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HBO’s hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R. R. Martin’s the world over bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A STORM OF SWORDS is the third volume in the series.

The Seven Kingdoms are divided by riot and blood feud, and winter approaches like an angry beast. Beyond the Northern borders, wildlings leave their villages to gather in the ice and stone wasteland of the Frostfangs. From there, the renegade Brother Mance Rayder will lead them South towards the Wall.

The men of the Night’s Watch are able for the coming of a great cold and the walking corpses that commute with it. But now they face a horde of wildlings twenty-thousand strong – hungry savage people steeped at nighttime magic of the haunted wilderness – poised to invade the Kingdom of the North where Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown.

But Robb’s defences are ranged against attack from the South, the land of House Stark’s enemies the Lannisters. His sisters are trapped there, dead or likely yet to die, at the whim of the Lannister boy-king Joffrey or his depraved mother Cersei, regent of the Iron Throne. Cersei’s ambition is unfettered whilst the dwarf Tyrion Lannister fights for his life, a victim of treachery.

And on the other side of the ocean, the last of the Targaryens rears the dragons she hatched from her husband’s funeral pyre. Daenerys Stormborn will return to the land of her birth to avenge the murder of her father, the last Dragon King on the Iron Throne.

The third volume of his six-volume fantasy epic “A Song of Ice and Fire”, “A Storm of Swords” continues Martin’s energetic account of the civil wars which follow the death of King Robert–the usurper who deposed a dynasty gone mad and dangerous–and the judicial murder by his widow and heir of Ned Stark, the man who made him king. The surviving Stark children are scattered–Robb leading a riot in the North; Arya learning hard lessons as she treks through the war zone; Sansa an observer of court intrigue; crippled Bran heading towards a sorcerous destiny; and Jon engaged in desperate defence of the ice-wall against barbarians and worse things. Daenerys, pretender and ruler of dragons, is building an empire in different places. Meanwhile, characters we have regarded as villains, notably Jaime Kingslayer, are developing belated consciences. Martin assists in keeping on upping the ante of violence and betrayal in this compelling saga of a fantasy middle ages soiled with blood and mud; his economic use of magic and his fascination with complex characters make this the sword-and-sorcery series for people with adult taste. As the series proceeds, his writing gets ever leaner and sharper, the evocation of the magical ever more sinister. —Ros Kaveney
The third volume of his six-volume fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords continues Martin’s energetic account of the civil wars which follow the death of King Robert, the usurper who deposed a dynasty gone mad and dangerous, and the judicial murder by his widow and heir of Ned Stark, the man who made him king. The surviving Stark children are scattered–Robb leading riot in the North, Arya learning hard lessons as she treks through the war zone, Sansa an observer of court intrigue, crippled Bran heading towards a sorcerous destiny, Jon engaged in desperate defence of the icewall against barbarians and worse things. Daenerys, pretender and ruler of dragons, is building an empire in different places. And characters we have regarded as villains, notably Jaime Kingslayer, are developing belated consciences … Martin assists in keeping on upping the ante of violence and betrayal in this compelling saga of a fantasy middle ages soiled with blood and mud; his economic use of magic and his fascination with complex characters make this the sword-and-sorcery series for people with adult taste. As the series proceeds, his writing gets ever leaner and sharper, the evocation of the magical ever more sinister. –Roz Kaveney

HBO’s hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R. R. Martin’s the world over bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A STORM OF SWORDS is the third volume in the series.

The Seven Kingdoms are divided by riot and blood feud, and winter approaches like an angry beast. Beyond the Northern borders, wildlings leave their villages to gather in the ice and stone wasteland of the Frostfangs. From there, the renegade Brother Mance Rayder will lead them South towards the Wall.

The men of the Night’s Watch are able for the coming of a great cold and the walking corpses that commute with it. But now they face a horde of wildlings twenty-thousand strong – hungry savage people steeped at nighttime magic of the haunted wilderness – poised to invade the Kingdom of the North where Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown.

But Robb’s defences are ranged against attack from the South, the land of House Stark’s enemies the Lannisters. His sisters are trapped there, dead or likely yet to die, at the whim of the Lannister boy-king Joffrey or his depraved mother Cersei, regent of the Iron Throne. Cersei’s ambition is unfettered whilst the dwarf Tyrion Lannister fights for his life, a victim of treachery.

And on the other side of the ocean, the last of the Targaryens rears the dragons she hatched from her husband’s funeral pyre. Daenerys Stormborn will return to the land of her birth to avenge the murder of her father, the last Dragon King on the Iron Throne.