A Dance With Dragons

In this fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin’s epic fantasy series, Martin gives readers dragons, more intriguing details about potential claimants to the Iron Throne, and more detailed portraits of the locales and cultures in the series.

The central system of magic in A Song of Ice and Fire has to do with dragons—where they come from and who can control them. By the time of A Dance With Dragons, Daenerys has three dragons, and they are vicious and dangerous creatures that even she struggles to control. Two of the dragons are chained beneath the Great Pyramid where Daenerys lives as the ruler of Meereen, but Drogon is flying free. Martin includes scenes of Meereen’s people pleading in court for recompense for Drogon’s killing of their livestock and even a little girl to indirectly represent the power of the dragons. Martin makes the world of Westeros more concrete by showing fans what they’ve finally been waiting for—Daenerys flying on a dragon. That flight comes after her failed effort to hold on to a kingdom on the continent of Essos. Her struggles call into question whether there can be any such thing as a kind and effective Targaryen ruler.