Warning: Spoilers and fangirl indulgence.
The thing about GRRM's work is that while there are many POV characters, plots, and story lines, each book always contains at least two stand out story threads that could really work all on their own. Because I've had a bad day/week, I thought I would just allow myself to talk about what parts of each book are the best stories to me.
A Game of Thrones:
To me, the most stand out story in the first book is Daeneyrs as the faces of the Womanhood. In fact, even though she is a young teenager when the series begins, Dany weaves through the various aspects of the goddess as her first story arch. She begins as a virginal girl of 13, sold into a marriage to an older, scary man. She is young, innocent, and powerless. Slowly, she begins to claim power as her own. She does this first by taking charge of her sexuality and sexual education, thus gaining some control over her marriage. So, she goes from Maiden to Lover. By the time she has turned 14, she's pregnant, now moving into the phase of Mother. Because she is with child, she now has even more value in the culture she's been sold into, and thus gains more power.
In no moment does Daenerys hold back in taking power that is presented to her. She accepts her role as the female leader of her husband's people and the obligations that go along with it. She does not shy away from or dismiss his culture, making her truly become Queen. While she respects the culture, she still sees places where it can improve. When Drogo's men rape captured women, Dany champions them, standing up to her husband and telling him that the rape is wrong. She defies the men around her, showing that she has the same Warrior's spirit they have.
As the book is winding down, Dany reaches the Crone aspects of the cycle. Death is around her. Drogo's death is close. She strikes a bargain to save him, knowing that death will be involved, as only life can pay for life. The magic woman who 'helping' her betrays her, putting Drogo into a nasty state of existence and presumably killing Dany's unborn child. Dany seems to have lost everything. Her people are scattered, she will never hold her child, and she is forced to put an end to her husband's life herself.
After this, after moving from Maid to Lover to Mother to Queen to Warrior to Crone, it would seem that Daenerys has no where left to go. She builds a pyre for her husband, sets her dragon eggs on it, and makes sure that the magical woman who betrayed her will burn as well. Dany enters the flames and everyone thinks she'll die along side her husband. Of course she doesn't. When the fire dies down, the eggs have hatched out the first baby dragons the world has seen in centuries.
Her story slows down in the books that follow. Past the first book, Daenerys's story is a lot like that of Alexander the Great. There is a lot of conquering and travel and some misguided ruling. But in this first book, she goes from being a little girl, an orphaned and displayed princess, to being the Mother of Dragons. It is an amazing process and more than anything else that happened in the first book, it is the reason I fell in love with this series.
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