To be honest, GRRM is light-years ahead of anyone else writing serious fantasy before him; he's the first author who's truly broken past the "Good vs. evil" confines which had encompassed the genre previously. (Actually, that's not entirely true; Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, whose writing date precedes the publication date of anything in A Song of Ice and Fire, also demonstrates those characteristics, albeit with a much more active pantheon. Howver, it wasn't published until much later, and imho contains some flaws in comparison to Martin's work). The only other fantasy author in Martin's league is Pratchett, who is not a serious fantasist at all; he's using the genre of fantasy as a means of satirizing our world, and in that fashion is much more comparable to Swift than to Tolkien.
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