Is a Song of Ice and Fire better than Lord of the Rings?

[Rhod the Red]

Well what would be better? Vague references like "I enjoyed our visit to my bed last night."?

[Mithalwen]

Possibly. There is a reason why there is an award annually for bad sex in fiction. I have read Sade and it is highly explicit but utterly tedious. My dissertation was on horror stories and there too letting the imagination work is scarier than describing the monster. A lot depends on context: consenting adults or abusive, fact or fiction. Alice Sebold's Lucky and the Lovely Bones are good exampkes of the same author handling the same subject matter very differently in novel and autobiography. The several harrowing pages of fact would have been gratuitous in the novel where she uses one perfect metaphor. There is a middle ground between all and nothing. But a lot is individual taste and there may be general gender differences in how things are perceived.

[Galadriel55]

I suppose that there's always the option of showing the bed but not explicitly showing pornography, which would avoid the awkward comments and complete inappropriateness, but Martin wrote in pretty explicitly pornographic detail.

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Rhod the Red

So it's alright to describe someone being killed with a sword or axe, but not describe sex?

It's okay to describe whatever one wants; but both violence and sex have the potential to be gratuitious, vulgar, or immature.