Tales in which great battles are fought and nary or few a protagonist killed deserve to be described with adjectives such as unrealistic, unbelievable and implausible. In real life, both heroes and villains rise and heroes and villains fall, and both outcomes are reached by skill and by chance. I wonder, however, if the works of George R. R. Martin are not simply reverse images of this fancifulness, every bit as unrealistic, unbelievable and implausible. The world depicted in #GameOfThrones is not simply pervasively dark, it is the embodiment of unadulterated nihilism. It is a world in which there is only one certainty: all light, all love, all goodness--wherever it might be found--will be extinguished. Be you virtuous or be you barbarous, be you high or be you low, be you jolly or be you forlorn, the ravenous maw of oblivion has caught your scent on the wind and stalks you even now. And yet I cannot turn away. Done with "A Storm of Swords" and off and running with "A Feast for Crows."

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