I’m just about done with the fifth and most current book in GoT. All I can say is that reading the fourth and fifth books might change your mind about honorable characters. I’ve also read Tolkien’s trilogy as well as The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
Both Martin and Tolkien are masters of character development but it’s important to note that, in the main, Martin does not use racial classifications in the same way as Tolkien did, at least not in the Seven Kingdoms. If you think of Westeros as a large “kingdom of men”, as Tolkien might put it, that might make the analogy better.
For me, Martin gets bogged down in food. I really don’t know why he spends so much time telling us what characters had for dinner, because only rarely does it mean anything.
Tolkien uses allegory in a brilliant way. Martin describes human nature and the potential for treachery in a way few others do. I find both to be excellent reading.
Comparing movies, GOT is porn. LOR is biblical.
I suppose that men and elves might be considered different "races," due to their occasional interbreeding.
I believe the other "races" of Middle Earth are more appropriately called species.
We've never had to deal with a world where there are multiple intelligent species. In such a world, our present definitions of racism wouldn't make any sense.
Dwarves and ents and orcs and trolls aren't "human" races at all, they're of entirely different species. In some cases the differentiation is even higher up the taxonomic scale. Ents would arguably be of a different Kingdom than Men.
Martin was a BIG fan of Jack Vance (probably one of the best of the genre). Jack Vance used food a lot because people are always hungry. Vance could write superb Fantasy and SF.
Have you seen a picture of Martin?
You’ve a shock coming... I won’t say more.