A Song of Ice and Fire

A Song of Ice and Fire is a medieval fantasy book series written by novelist and screenwriter George R.R. Martin. The series has been translated into 18 languages, appeared on the New York Times Best Selling List, and has sold more than 3.5 million copies in the USA. It takes place in the world of Westeros, which resembles medieval Europe in some aspects.

To date this is one of the best series of books that I've ever read. They are full of noble families with distant histories, knights, ladies, magic, and on top of all that it's written for mature audiences, giving it that gritty feeling. You just never know when a main character will die, or perhaps a character that you once thought was an evil villain actually turns out to have a soft heart. In this world, there is no good versus evil, but instead it is one giant shade of gray. The author wrote it in such a way that you will get different viewpoints from the main characters, and those main characters may be on opposite sides of a war. For example, you'll read about one character who describes another character as a greedy, murderous villain. Yet, later in the book you'll have the viewpoint of that other character and the reasons why he did what he did, and in the end he doesn't seem so evil.

To the right is the map of Westeros, where the stories take place in. Many believe that George R.R. Martin fashioned this map to make it similar to the British Isles. The home of the Seven Kingdoms is a large city called, King's Landing, which is also the seat of the Iron Throne. Originally several hundred years before the main story, the land was split between multiple kingdoms, and eventually it was conquered by Aegon the Conquerer and his sister-wives (yes, you read correctly). He conquered the bulk of the land all the way up to the wall to the north, and made a peace agreement with the lord of the south to be a part of Aegon's kingdom. For a few hundred years Aegon Targaryen's dynasty ruled until Robert's Rebellion defeated the Targaryens, during which takes place only a couple decades before the main story. Without giving out too much, the main story of the book is basically a low to mid level fantasy which is strikingly similar to the War of the Roses which took place in England.

HBO has the greenlight to make a television series based off of these books? It's true! It's going to be called "A Game of Thrones" which is the title of the first book in the series of novels. If you notice in the list below, there are some relatively big names in there. Sean Bean played Boromir in the Lord of the Rings, Jennifer Ehle from the movie 300, as well as the Sarah Conner Chronicles. Below is a list of the known actors and actresses that will be in the series.

Sean Bean as Eddard Stark
Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn Stark
Richard Madden as Robb Stark
Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark
Maisie Williams as Arya Stark
Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Bran Stark
Kit Harington as Jon Snow
Joseph Mawle as Benjen Stark
Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy
Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon
Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister
Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister
Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon
Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane
Tamzin Merchant as Daenerys Targaryen
Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen
Jason Momoa as Drogo
Iain Glen as Jorah Mormont