This great article lays out in more detail why people should read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones than I did in my review of the book.  I think a lot of these reasons will also relate to why people should also watch the HBO series that is premiering on Sunday, April 17th.  Here is an excerpt of one of the points that I liked a lot.

#8 The Story Is Driven by Realistic Human Conflicts

Martin has said that the series’ central struggle for power — the titular game of thrones played by various important people we meet — was inspired by England’s real-world War of the Roses, with its complex web of family loyalties and regional rivalries and so on. In terms of narrative fiction, I think the closest comparison is The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. A Game of Thrones combines the first film’s story of rival families violently jockeying for supremacy amid all sorts of complex conspiracies and alliances with the second film’s story of the very serious, very smart leader of one of those families trying to uncover the origin of a plot against him and his. The point is that we’re very far from rote Joseph Campbell hero’s-journey fantasy storytelling, with some dude learning it’s his destiny to defeat the Dark Lord. If you’re sick of that sort of thing, you’ll find a lot more to hook you here. This goes double if you’re the sort of person who’s ever enjoyed fictional or non-fictional war epic’s or gangster stories. “The Sopranos with swords” really is a pretty dead-on way to describe what’s going on here.

via 10 Reasons Why You Should Read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones – Topless Robot

Yesterday HBO, showed the first 14 minutes of the premiere episode of Game of THrones, and as I have been with everything I have seen so far, the chunk we saw last night was just great.  I simply can’t wait until it premieres in less than two weeks now.