A Song of Ice and Fire

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. Martin began the series in 1991 and published the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1996. Martin gradually extended the originally planned trilogy into four, six and eventually seven volumes. The fifth installment, A Dance with Dragons, took over five years of writing until being published in 2011. The sixth book, The Winds of Winter, is being written.

The story of A Song of Ice and Fire takes place on the fictional continents Westeros and Essos, with a history of thousands of years. The series is told in the third person by point of view characters, whose number reaches 31 by the fifth novel. Three stories become interwoven: the chronicling of a dynastic war for control of Westeros by several families; the rising threat of the dormant cold supernatural Others dwelling beyond an immense wall of ice on Westeros' northern border; and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled daughter of a king murdered in a civil war shortly before her birth, to return to Westeros with her fire-breathing dragons and claim her rightful throne.

Drawing inspiration from historical events such as the English period of the Wars of the Roses, Martin defied the conventions of the high fantasy genre. The series received praise for its realism; it subdues magic in favor of battles and political intrigue. Violence, sexuality and moral ambiguity are frequently displayed among a set of over a thousand named characters. Major characters are repeatedly killed off so that readers cannot rely on the supposed heroes to remain safe and sound. The multiple viewpoint structure allows characters to be explored from many sides so that the supposed villains can provide their viewpoint. In contrast to an omnipotent storyteller, this structure can present the reader with misleading information as it is slanted by each character's own interpretation of events, rather than being a strictly factual presentation. A Song of Ice and Fire also received critical commentary for its diverse portrayal of women and religion.

Plot synopsis

The story of A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world where seasons may last for years. Centuries before the events of the first novel (see backstory), the Seven Kingdoms on the continent Westeros were united under several generations of the Targaryen dynasty, who wielded the power of fire-breathing dragons until their apparent extinction. The last Targaryen king was killed in a rebellion of feudal lords led by a young Robert Baratheon some fourteen years before the events of the first novel. The books' present follows various viewpoint characters spread across divergent lands as winter is approaching.

The main story chronicles a many-sided power struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros after King Robert's death in the first book, A Game of Thrones. King Robert's son Joffrey immediately claims the Iron Throne with the support of his mother's powerful family, the immensely wealthy House Lannister. When Lord Eddard Stark, King Robert's "Hand" (chief advisor), is executed after finding out Joffrey and his siblings were in fact not sired by Robert, Robert's brothers Stannis and Renly individually lay claim on the throne. Meanwhile, several regions of Westeros seek to return to self-rule: Eddard Stark's eldest son Robb is proclaimed King in the North, while Balon Greyjoy re-establishes an independent Kingdom in his region, the Iron Islands. This so-called War of the Five Kings is in full progress by the middle of the second book, A Clash of Kings, with more people gradually joining the struggle for power.

The second story takes place on the northern border of Westeros, where an enormous, eight-thousand years old wall of ice defends Westeros from the Others, creatures believed to be mythical at the start of the series. The Wall's sentinels, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch, are spending most of their time dealing with the human wildlings living beyond the Wall when the first Others appear in A Game of Thrones. The Night's Watch story is told primarily through the eyes of Jon Snow, alleged bastard son of Eddard Stark, as he rises through the ranks of the Watch and learns the true nature of the threat from the north. With the third volume, A Storm of Swords, this story becomes entangled with the civil war to the south when Stannis moves to the Wall to protect the realm from the threat of invasion and simultaneously win the favor of the northern strongholds. In the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, Joffrey's younger brother Tommen holds the Iron Throne, with his mother and later his uncle serving as his regents as the first snowflakes reach their regal domicile at King's Landing.

The third story is set on a huge eastern continent named Essos and follows the adventures of Daenerys Targaryen, the last known scion of House Targaryen. Her story is isolated from the others until more POV characters join her in A Dance with Dragons. Living in exile on Essos, Daenerys's adventures show her growing ability as she rises from a pauper sold into an arranged marriage, to a powerful and canny ruler. Her rise is aided by the birth of three dragons from fossilized dragon eggs given to her as wedding gifts. With a three-headed dragon as her family's coat of arms, these creatures are of symbolic value to her before they grow big enough to be of tactical use for her goal of reclaiming the Iron Throne.

Character development

Regarding the characters as the heart of the story, Martin planned the epic Ice and Fire fantasy to have a large cast of characters and many different settings from the beginning. A Feast for Crows has a 63-page list of characters, with many of the thousands of characters mentioned only in passing or disappearing from view for long stretches. When Martin adds a new family to the ever-growing number of genealogies in the appendices, he devises a secret about the personality or fate of the family members. However, their backstory remains subject to change until written down in the story. Martin drew most character inspiration from history (without directly translating historical figures) and his own experiences, but also from the manners of his friends, acquaintances and people of public interest. Martin aims to "make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish [attributes and are] well-mixed in their natures", to which Jeff VanderMeer of the Los Angeles Times remarked that "Martin's devotion to fully inhabiting his characters, for better or worse, creates the unstoppable momentum in his novels and contains an implied criticism of Tolkien's moral simplicity" (see Themes: Moral ambiguity).

Martin deliberately ignored the writing rules to never give two characters a name starting with the same letter. Instead, character names reflect the naming systems in various European family histories, where particular names were associated with specific royal houses and where even the secondary families assigned the same names repeatedly. The Ice and Fire story therefore has children called "Robert" in obeisance to King Robert of House Baratheon, every other generation of the Starks has a "Brandon" in commemoration of Brandon the Builder (of the Wall), and the syllable "Ty" is common in given names of House Lannister. Confident that readers would pay attention, Martin then used techniques as in modern times to discern people with identical given names, such as adding numbers or locations to their given name (e.g. Henry V of England). The family names were designed in association with ethnic groups (see backstory): the First Men in the North of Westeros had very simply descriptive names like Stark and Strong, whereas the descendents of the Andal invaders in the South have more elaborate, undescriptive house names like Lannister or Arryn; the Targaryens and Valyrians from the Eastern continent have the most exotic names with the letter Y.

All characters are designed to speak with their own internal voice to capture their views of the world. The Atlantic pondered whether Martin ultimately intended the readers to sympathize with characters on both sides of the Lannister–Stark feud long before plot developments force them to make their emotional choices. Contrary to most conventional epic fantasies, the Ice and Firecharacters are vulnerable so that, according to The Atlantic, the reader "cannot be sure that good shall triumph, which makes those instances where it does all the more exulting". Martin gets emotionally involved in the characters' lives during writing, which makes the chapters with dreadful events sometimes very difficult to write. Seeing the world through the characters' eyes requires a certain amount of empathy with them, including the villains, who he all loves as if they were his children. Martin found that some characters had a mind of their own and took his writing into different directions. He returns to the intended story if it does not work out, but these detours sometimes prove more rewarding for him.

Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen generate the most feedback from readers. Tyrion is Martin's personal favorite as the grayest of the gray characters, with his cunning and wit making him the most fun to write. Bran Stark is the hardest character to write. As the character most deeply involved in magic, Bran's story needs to be handled carefully within the supernatural aspects of the books. Bran is also the youngest viewpoint character and has to deal with the series' adult themes like grief, loneliness and anger. Martin set out to have the young characters grow up faster between chapters, but as it was implausible for a character to take two months to respond, a finished book represents very little time passed. Martin hoped the planned five-year break would ease the situation and age the children to almost adults in terms of the Seven Kingdoms, but he later dropped the five-year gap (see section Bridging the timeline gap).

Reception

[edit]Critical response

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", for which reviews have been "orders of magnitude better" than for his previous works, as Martin described to The New Yorker. In 2007, Weird Tales magazine described A Song of Ice and Fire as a "superb fantasy saga" that "raised Martin to a whole new level of success". Shortly before the release of A Dance with Dragons in 2011, Bill Sheehan of The Washington Postwas sure that "no work of fantasy has generated such anticipation since Harry Potter's final duel with Voldemort", 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". As Salon.com's Andrew Leonard said, "The success is all the more remarkable because [the series debuted] without mass market publicity or any kind of buzz in the fantasy/SF scene. George R. R. Martin earned his following the hard way, by word of mouth, by hooking his characters into the psyche of his readers to an extent that most writers of fantasy only dream of."

Publisher's Weekly noted in 2000 that "Martin may not rival Tolkien or Robert Jordan, but he ranks with such accomplished medievalists of fantasy as Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson." After the fourth volume came out in 2005, Time's Lev Grossman considered Martin a "major force for evolution in fantasy" and proclaimed him "the American Tolkien", explaining that although Martin was "[not] the best known of America's straight-up fantasy writers" at the time and would "never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award ... his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today". As Gross-man said in 2011, the phrase American Tolkien "has stuck to [Martin], as it was meant to", being picked up by the media including The New York Times ("He's much better than that"), the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly ("an acclaim that borders on fantasy blasphemy"), The Globe and Mail and USA Today. Time magazine named Martin one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011, and USA Today named George R.R. Martin their Author of the Year 2011.

According to The Globe and Mail's John Barber, Martin manages to simultaneously master and transcend the genre so that "Critics applaud the depth of his characterizations and lack of cliché in books that are nonetheless replete with dwarves and dragons". Publisher's Weekly gave favorable reviews to the first three Ice and Fire novels at their points of release, saying the individual volumes had "superbly developed characters, accomplished prose and sheer bloody-mindedness" (A Game of Thrones), were "notable particularly for the lived-in quality of [their fictional world and] for the comparatively modest role of magic" (A Clash of Kings), and were some "of the more rewarding examples of gigantism in contemporary fantasy" (A Storm of Swords). However, they found that A Feast For Crows as the fourth installment "sorely misses its other half. The slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying." Their review for A Dance with Dragons repeated points of criticism for the fourth volume and said that although "The new volume has a similar feel to Feast", "Martin keeps it fresh by focusing on popular characters [who were] notably absent from the previous book."

According to the Los Angeles Times, "Martin's brilliance in evoking atmosphere through description is an enduring hallmark of his fiction, the settings much more than just props on a painted stage", and the novels captivate readers with "complex story lines, fascinating characters, great dialogue, perfect pacing, and the willingness to kill off even his major characters". CNN remarked that "the story weaves through differing points of view in a skillful mix of observation, narration and well-crafted dialogue that illuminates both character and plot with fascinating style",and David Orr of The New York Times found that "All of his hundreds of characters have grace notes of history and personality that advance a plot line. Every town has an elaborately recalled series of triumphs and troubles." Salon.com's Andrew Leonard "couldn't stop reading Martin because my desire to know what was going to happen combined with my absolute inability to guess what would happen and left me helpless before his sorcery. At the end, I felt shaken and exhausted." The Christian Science Monitor advised to read the novels with an A Song of Ice and Fire encyclopedia at hand to "catch all the layered, subtle hints and details that [Martin] leaves throughout his books. If you pay attention, you will be rewarded and questions will be answered."

Among the most critical voices were Sam Jordison and Michael Hann, both of The Guardian. Jordison detailed his misgivings about A Game of Thrones in a 2009 review and summarized "It's daft. It's unsophisticated. It's cartoonish. And yet, I couldn't stop reading .... Archaic absurdity aside, Martin's writing is excellent. His dialogue is snappy and frequently funny. His descriptive prose is immediate and atmospheric, especially when it comes to building a sense of deliciously dark foreboding [of the long impending winter]." Hann did not see the novels stand out from the general fantasy genre despite Martin's alterations to fantasy convention, although he rediscovered his childhood's views "That when things are, on the whole, pretty crappy [in the real world], it's a deep joy to dive headfirst into something so completely immersive, something from which there is no need to surface from hours at a time. And if that immersion involves dragons, magic, wraiths from beyond death, shapeshifting wolves and banished princes, so be it."

Book Order 

Series : 
1 ) A Game of Thrones
2 ) A Clash of Kings
3 ) A Storm of Swords
4 ) A Feast for Crows
5 ) A Dance with Dragons