You really didn't like The Grey King? I think that's the best, though I like The Dark Is Rising, personally. The Welsh connections really intrigued me. That's about all I remember from it, but it's enough to leave a positive takeaway anyhow.

I don't find myself recommending The Dark Is Rising very much these days, but it was important to me. In this modern age, with good fantasy series so much more prevalent, it's not as impressive.

You really didn't like The Grey King? I think that's the best

I know! But I didn't care for it. Cooper's pacing and narrative structure are just not my thing; characters seem to do nothing for pages and pages and then magically end up somewhere important, do something significant, and then be boring for pages and pages. There rarely seems to be any real conflict or active struggle.

The Welsh connections really intrigued me.

Whereas I didn't care. So that didn't help matters.

Heh. I think I was just like "Wait, what, Arthur legends have some interesting history to them? They're not just the Disney movie?"

I read it much younger than you.

Dance With Dragons: It's not enough that these books have eight thousand characters, now they're all disguised as each other?

I'm so tickled. Tim hauled ass through the 4th Skulduggery Pleasant book (Dark Days) in less than a week, and is now almost done with the 5th book (Mortal Coil). Two nights ago he asked me to hide it from him so he would go to bed at a reasonable time, since he had been reading until 2 or 3 every night.

WIN WIN WIN.

He hasn't quite gotten to the part where the Remnants infect everyone (no Tanith no no no), but he's almost there. Thank god. I need to flail at him about Tanith. Oh, and about Kenspeckle getting killed. He'll understand, especially about Kenspeckle, because Tim loves Kenspeckle.

I think when the 7th book arrives we might have a fight over who gets to read it first. (I'll win. I'm a hair-puller.)

A Game of Thrones : I was right. The one major death spoiler I knew, and it still hurt. I almost have tears in my eyes here, and I knew it was coming.

I think I know which one you're talking about, and it was the first of several "What? You can't do that!" moments for me. (There were several more, until I finally got it through my head that, in these books, anything can happen.) (Though I'm now in the fifth book, and there are a few people who seem crucial enough to the narrative that I don't think they can die without leaving huge plot threads hanging, but then again, maybe they can.)

OTOH, there are several people crucial to the plot who would close some of those loose-hanging plot threads if they died, so it more or less still comes out as "anyone could go at any moment."

Good point. At the point where I am right now, there are too many people trying to plan things around Daenerys that her death would take too long to have much impact, but Stannis could easily die with no one even noticing. He doesn't really seem to have much purpose, anyway -- he wants to be king because the rules say he should be king, and he follows the rules.

Paul and Storm have a plea to GRRM - Write Like The Wind!

I don't remember anything NSFW about it (language, maybe?) but I'd recommend headphones, just in case.