I'm reading the second book in the series now. The dwarf character Tyrion "the Imp" Lannister just keep getting better and better. No matter how much the author directs the reader to hate the Lannisters I can't help but like the Imp. He funny, glib, never turns down a meal or passes up a whore. In one scene a foreign whore tells the Imp that in the lands she comes from sexual pleasure is a gift of the gods to be learned and practiced. Tyrion tells her if someone had told him sooner that he could pray with his cock he'd have been a much more religious man.