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. He began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, publishing it in 1996. Martin originally envisioned the series as a trilogy but has released five out of a planned seven volumes. The fifth and most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Martin continues to write the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.
Author
United States
English
- Bantam Books (US, Canada)
- Voyager Books (UK, Australia)
August 1, 1996 – present
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 their stories continually raise questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence.
The story unfolds through a rotating set of subjective points of view, the success or survival of any one of which is never assured. Each chapter is told from a limited third-person perspective, drawn from a group of characters that grows 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.[3][4] The work as a whole consists of three interwoven plots: a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros; the growing threat posed by the powerful supernatural Others from the northernmost region of Westeros; and the ambition of the daughter of the deposed Westerosi king to return from her exile in Essos and assume the Iron Throne.
As of 2024 more than 90 million copies in 47 languages had been sold.[5][6][7] The fourth and fifth volumes both reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller lists when published in 2005 and 2011.[8] Among the many derived works number several prequel novellas, two series for television, a comic book adaptation, and several card, board, and video games. The series has been received with widespread critical acclaim for its world-building, characters, and narrative.
Publishing history[edit]
Overview[edit]
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.[10] The series has also been translated into more than 30 languages.[11] All page totals given below are for the US first editions.
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
Science Fiction Weekly stated in 2000 that "few would dispute that Martin's most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking A Song of Ice and Fire historical fantasy series",[38] for which reviews have been "orders of magnitude better" than for his previous works, as Martin described to The New Yorker.[51] In 2007, Weird Tales magazine described the series as a "superb fantasy saga" that "raised Martin to a whole new level of success".[30] Shortly before the release of A Dance with Dragons in 2011, Bill Sheehan of The Washington Post was sure that "no work of fantasy has generated such anticipation since Harry Potter's final duel with Voldemort",[116] and Ethan Sacks of Daily News saw the series turning Martin into a darling of literary critics as well as mainstream readers, which was "rare for a fantasy genre that's often dismissed as garbage not fit to line the bottom of a dragon's cage".[62] Salon.com's Andrew Leonard stated:
Derived works[edit]
Novellas[edit]
Martin has written several prequel novellas. The Tales of Dunk and Egg series, three novellas set 90 years before the events of the novel series, feature the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire "Egg", who later became King Aegon V Targaryen. The stories have no direct connection to the plot of A Song of Ice and Fire, although characters from it are mentioned in the series. The first installment, The Hedge Knight, was published in the 1998 anthology Legends. The Sworn Sword followed in 2003, published in Legends II.[44] Both were later adapted into graphic novels.[159] The third novella, The Mystery Knight, was first published in the 2010 anthology Warriors[160] and in 2017 it was adapted as a graphic novel, as well.[161] In 2015, the first three novellas were published as one illustrated collection, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
The novella The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens appeared in Tor Books's 2013 anthology Dangerous Women and explains some of the Targaryen backstory two centuries before the events of the novels.[162][163] The Rogue Prince, or, a King's Brother, published in the 2014 anthology Rogues, is itself a prequel to the events of The Princess and the Queen.[164] The novella The Sons of the Dragon, published in the 2017 anthology The Book of Swords, is the story of Aegon the Conqueror's two sons Aenys I and Maegor I "The Cruel". All three of these stories were incorporated as parts of Fire & Blood, a book chronicling the history of the Targaryen line.
Chapter sets from the novels were also compiled into three novellas that were released between 1996 and 2003 by Asimov's Science Fiction and Dragon: