A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. He began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, publishing it in 1996. Martin originally envisioned the series as a trilogy but has released five out of a planned seven volumes. The fifth and most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Martin continues to write the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.A Song of Ice and Fire depicts a violent world dominated by political realism. What little supernatural power that remains is confined to the margins of the known world. Moral ambiguity pervades the books and their stories continually raise questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence. The novels are set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. The story unfolds through a rotating set of subjective points of view, the success or survival of any one of which is never assured. Each chapter is told from a limited third-person perspective, drawn from a group of characters that grows from nine in the first novel to 31 by the fifth. The work as a whole consists of three interwoven plots: A dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, The growing threat posed by powerfully supernatural Others from the northernmost region of Westeros, The ambition of the daughter of the deposed Westerosi king to return from her exile in Essos and assume the Iron Throne.Martin's stated inspirations for the series include the Wars of the Roses and The Accursed Kings, a series of French historical novels by Maurice Druon.As of 2023 more than 90 million copies in 47 languages had been sold. The fourth and fifth volumes both reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller lists when published in 2005 and 2011. Among the many derived works number several prequel novellas, two series for television, a comic book adaptation, and several card, board, and video games. Source: Wikipedia (en)