The books are a ghastly bizarro-world imitation of the books of Tolkien—the writer of the semi-porn crap is just a dirty-minded loser. Yuck. Hate to see it take up space as anything resembling art on FR.
I might take issue with you on that.
I find very little that imitates Tolkien, other than the exercise in world building. The books are more a subversion of fantasy tropes, and I find that refreshing. The stories are more about power struggles and political maneuvering than the hero’s journey.
Actually I think of Martin as the anti-Tolkien - everything that is good and noble in Tolkien (and other High Fantasy books) is deliberately left out. Every character is deeply flawed, there is no good vs evil because everyone is evil, there is no romance, only tawdry sex. He can feel free to kill off anyone because there are no heroes. It's likely because Martin is a flaming leftist and thus only has evil in his heart. And yet the books are very good, though the last was less good - Martin is falling into the "stretch out the story to make an extra buck" trap that Robert Jordan also fell in. Martin is getting on in years - hope he doesn't die before he finishes the series llke Jordan did (though in Jordan's case it was finished by a technically better writer so it worked out fine).
The books have very little overt sex in them.
The discussion of sex in the books is not a bit out of line with what is normal in literary works, particularly of the realist sort. Sex is implied, or baldly discussed, but rarely if ever shown, and then without prurience. It is a very adult sort of treatment of life.
Consider Flaubert, Balzac, Zola or Hugo.
As for what HBO did, that is their doing and not essential to the work. The series would be substantially better with some editing of HBOs extra features.
Not really. The story is sort of “The War of the Roses” in a fantasy setting. It’s the seriousness that the author puts into his writing that invites the Tolkein comparison.
Based on your description I’m fairly certain you have never read them.