Same here. But I get a more emotional experience from reading the Lord of the Rings than anything ever written by George Martin. Merry and Pippin and their conversation with the people arriving at Isengard in Flotsam and Jetsam make me feel contented happiness - something I have never seen another pull off. Smiling as though I were joking along with friends.

I feel the despair when traversing the Black Land, and I feel the terror of the Nazgûl ever at the Hobbits' tail, I feel the triumph on the Field of Cormallen and Pippin's outrage at the brigands' disrespect for Frodo back in the Shire.

Yet these are certainly not characters I can identify with - they're all far greater than life, even the Hobbits, while not possessing any exceptional strength or power or what not, are inhumanly good-natured and innocent, pure even. Intrinsically heroic and noble, as you put it below.



In Stephen Erikson's Deadhouse Gates, you feel for Coltaine because of just that. By any accounts, bearing the weight of the Chain of Dogs is an inhuman feat, but that doesn't make the experience less visceral, it makes it much more so.



I'd probably be deeply satisfied to see Mallick Rel's throat slit, but revenge is such an unsatisfying emotion. It's just a brief moment, and afterward you feel hollow because it's essentially a resolution. It simply can't compare to something like the Field of Cormallen.

Inhuman characters allow you to feel inhuman emotions through them, if they are well written. And given that I can actually feel human emotions, I don't really need to read a book to experience them.

Also, I loathe Arya, skip her chapters on rereads and view her storyline from her escape from King's Landing to her departure from Westeros the same way many people here view Perrin's storyline while Faile was abducted.