A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Martin plans to write the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.
A Song of Ice and Fire depicts a violent world dominated by political realism. What little supernatural power exists is confined to the margins of the known world. Moral ambiguity pervades the books, and many of the storylines frequently raise questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence. The story unfolds through an alternating set of subjective points of view, the success or survival of any of which is never assured. Each chapter is told from a limited third-person perspective, drawn from a group of characters that expands from nine in the first novel to 31 by the fifth.
The novels are set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. Martin's stated inspirations for the series include the Wars of the Roses and The Accursed Kings, a series of French historical novels by Maurice Druon. The work as a whole consists of three interwoven plots: a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, the ambition of the surviving members of the dethroned Targaryen dynasty to return from their exile in Essos and reassume the Iron Throne, and the growing threat posed by the powerful supernatural Others from the northernmost region of Westeros.
As of 2015, more than 90 million copies in 47 languages had been sold. The fourth and fifth volumes reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller lists when published in 2005 and 2011 respectively. Among the many derived works are [|several prequel novellas], [|three television series], a comic book adaptation, and several card, board, and video games. The series has received critical acclaim for its world-building, characters, and narrative.
Plot synopsis
A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world in which seasons often last for years and can end unpredictably. Before the events of the first novel, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were united under the Targaryen dynasty, establishing military supremacy through their control of dragons. The Targaryens ruled for nearly three hundred years, continuing beyond the extinction of the dragons. Their dynasty eventually ended with a rebellion led by Lord Robert Baratheon, in which Aerys II "the Mad King" Targaryen was killed and Robert proclaimed king of the Seven Kingdoms. At the beginning of A Game of Thrones, 15 years have passed since Robert's rebellion, with a nine-year-long summer nearing its end.The principal story chronicles the power struggle for the Iron Throne among the great Houses of Westeros following the death of King Robert in A Game of Thrones. Robert's heir apparent, the 13-year-old Joffrey, is immediately proclaimed king through the machinations of his mother, Queen Cersei Lannister. When Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark — Robert's closest friend and chief advisor — discovers that Joffrey and his siblings are the product of incest between Cersei and her twin brother Ser Jaime Lannister, Eddard attempts to unseat Joffrey, but is betrayed and executed for treason. In response, Robert's younger brothers Stannis and Renly lay separate claims to the throne. During this period of instability, two of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros attempt to become independent from the Iron Throne: Eddard's eldest son Robb is proclaimed King in the North, while Lord Balon Greyjoy desires to recover the independence of his kingdom, the Iron Islands. The so-called "War of the Five Kings" is in full progress by the middle of the second book, A Clash of Kings. This story is told principally through the perspectives of Eddard's wife Catelyn, their children Sansa, Arya, and Bran, and Jaime and Cersei's younger brother Tyrion Lannister, with more point-of-view characters added as the novels continue.
The second storyline stems from the far north of Westeros, where an 8,000-year-old wall of ice, simply called "the Wall", defends the Seven Kingdoms from supernatural creatures known as the Others. The Wall's sentinels, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch, also protect the realm from incursions by the "wildlings" or "Free Folk", a number of human tribes living on the north side of the Wall. The story of The Night's Watch is told primarily through the point of view of Jon Snow, Lord Eddard Stark's bastard son. Jon follows in the footsteps of his paternal uncle Benjen Stark and joins the Watch at a young age, rising quickly through the ranks. He eventually becomes Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. In the third volume, A Storm of Swords, the Night's Watch storyline becomes increasingly entangled with the War of the Five Kings when King Stannis Baratheon arrives at The Wall.
The third storyline follows Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aerys II. On the continent of Essos, east of Westeros across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys is married off by her elder brother Viserys to a powerful warlord of the nomadic Dothraki. Over the course of her story, Daenerys slowly becomes an independent and intelligent ruler in her own right. Her rise to power is aided by the historic birth of three dragons, hatched from eggs given to her as wedding gifts. The three dragons soon become not only a symbol of her bloodline and her claim to the throne but also devastating weapons of war, which help her in the conquest of Slaver's Bay. The later books follow her ongoing conflict with the region's city-states, in which she aims to consolidate power, disrupt the Essosi slave trade, and gather support for her ambitions to reclaim Westeros.
Publishing history
Overview
Books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series are first published in hardcover and are later re-released as paperback editions. In the UK, Harper Voyager publishes special slipcased editions. The series has also been translated into more than 30 languages. All page totals given below are for the US first editions.First three novels (1991–2000)
George R. R. Martin was already a successful fantasy and sci-fi author and TV writer before writing his A Song of Ice and Fire book series. Martin had his first short story published in 1971 and his first novel in 1977. By the mid-1990s, he had won three Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and other awards for his short fiction. Although his early books were well-received within the fantasy fiction community, his readership remained relatively small and Martin took on jobs as a writer in Hollywood in the mid-1980s. He worked principally on the revival of The Twilight Zone throughout 1986 and on Beauty and the Beast until 1990, but he also developed his own TV pilots and wrote feature film scripts. He grew frustrated that his pilots and screenplays were not getting made and that TV-related production limitations like budgets and episode lengths were forcing him to cut characters and trim battle scenes. This pushed Martin back towards writing books, where he did not have to worry about compromising the size of his imagination. Admiring the works of J. R. R. Tolkien in his childhood, he wanted to write an epic fantasy, though he did not have any specific ideas.When Martin was between Hollywood projects in the summer of 1991, he started writing a new science fiction novel called Avalon. After three chapters, he had a vivid idea of a boy seeing a man's beheading and finding direwolves in the snow, which would eventually become the first non-prologue chapter of A Game of Thrones. Putting Avalon aside, Martin finished this chapter in a few days and grew certain that it was part of a longer story. After a few more chapters, Martin perceived his new book as a fantasy story and started making maps and genealogies. However, the writing of this book was interrupted for a few years when Martin returned to Hollywood to produce his TV series Doorways that ABC had ordered but ultimately never aired.
In 1994, Martin gave his agent, Kirby McCauley, the first 200 pages and a two-page story projection as part of a planned trilogy with the novels A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter intended to follow. When Martin had still not reached the novel's end at 1,400 manuscript pages, he felt that the series needed to be four and eventually six books long, which he imagined as two linked trilogies of one long story. Martin chose A Song of Ice and Fire as the overall series title: Martin saw the struggle of the cold Others and the fiery dragons as one possible meaning for "Ice and Fire", whereas the word "song" had previously appeared in Martin's book titles A Song for Lya and Songs the Dead Men Sing, stemming from his obsessions with songs. Martin also named Robert Frost's 1920 poem "Fire and Ice" and cultural associations such as passion versus betrayal as possible influences for the series' title.
The revised finished manuscript for A Game of Thrones was 1,088 pages long, with the publication following in August 1996. The Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan had written a short endorsement for the cover that was influential in ensuring the book's and hence series' early success with fantasy readers. Blood of the Dragon, a pre-release sample novella drawn from Daenerys's chapters, went on to win the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella. The first book was marketed as part of the "Song of Ice and Fire trilogy" in 1996, but by the second book's release, the "trilogy" suffix had been dropped and the series was retitled to A Song of Ice and Fire.
The 300 pages removed from the Game of Thrones manuscript served as the opening of the second book, entitled A Clash of Kings. It was released in February 1999 in the United States, with a manuscript length of 1,184 pages. A Clash of Kings was the first book of the Song of Ice and Fire series to make the best-seller lists, reaching 13 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 1999. After the success of The Lord of the Rings films, Martin received his first inquiries to the rights of the Song of Ice and Fire series from various producers and filmmakers.
Martin was several months late turning in the third book, A Storm of Swords. The last chapter he had written was about the "Red Wedding", a pivotal scene notable for its violence. A Storm of Swords was 1,521 pages in manuscript, causing problems for many of Martin's publishers around the world. Bantam Books published A Storm of Swords in a single volume in the United States in November 2000, whereas some other-language editions were divided into two, three, or even four volumes. A Storm of Swords debuted at number 12 in the New York Times bestseller list.