Two great leaders-Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon, who held sway over an age of enforced peace-are dead, victims of royal treachery. The summer of peace and plenty, ten years long, is drawing to a close, and the harsh, chill winter approaches like an angry beast. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance.

Index of game of thrones