World of Ice and Fire

Winter is coming, and the men who forget it die first. Here is Westeros: seven quarrelsome kingdoms bound under one iron throne, ringed by a wall of ice in the north and a narrow sea to the east, beyond which lies the older, stranger continent of Essos. A king dies, and the great houses reach for the crown as they always have, with sword and poison and marriage-bed. But the maesters who keep the records know what the lords forget. The seasons run wrong here. The dragons are three centuries dead. And something is stirring past the Wall that no lineage or claim will answer. The chronicle is the work of one hand. Its spine is A Song of Ice and Fire, the great unfinished saga that opens with A Game of Thrones and runs through A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons — a war of succession told from within a dozen rival skulls at once. Around it stand two bodies of older lore: the Tales of Dunk and Egg, brisk hedge-knight adventures set ninety years before the war; and the invented histories, chief among them Fire & Blood, the blood-soaked chronicle of the dragonlords who ruled before the fall. What sets this world apart is its refusal to flatter. No banner is clean, no favourite is safe, and the sword that seems destined for greatness may snap on the first swing. Power is dynastic, cold, and paid for in kin. Begin at the beginning: A Game of Thrones. The histories keep — read Fire & Blood once the Targaryen name already means something to you. The realm rewards the patient reader, and punishes the trusting one.