A Dance With Dragons: Part 1 Dreams and Dust. George R.r. Martin

Davos

       Reek

       Jon

       Tyrion

       Daenerys

       The Lost Lord

       The Windblown

       The Wayward Bride

       Tyrion

       Jon

       Davos

       Daenerys

       Melisandre

       Reek

       Tyrion

       Bran

       Jon

       Daenerys

       The Prince of Winterfell

       The Watcher

       Jon

       Tyrion

       Appendix: The Kings and their Courts

       The Boy King

       The King at the Wall

       King of the Isles and the North

       Other Houses Great and Small

       House Arryn

       House Baratheon

       House Frey

       House Lannister

       House Martell

       House Stark

       House Tully

       House Tyrell

       The Sworn Brothers of the Night’s Watch

       The Wildlings, or the Free Folk

       Beyond the Wall

       Essos Beyond the Narrow Sea

       In Braavos

       In Old Volantis

       On Slaver’s Bay

       The Queen Across the Water

       The Sellswords Men and Women of the Free Companies

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Praise for A Song of Ice and Fire

       By George R.R. Martin

       About the Publisher

      A CAVIL ON CHRONOLOGY

      It has been a while between books, I know. So a reminder may be in order.

      The book you hold in your hands is the fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. The fourth volume was A Feast for Crows. However, this volume does not follow that one in the traditional sense, so much as run in tandem with it.

      Both Dance and Feast take up the story immediately after the events of the third volume in the series, A Storm of Swords. Whereas Feast focused on events in and around King’s Landing, on the Iron Islands, and down in Dorne, Dance takes us north to Castle Black and the Wall (and beyond), and across the narrow sea to Pentos and Slaver’s Bay, to pick up the tales of Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and all the other characters you did not see in the preceding volume. Rather than being sequential, the two books are parallel … divided geographically, rather than chronologically.

      But only up to a point.

      A Dance with Dragons is a longer book than A Feast for Crows, and covers a longer time period. In the latter half of this volume, you will notice certain of the viewpoint characters from A Feast for Crows popping up again. And that means just what you think it means: the narrative has moved past the time frame of Feast, and the two streams have once again rejoined each other.

      Next up, The Winds of Winter. Wherein, I hope, everybody will be shivering together once again …

      —George R. R. Martin

      April 2011