Actually, Martin doesn't write high-fantasy. I think it's called vulgar fantasy or low fantasy or something.

point is, high-fantasy is very black and white - think LotR. The good guys are tragic, but clearly good: Boromir may have tried to steal the Ring, but he did it because he genuinely was trying to save his people. Moral dilemmas are virtually non-existent, so the Boromir case is probably the most morally taxing situation you'll come across throughout the series. Bad guys are clearly evil - they look evil, act evil etc

Martin's series isn't this clear cut, and that's the difference. Jon Snow is a good guy, but he goes out
buttsoup
. Jaime starts out as a legimate bad, by
breasts
but he looks like a good guy: blonde hair, blue eyes, rich, famous. Sandor Clegane is another great example of the mixed-value, really interesting characters, because he
genitals?
, even though he looks like a bad guy and runs with the bad guys.

While the Song of Ice and Fire is listed as having elements of high fantasy, such as taking place in a parallel world with no primary world and being a multi-volume saga with a large scope, the traditional hallmarks of high-fantasy are missing from it.

Also, Martin's books are nice in that there is a minimum of magic, although he's starting to ramp it up as the books go on. I'm really disappointed with some of his decisions in story-telling in books 4-5, but that might be because I'm an elitist when it comes to fantasy.

In thread related news, I just finished reading (surprise, surprise) the Impotence of Being Earnest and I'm now into Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson. I also just finished reading Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini(sp?), which was a really good read. He managed a fantastic contrast between ignorant victim and knowing victim on the backdrop of Afghanistan as it reaches the point where 9/11 happens. The story got a bit hokey in its final pages, but all in all it was an interesting and worthwhile journey.