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All the Kings Men

Game of Thrones—which you probably know as a bloody, sexy, thrillingly unpredictable HBO drama now in its second season—started life as a novel by George R.R. Martin, the first in a projected trilogy called A Song of Ice and Fire. It was published in 1996 (a year before Harry Potter came out in the U.K., two years before it hit the States) and did pretty well for itself. The follow- up, A Clash of Kings, came out in 1999 and eventually made the New York Times best-seller list. By the time the third book, A Storm of Swords, debuted as a best seller, in 2000, Martin had realized he was going to need more than three books to tell his story of dragons, pal- ace intrigue, dynastic wars, smugglers, slave revolts, religious fanatics, international relations, incest, the undead, and maybe a snowbound apocalypse. A Feast for Crows came out in 2005 and was another best seller, even though it pissed off a significant chunk of his fan base. The problem, basically, was that Martin’s vision had gotten so big that the next installment no longer fit into a single book. He decided to break his story into two 900-plus-page books that would take place more or less simultaneously. Feast is set in the more familiar territory of Westeros, but almost all of its protagonists are characters whom fans regard as bit-players. All the major storylines from Clash, meanwhile, were left untold until Martin finally finished the companion volume, A Dance with Dragons, which came out in 2011—an 11-year cliffhanger! (And you thought almost two years between seasons of Mad Men was bad.)

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