Need another fix?

Now that all of you have burned through the 7th Harry Potter book like GWB with an 8-ball of coke in the 70s, what is left for you to do? How to combat that remorseful feeling of being out of such perfectly fluffy literature?

Well here’s an open thread to discuss those other series which may provide a HP-like fix for those who are starting to suffer. I have a suggestion that is no mere methadone substitute.

The series I’d recommend wholeheartedly would be George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series that begins with A Game of Thrones.

Martin has created the most interesting series I’ve read in the genre, not because it’s fantastic, but because it so perfectly captures various aspects of human nature. Usually in the fantasy-genre there is a formula which gets pretty boring, of a boy or girl chosen for destiny. People are good or evil, there is no moral ambiguity, and from the first book you know what the outcome will be. Martin kills all those people off within a few chapters and you are taken through a more realistic world of feudalism in which chivalry is illusory, even the good people with power have to do wrong, and the outcome is never clean and simple. He’s five books into the series, there are going to be seven total. Also, if you like books on tape, Audible has the series so far read beautifully by Roy Dotrice.

It’s my favorite series of books, and unlike the HP books or Tolkien, it is far more appropriate for an adult readership. In fact, kids under about 14 or 15 probably shouldn’t read them. It has the more interesting moral complexity of books like Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark materials Trilogy” which I can also strongly recommend. People frequently describe them as the fantasy series for atheists, but I think that’s a simplification.

What do others think? Who should we turn to now that Potter’s series is over?