I resisted for over a year. I refused point-blank. There was no — no way in hell, not ever, no sir — that I was going to read or watch Game of Thrones.

I told myself that it was because I detested fantasy. The Lord of the Rings left me cold, and the Hobbit made me want to claw my eyes out from boredom. The Wheel of Time saga is around ten trillion books long, but I couldn’t even get past the first ten pages. Fantasy, I was convinced, was mostly badly-written gobbledegook, expecting the reader to live in the world and comprehend how everything in itworks within the first half-chapter, and if you don’t manage then: screw you. No other genre has made me feel like an idiot more often, and as such I was sort of soured on the thing.

Sod that.

But in the past year, my Internet has been flooded with the bloody thing. TV series live-blogs. Memes. People wailing about how terrible it is that they have to wait for more Game of Thrones (yes, I’m aware the series is known as A Song of Ice and Fire, but truth be told I don’t really care). It got too much. I had to prove to myself, once and for all, that fantasy is bunk and everyone on earth is stupid.

I am halfway through the first of George R.R. Martin’s books, and I am hooked. Utterly and totally. It is next-level brilliant. So I’d like to address the fifteen remaining people on the planet who have yet to read it, and offer the following advice.

Everybody dies

It’s the first thing you’ll find out about the series if you pay attention to it for more than half a second. Once again: EVERYBODY DIES. Do not do as I did, and become attached to the characters. I dig Eddard Stark. I cackle with joy whenever the dwarf Tyrion Lannister pops up. I am in love with Danaerys Targaryen. They’re all amazing. And I know that they’re all going to die horrific and painful deaths, probably within the next three pages.

It’s worse than waiting for test results from the doctor. Please, for your sanity: treat everybody in the continent of Westeros as expendable. Especially the ones you like the most.

The language will invade your life

I was writing an email to a colleague this morning, talking about a particularly difficult client. I believe I wrote something like, “I am wroth with him anew for his treachery.”

In the book I’m writing, my main character — a twelve-year-old boy from Brooklyn — turned to his buddy and said, “They will taste the darkness-forged edge of my blade.”

Last night, my girlfriend asked if I’d like another beer, and I replied: “Forsooth! T’would be most welcome, milady, for I am much parched.”

Verily, such floral verbosity doth forsake my existence. Tread carefully when thou pickest up this book.

(EDIT: That originally read “picketh” but my friend Charis corrected it. Charis, thank you. I oweth you a most sizeable debt, and if you correct anything in this apology I shall visit you in the small hours and, like Basil Fawlty, put a bat up your nightdress.)

Your life as you know it will end

Oh, that free time you had after work? Gone. You’re due in Westeros, chum. And you’ve only just started reading. Each book is 1000-plus pages. And there are, at last count, five books with two more coming.

And let’s not forget the TV series, currently at Season 4 and climbing. You don’t dare watch it while reading the books, for fear of spoilers, which that means that when you turn 70, and finally put down the last sodding book with an arthritic wheeze, you’ll have another twenty years of television ahead of you.

And speaking of length…

The series may NEVER END

Five books have been written. Two more are due, at around 1500 pages each.

The problem is, the be-bearded George R.R. Martin might actually die before he can finish. He is 65 years old. He’s also allegedly said that he won’t permit another writer to complete the series like that bloke did when Robert Jordan popped his clogs (And was he any good? Who can say? Not I, not when I’d have to sit through eleven Wheel of Time books to find out)

So it may never end. And you’re addicted. Lucky you. Have fun!