These three are generally thought the most plausible riders of the titular dragons, but plots within plots abound, and two strong new candidates for those scaly saddles emerge as a powerful enemy threatens Daenerys's captured city of Meereen, Tyrion is kidnapped by slavers, and treachery undermines Jon's command of the undead-battling Night's Watch. The new volume has a similar feel to Feast and takes place over a similar time frame Martin keeps it fresh by focusing on popular characters Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow, all notably absent from the previous book. Dance was originally the second half of 2005's A Feast for Crows, sometimes criticized for shifting from battles and intrigue to slow trudges through war-torn, corpse-littered Westeros.

Martin's fans, however, are hungry for more action and purpose, their appetites whetted by a six-year wait and the recent HBO adaptation of A Game of Thrones. These themes suggest that readers should think strategically, be patient as the story grows, and brace for a beating. (And these last three are all members of the same family!) But Dragons is also a brilliantly unified work: Each character is struggling, in his or her own way, to create order out of chaos.A few images recur in the enormously complex fifth installment of Martin's massively multicharacter epic: the chess-like game cyvasse, small rivers flowing into larger ones, ships and armies battered by terrible storms. There’s a pirate lord sailing through mystical waters, a warrior princess rebelling against kings, and an imprisoned traitor-prince brutalized by his captors. Daenerys Targaryen, the Dragon Queen, must contend with far more human concerns, ruling a rowdy city-state whose government rivals The Wire‘s Baltimore in complexity. Jon Snow, hero of the icy north, is building an army to battle an ancient evil. The imp Tyrion Lannister finds himself on a genuine quest, traveling by land and sea. And if Crows was only half a novel, A Dance With Dragons is its opposite: By turns thrilling, funny, scary, emotionally devastating, oddly inspirational, and just plain grand, it feels like a compilation of several different great fantasy novels as it pulls together the disparate characters’ story lines. But now the second half of that tale has arrived.

George rr martin a dance with dragons