The first vision George R.R. Martin had for his hit fantasy saga was of a boy seeing a man beheaded. The author refuses to shy from violence in his ongoing Song of Ice and Fire series, on which the HBO series Game of Thrones is based. (Remember the Red Wedding?) Yet as of now, he hopes to leave readers with a feeling besides horror, and while inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien.

"I’ve said before that the tone of the ending that I’m going for is bittersweet," Martin says to The Observer. "I mean, it’s no secret that Tolkien has been a huge influence on me, and I love the way he ended Lord of the Rings. It ends with victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory. Frodo is never whole again, and he goes away to the Undying Lands, and the other people live their lives."

Martin tells The Observer that, when he first read Lord of the Rings at age 13, he didn't "get" the trilogy's ending. By last year, however, he totally did. "Frodo's sadness — that was a bittersweet ending," he said to Rolling Stone, "which to my mind is far more powerful than the ending of Star Wars, where all the happy Ewoks are jumping around, and the ghosts of all the dead people appear, waving happily."

Martin hopes to finish his next Song of Ice and Fire book by Game of Thrones' sixth season. Meanwhile, an unfinished Tolkien manuscript named The Story of Kullervo will be released later this year.