Ignore the series, read the books. Seriously, they're the next best thing since oxygen.
There is violence, but there's only so much violence because things were rough in the middle ages, which is the approximate time period the series is on. No violence is completely gratuitous, there is always context, and the author convincingly portrays the viewpoints of the different characters and how they justify and see their actions and the actions of those around them. In fact, the viewpoint thing is the main selling point of the series for me.
Instead of relying on a single all-seeing narrator, the author writes each chapter from the viewpoint of a different character. Since every narrator is a character in the series themselves, they are unreliable narrators. They are not aware of things that are going on outside of what they saw, heard or read, and they have no more way of being sure of what is going on than the reader is, and because of that, you are constantly being surprised by turns of event, which is something George is a genius at. The recent hype comes from the episode in the series that deals with the Red Wedding, which i'll not go into detail here, but suffices to say, that it is *THE* most unexpected plot twist in the entire series, or if not, at least one of THE most unexpected. So many people you didn't expect to die, die, that your jaw drops with the force of a thousand tons.
The amount of detail that goes into the series is just amazing. He does his best to try and get everything right about the period, including the little but ever important things like food, the way armor is donned, the way battles are fought, the way wars are fought, the fact that people had EXTREME difficulty of getting messages across quickly, etc. The world is also very fleshed out, the religions are believable, as are the traditions, and by the gods, he did his research on medieval traditions. Seriously, it's amazing.
The TV series doesn't do justice to the magnitude of the work.