A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones opens A Song of Ice and Fire, the American author George R. R. Martin's series, and the first volume appeared in August 1996. Martin had the idea in 1991 while working in television, wrote a hundred pages and sent them to his agent, originally planning the story as a trilogy. It was his return to prose fiction after years of writing for the screen.

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are held together by a king who won his throne by war and has little appetite for governing. Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell is asked to serve as his Hand in the capital, where his predecessor died in circumstances nobody will describe plainly. The marriage alliances between the great houses are less reliable than they look, and the family that lost the throne still has living heirs across the sea who have their own claim to press.

Away in the north, the illegitimate son of House Stark takes the black and joins the brotherhood that holds the great wall of ice, which keeps out raiders and a set of mythical enemies. The novel is told in the third person, with each chapter following one of eight narrators, and the accounts do not always agree. The long summer that has held for years is coming to an end, and the northern reports describe things the capital has no explanation for.

The series continues in A Clash of Kings and the volumes that follow, and the first book establishes House Stark, House Lannister and the political rivalry between them. It is an epic fantasy told from many points of view at once, and it is the first of a series rather than a self-contained story, with the later volumes widening the same conflict to other continents.