All In The Game, Yo

I have a new appreciation for heroin addicts.

In the legends I’ve heard about heroin addiction–not being exposed to heroin myself, you understand–the dealers hook you with the really good stuff and you spend the rest of your sad, addicted nod of a life chasing that dragon.   No hit will ever be as pure and potent and wonderful as that first taste.   Your body chemistry becomes used to the drug; in addition to that, the dealers also sell you “stepped on” product that’s been cut with baby powder, powdered milk, drywall…whatever.

And that, my friends, is where I’m at now.   Having sworn off fantasy as a genre years ago, I begrudgingly started to read the existing books in George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire.  You probably know all of this if you’ve read here in the last couple of months.   You probably also know that I fell in deep love with those books.

So here I am now, reading through other Epic Fantasy series which are stepped on in their own ways.   I’m halfway through Greg Keyes’ The Briar King and I’m realising that nothing will come close to the wonderfulness of Martin.   I realised that moreso when I googled “Best Epic Fantasy” yesterday and got a long list…with Martin at the top, loudly labled as “the best the genre has to offer.”

Clearly anything else I read will be second best.   But read them I shall, because I’m newly addicted.