When Houses Fall . . . A Game of Thrones Readthrough Update

I'm on the final leg of Game of Thrones!  What's that mean?  It means it's finally getting interesting.  Stuff went down.  I suppose, if you thought of it as a chess game, then the queen just took the knight.  What's most interesting so far is the way in which Martin has set up the rules of the world; I'm impressed by his world-building on the cheap, and I think I can see where he's going from here.  I'm interested to see what he's going to do with the dragons, and especially with magic, since this doesn't seem to be a world in which magic plays much of a part.  But on the whole, I gotta admit that it hooked me, and I'm really excited to finish the books now.