A Clash of Kings: The bestselling classic epic fantasy series behind the award-winning HBO and Sky TV show and phenomenon GAME OF THRONES (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2)

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The 300 pages removed from the A Game of Thrones manuscript served as the opening of the second book, entitled A Clash of Kings. A pilot episode was produced in late 2009, and a series commitment for nine further episodes was made in March 2010. Jordison detailed his misgivings about A Game of Thrones in a 2009 review and summarized "It's daft. In the third volume, A Storm of Swords, the Night's Watch storyline becomes increasingly entangled with the War of the Five Kings.

The three dragons soon become not only a symbol of her bloodline and her claim to the throne, but also devastating weapons of war, which help her in the conquest of Slaver's Bay. Martin, however, considers sexuality an important driving force in human life that should not be excluded from the narrative. Two great leaders—Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon—who held sway over an age of enforced peace are dead . Scriptwriting has also taught him the technique of "cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle", which is the final stage of completing a book, a technique that brought the page count in A Dance with Dragons down almost eighty pages. and having read the Book I, I had the foundations for this second book and could enjoy it better (especially since I knew what was going on!

It also had the highest single and first-day sales of any new fiction title published in 2011 at that point, with 170,000 hardcovers, 110,000 e-books, and 18,000 audio books reportedly sold on the first day. Though the amount of magic has gradually increased throughout the story, the series is still to end with less overt magic than most contemporary fantasies. Arya Stark, posing as a boy named Arry, is taken north by Yoren as a new recruit for the Night's Watch.

For her three choices, Arya selects Chiswyck, a soldier in Gregor Clegane's forces, Weese, her servant overseer, and Jaqen H'ghar himself. Martin deliberately ignored the writing rule of never giving two characters names starting with the same letter. Daenerys's bloodriders scout the surrounding region and find a safe route to the great trading city of Qarth on the Jade Sea.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). The Christian Science Monitor advised reading 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. The popularity of the HBO series has made its version of the Iron Throne an icon of the entire media franchise.

On the continent of Essos, east of Westeros across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys is married off by her elder brother Viserys Targaryen to a powerful warlord, but slowly becomes an independent and intelligent ruler in her own right.

In the south, Joffrey, the heir apparent, rules in name only, victim of the scheming courtiers who teem over King’s Landing.

However, with A Song of Ice and Fire series evolving into the biggest and most ambitious story he has ever attempted writing, [47] he still has two more books to finish as of 2024 [update]. 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.Thus, he wanted to combine the realism of historical fiction with the magic appeal of the best fantasies, [87] subduing magic in favor of battles and political intrigue.