to how you'll see it on the show.

He'll describe a character practically down to the shoes they're wearing. If you like books that are detailed, you'll like these books. I'm on the last one right now. I have never been much of a reader, but have enjoyed these for sure.

He is detailed, so you can skim the feast descriptions (except at Ramsay's wedding). But they are also long because he has built an expansive story with lots of characters at lots of locations all over his intricately created world. A few chapters drag, but overall, they are very entertaining books.

So did anyone read the Sir Barristan chapter descriptions I posted?

SPOILERS

I'm pumped to see him give the ra-ra pre-battle speech and actually get into battle. Selmy is a bad ass. And I like the sound of the new Red Lamb character which is one of the new knights Selmy trained. Cracks me up that the yunkish had tall dudes fighting on stilts, reminds me of the Persians in 300. No match for Selmy of course.

And Victarion and his fleet joining in the battle too, I wonder if he'll blow the dragon horn and what will happen when he does. If the pit fighting attracted Drogon, you can only imagine that the dragons must be nearby with a whole battle erupting. I also wonder what Tyrion, Mormont, Brown Ben Plumm and the second sons are doing during this battle. He needs to get the next book finished soon!

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It says the website is offline/down. Weird.

Sweet, can't wait!

S2 blu ray finally arrived. Can't WAIT to re-watch the series. Hopefully, get the whole thing in before S3 starts up.