'After five volumes Martin is, if anything, a better writer than when he started. If you're watching A Game of Thrones on HBO, you're foregoing the great pleasure of Martin's deft prose...' Time Magazine 'A Game of Thrones has captured the imaginations of millions for the same reason the archetypal dramas of Homer, Sophocles or Shakespeare have lasted for millennia. They show us the conflict between self-sacrifice and self-interest, between the human spirit and the human ego, between good and evil. And when we look up from the page we recognise those same conflicts in the world around us and in ourselves' The Guardian 'It is hard to accept that something that enormous and that popular is as good as people tell you it is' Independent 'A Game of Thrones grabs hold and won't let go. It's brilliant.' Robert Jordan 'Colossal, staggering... Martin captures all the intoxicating complexity of the Wars of the Roses or Imperial Rome in his imaginary world... one of the greats of fantasy literature.' SFX 'Fantasy literature has never shied away from grandeur, but the sheer-mind-boggling scope of this epic has sent other fantasy writers away shaking their heads... Its ambition: to construct the Twelve Caesars of fantasy fiction, with characters so venomous they could eat the Borgias.' Guardian 'Such a splendid tale. I couldn't stop till I'd finished and it was dawn.' Anne McCaffrey

George R. R. Martin is the author of fourteen novels, including five volumes of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, several collections of short stories and numerous screen plays for television drama and feature films. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.