[CW] Take the book nearest to you, turn to page 13. The first sentence your eyes land on is the first sentence of your story. The next one: “There were dragons everywhere.”

Write whatever comes into your mind, whatever the literary work triggers in your own imagination, whatever you think are the important ideas or values, based on your own experience.

There were dragons everywhere. That’s the detail that I find most engrossing about George R. R. Martin’s fantasy epicA Song of Ice and Fire.

There was once a single thing that could keep everybody in line. Don’t like that lord holed up in his new castle of Harrenhal? Burn it down. It seemed that in their early days the Targaryens could solve any problem by setting it on fire. Though it may have been peace through fear, it was relative peace compared to the times that Martin writes.

Overall, I feel like this story is intriguing. There’s always something hiding in the background, clearly foreshadowed and yet still surprising when it leaps out and puts beloved characters into peril and sometimes into the ground. It’s fascinating to examine in depth, as each event is so clearly foreshadowed and yet the reader makes his or her’s assumptions. What is one to expect when they are used to the good guys winning?

If I had one criticism for George R. R. Martin’s now famous (some would even say infamous) series, it would be this:

The last two books are not yet finished.