I am relishing a fantasy series that doesn't devolve into an obsessive desire with rape and other sexual atrocities. My wife and I don't get the Game of Thrones fanbase: the show is mostly horrific sexual abuse of women with some male sexual humiliation thrown in.
Rings of Power feels more like a return to fantasy as a meditation on wonder: I feel sometimes as if I was a child again stumbling upon some ruin in EverQuest or swampy bog of alien dangers.
I believe the early fans of A Song of Ice and Fire were excited about it because it went against the fantasy culture that Tolkien had started of a sanitized diaphanous world where the villains were unquestionably evil and the good guys could do no wrong. I think Martin tried to present his world in a more believable way as to how history shows us similar feudal periods went.
I think I also prefer Tolkien's flavour, but I can appreciate Martin's grittiness none the less.
Rings of Power feels more like a return to fantasy as a meditation on wonder: I feel sometimes as if I was a child again stumbling upon some ruin in EverQuest or swampy bog of alien dangers.