A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones is George R. R. Martin's 1996 epic fantasy, the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire and arguably the most-influential genre debut of the late twentieth century. King Robert Baratheon journeys north to ask his old friend Ned Stark to serve as the Hand of the King. Across the Narrow Sea, the exiled Targaryen siblings Viserys and Daenerys make political-marriage arrangements with the Dothraki khal Drogo. Across the entire Seven Kingdoms, the political assumptions that have held since Robert's Rebellion begin to unravel.

What Martin did to the epic-fantasy genre with this novel is by now well-documented: protagonist death, moral complication, multi-POV structure that takes the genre out of one protagonist's head. What gets less credit is the simple fact that Martin is a working stylist whose sentences carry weight. The prologue at the Wall is one of the best-engineered cold opens in contemporary fantasy. The Eddard Stark chapters set up a moral framework the rest of the series will systematically test. The Daenerys chapters introduce a parallel narrative that the next two books will earn.

Recommended as required epic-fantasy reading, as the source for the foundational seasons of the HBO Game of Thrones adaptation, and as one entry-point novel in a series that the author has not finished (The Winds of Winter remains forthcoming, with no announced timeline). Five stars without reservation. The Roy Dotrice audiobook is the definitive audio production.