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ASOIAF & Game of Thrones blathering (spoilers I guess).
There's clearly something about this story (or now, stories) that has captured a vast audience for a very good reason. I'm not sure what it is, but I know it's not articulated particularly well. Mind, I'm happy for people to like what they like, but both the books and the TV series aren't good for the reasons that are commonly posited. Let's hit up some examples:
"The plot is exceptional."
Maybe? This falls deeply into the realms of subjectivity, but I'll grant that the plot is exceptionally unpredictable and convoluted. Neither of these are inherently good or bad traits, but I don't feel they're used particularly well. Part of this is Martin's writing style; his background in writing TV serials is on full display as he ends many chapters of his books with cliffhangers, often waiting several chapters (if not a whole book) until the resolution of those events is described. I found this a frustrating reading experience, because I draw a stop-start feeling from this kind of writing tempo.
Compounding this, Martin seems to feel a need to answer every perspective character death with the introduction of another perspective character. So rather than using the end of a character's plotline and development to focus on existing characters, the stop-start cycle simply continues. Character deaths often seem arbitrary, too, relying on a combination of shock value and implications towards realism. In many cases, I'd much rather have seen character plotlines continue. We're already invested, so why undo that work for a temporary emotional rise? A great example is Joffrey's death, which is cathartic for the audience, but robs us of a more dramatic catharsis later on if he were undone by a character we had previous investment in.
"It's much more realistic than other works of fiction focusing on medieval and/or fantasy elements."
This is probably the biggest factual error I hear, and it's an error on numerous levels. For one thing, fiction is fiction for a reason; life doesn't generally organise itself into a narrative other than in retrospect. This is the essentially unrealistic element of fiction, and one of the reasons things like writing frameworks exist in the first place; one of a writer's job is to provide a frame of reference that's simple enough that an audience can follow events without getting easily lost. Usually, the best results emerge from sophisticated and elegant use of simpler frameworks.
In terms of social organisation, we only get very absolute examples based on caricatures of historical societies. The Iron Islands provide the best example, because it reduces the medieval Norse to one concept contained in a verb -- "Viking". There were no "vikings" as a society, as one would "go viking" as an activity. The medieval Norse sometimes used viking as a source of wealth, as most of their population were farmers, and the cold conditions of the location and period could make farming precarious. Norse warriors were, largely, comparable to the warriors of any Germanic society at the time, primarily being lightly armoured spearmen with shields. More broadly, different regions of the setting are divided into types of social organisation; we have a feudal empire/kingdom region, a city state region, and a nomad region. One of the more interesting aspects of history (at least in my opinion) was the interaction between these types of societies, as they often existed in close proximity to one-another rather than in discrete "zones".
On a more superficial level of criticism, Martin doesn't display much nuanced understanding of the late medieval warfare he's predominantly describing. In his depictions of war, he conflates civil war, total war, and "ritual" war (the broadly accepted term for the concept escapes me right now). His idea of military organisation used amounts to "a bunch of dudes I guess", rather than anything that might provide a frame of reference such as lance organisation or decimal organisation. Martin also lacks a working understanding of how to use the likes of a sword or spear (or whatever else). This isn't an issue for most people, but it makes some parts really cringey to me, particularly when characters are trying to demonstrate how hardcore or whatever they are.
"It resembles history remarkably well."
Connected to the above, but worth discussion in its own right. In the study of history, one is trying to discover the most likely "narrative" on the basis of imperfect evidence. That means that many historical events and systems are based on educated guessing rather than absolutely objective proof. So the process of learning history doesn't involve the reading of a history book; it involves the appraisal of many sources of information, which is a task history books assist with, but don't eclipse. The stories we're reading or watching sometimes include ambiguous elements, but the majority of events are presented as objective truths within the setting of the story.
Naturally, there's nothing wrong with this. It's how fiction works. But reading ASOIAF or watching GoT is nothing like the process of interpreting historical evidence, because our information is too clean.
tl;dr: The praise ASOIAF and GoT get is often expressed through incorrect information or assumption. I don't have any problem with people liking what they like, but these series are just as ahistorical and coloured by interpretation, bias, and misunderstanding as many other fantasy or semi-historical works of fiction are. I feel this is important because the way people understand history is so often informed by the media that references it, and Martin's work is just as flawed in providing an understanding of the periods and culture types involved as any number of other fantasy works I could name. So this post isn't so much about the quality of these stories as such, but their broad reception and common interpretation.
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Also, when karma is a huge bitch.
Come for the boobs, stay for the dragons.
Three times.
Nowhere near so funny, though.
I still think the show's too Dark and Moody for my taste, but that battle was Lit™ and it was nice seeing Dinklebot Peter Dinklage in his natural habitat