It has been over a decade since A Dance with Dragons hit shelves. Ten years. That is a long time to wait for a book. Fans have grown up, gotten married, and arguably lost their minds analyzing every single sentence George R.R. Martin has ever written. But even with the shadow of the HBO show looming over the legacy, A Song of Ice and Fire remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of modern fantasy. Why? Because it’s not actually about dragons. Not really. It’s about the messy, disgusting, beautiful, and horrific things humans do when they think no one is looking.
If you’re coming to the books after watching Game of Thrones, you’re probably expecting a slightly more detailed version of what you saw on screen. You aren't ready. The books are a sprawling, interconnected web of political philosophy and historical trauma that the show barely scratched.
The Gritty Reality of A Song of Ice and Fire
George R.R. Martin famously asked: "What was Aragorn's tax policy?" That’s the core of the series. He wanted to write a fantasy where logistics actually matter. If an army marches across a continent, they need to eat. If they eat, they need to pillage. If they pillage, the smallfolk starve.
Most fantasy authors ignore the peasants. Martin makes you look at them. He forces you to see the "Broken Men" that Septon Meribald talks about in A Feast for Crows. That monologue is arguably the best piece of prose in the entire series. It describes how a normal kid from a farm gets drafted into a lord’s war, loses his friends, loses his mind, and ends up a scavenger. It’s brutal. It’s honest. It makes the "heroic" battles of the kings look like the petty squabbles they actually are.
People often call this series "grimdark." I think that’s a bit of a lazy label. It's realistic. The "Ice" and "Fire" aren't just literal elements; they are metaphors for the extremes of human nature. Fire is passion, consumption, and the destructive power of ambition (looking at you, Daenerys). Ice is the cold, numbing apathy of duty and the inevitable march of death. Finding the balance between those two is the actual "Song."
Why the POV Structure Changes Everything
Martin uses a "Point of View" (POV) structure that is essentially a magic trick. You aren't reading a third-person narrative. You are inside a specific person's head, which means you are being lied to. Frequently.
Take Sansa Stark. In the first book, she’s a naive girl who loves stories of knights. Her chapters are filtered through that lens. When she remembers the "Hound" (Sandor Clegane), her memories change over time based on her trauma and emotional state. This is called the "unreliable narrator," and Martin is a master of it. You can't trust what a character sees because they only see what they want to see.
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This creates a layer of mystery that keeps the community alive. We are still debating the "Pink Letter" or the true identity of Young Griff because the information we have is filtered through characters who might be wrong, lying, or simply confused. It turns reading into a forensic investigation.
The Historical Bones of Westeros
You’ve probably heard that the War of the Five Kings is based on the Wars of the Roses. That's true, mostly. The Starks are the Yorks, and the Lannisters are the Lancasters. But Martin pulls from everywhere.
The Red Wedding? That’s based on two real events from Scottish history: The Black Dinner of 1440 and the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. In both cases, the laws of hospitality—the "Guest Right"—were violated in a way that shocked the contemporary world. Martin took those real-world horrors and dialed them up.
- The Wall: Inspired by Hadrian’s Wall. Martin stood on the ruins in England and wondered what it would feel like to be a soldier from Italy, staring out at the "barbarian" north and wondering what monsters lived in the woods.
- The Dothraki: A mix of the Mongols, the Huns, and various Plains Indian tribes.
- Braavos: A clear nod to Venice, mixed with a bit of Rhodes.
By grounding A Song of Ice and Fire in real history, the stakes feel heavier. When a character dies, it doesn't feel like a plot device. It feels like the consequence of a bad political move.
The Winds of Winter Problem
We have to talk about it. The delay. The agonizing wait for the sixth book.
Martin has admitted he’s a "gardener" writer, not an "architect." He plants seeds and sees where they grow. The problem is that his garden has become a jungle. In A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, he introduced so many new subplots—the Dornish conspiracy, the Ironborn expansion, the Golden Company—that the narrative "knot" (often called the Meereenese Knot) became almost impossible to untie.
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But honestly? The complexity is why we’re still here. If it were easy to finish, it wouldn't be this good. The sheer scale of the world-building in A Song of Ice and Fire is unparalleled. There are family trees for houses that only appear in one chapter. There are fake histories written for the Targaryen kings that span hundreds of pages.
The depth is the point.
Magic is a Sword Without a Hilt
One thing Martin does better than almost anyone is the "low magic" setting. In many fantasy novels, magic is a tool. A wizard says a word, and a fireball happens. In Westeros, magic is dangerous, rare, and usually requires a blood sacrifice.
"Magic is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it," says Dalla in A Storm of Swords. This keeps the tension high. When Melisandre performs a ritual, you aren't thinking, "Cool, a spell!" You’re thinking, "Oh no, what is this going to cost?" Usually, it costs a life. This makes the supernatural elements feel earned and terrifying rather than like a deus ex machina meant to save the hero.
How to Actually Read the Series (It's Not Just 5 Books)
If you’ve only read the main five books, you’re missing about 40% of the picture. To truly understand the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, you have to look at the supplemental material.
First, there are the Dunk and Egg novellas (collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms). They take place about 90 years before the main series. They’re shorter, funnier, and seemingly simpler. But they provide the foundational lore for the Targaryen dynasty and the Blackfyre Rebellions, which are becoming increasingly important in the main books.
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Then there’s Fire & Blood. It’s written as a history book by an Archmaester. It’s dry in some parts but absolutely bananas in others. It covers the Dance of the Dragons (the civil war) and gives you the context for why the Targaryens are the way they are.
Finally, The World of Ice & Fire is the big coffee table book. It’s essentially an encyclopedia. If you want to know what’s happening in Yi Ti or the Sothoryos (the mysterious southern continent), this is where you go.
Misconceptions That Need to Die
- "Everyone dies." No, they don't. Characters die when they make mistakes or when they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ned Stark didn't die because the book is "edgy." He died because he tried to play a game of honor in a den of thieves.
- "The show spoiled the ending." Probably not. Martin has stated that his ending will likely differ significantly from the HBO version. The show cut out major characters like Lady Stoneheart and Victarion Greyjoy. Their absence changes the entire endgame.
- "It’s just for guys." Some of the strongest, most complex, and most terrifying characters in the series are women. Cersei, Catelyn, Brienne, Arya, Daenerys—they aren't just "strong female characters." They are deeply flawed, human, and often very powerful people operating in a world designed to suppress them.
What to Do Next
If you are looking to get into the series or want to deepen your knowledge, stop watching YouTube theory videos for five minutes and actually look at the text.
- Start a "Combined Read" of Books 4 and 5: Since A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons happen at the same time chronologically, fans have created reading orders (like "A Ball of Beasts") that interleave the chapters. It makes the experience much more cohesive.
- Pay attention to the food: Martin describes meals in excruciating detail for a reason. Often, the food served at a wedding or a feast foreshadows what is about to happen to the characters eating it.
- Track the dreams: Prophecy in this world is fickle. "Prophecy will bite your finger off every time," Martin has said. Don't take a prophecy literally. Look at the symbolism.
The wait for the next installment is frustrating, sure. But the richness of the existing text means you can reread the series five times and still find a clue you missed the first time. That’s the mark of a masterpiece.
Take a deep dive into the "Dunk and Egg" novellas first if you're feeling burned out by the main plot; they provide a much-needed breath of fresh air and essential context for the Blackfyre lore that will inevitably dominate the final books.
If you're already caught up, go back and read the Aeron Greyjoy chapter "The Forsaken" (a released sample from The Winds of Winter). It is arguably the most atmospheric and horrifying thing Martin has ever written, and it proves he hasn't lost his edge.