Pic semi-related as I didn't watch the tv show but only read the first book out of curiosity since everyone and their mother kept talking about this frogging bullfish and I wanted to see if it could be any good. Biggest mistake in my life.
That neckbeard Martin thinks he can be a new Tolkien, but they have nothing in common except the R.R. in the name. Tolkien wrote an awesome masterpiece full of deep meaning with Lord of the Rings, in which every word can tell you something as they were all chosen carefully, and whose messages roots in Tolkien's life as a Christian, being a work which can really give you some important advice on how to live your life and what's really important. I could spend hours just talking about Frodo and how his "inverted quest" is the most revolutionary thing ever happened to modern novel, or how the acts of mercy on Gollum are maybe the most important part in the whole story as they resonate throughout the whole story. Not to talk about hobbits in general and how they can express the modern man, or how Tolkien created a real mythology of it's own.
Game of thrones doesn't even have an inch of all of this. It wants to feel "gritty and realistic" all of the time, resulting in just recurring to soap opera means to cheaply make the reader want to know what happens next, killing off characters as it was nothing because the atheist neckbeard Martin is says "woo people die when they get killed so let's kill em off randomly" (to then bring them back to life when plot armor is needed), and making everyone a fucking douche you'd want to slap badly in the face.
One thing that ASOIAF fags often refer to as Tolkien's limit is that some characters are too "good", and the example they always use is Sam. But everyone who read LotR carefully knows that Sam isn't completely good, in fact there's a point where Gollum is almost on the brink of turning good, and tries to caress Frodo as he slesps, but Sem scolds him thinking he was gonna harm him and from then on Gollum will just want to kill them. Tolkien also said in lots of his letters that while Sam sure has some good features, he's very limited in being a "small" person, who can't go the extra mile like Frodo does. And all characters, if you pay attention, have good and bad in them in LotR, only Tolkien shows you how there are some who really choose to follow the right path.
I find it a lot more simplistic and forced that a guy like Drogo in ASOIAF, who is basically a Gengis Khan who doesn't mind killing and raping thousands of people, suddenly turns into a Nice Guy™ for that slut Danaerys and they fall in love and "bangs her gently" and blah blah blah.
(Continuing in a comment as it's long)