Beyond the Wall to the north, meanwhile, the Others are preparing their army of the dead to march south as the warmth of summer drains from the land. Some fight with sword and mace, others with magic and poison. “In a world where the approaching winter will last four decades, kings and queens, knights and renegades struggle for control of a throne. – Paul Levinson, Tangent Magazine, Fall 1996 The book is so good at this, so real and effective in its complex characterizations, that I would vote it an award just for that, and the dragons be damned.” Yes, I liked this dwarf so much that I truly felt glad when, after months of travail, he finally finds comfort in a prostitute’s arms. “These other threads show us two different daughters, a romantic and a tomboy, and how they fare in these less-and-more than chivalrous times a bastard and a ‘true-born’ hero and another son whose legs are paralyzed but whose mind soars another family where one son is handsome and vicious and evil yet brave, and his brother-a dwarf, my favorite character in the novel-is conniving, yet so honorable that he pays his debt of gold to a cruel, stupid jailor whom the dwarf has talked into taking a message that will free him. The descriptive passages are marvelous-you can smell the spice, and taste it in every cup of wine Martin renders-but the story as a whole is not special. Published as a stand-alone novella in the July 2006 Asimov’s Magazine (‘Blood of the Dragon’), it follows the trials and exploits of the overthrown King’s two lineal descendants-a brother who is a claimant to the throne with no army, and his sister, whom the brother gives as a bride to a Ghenghis Khan-type character reigning with a vast army in this England’s version of Europe and Asia, in hopes of getting that army to cross the ‘narrow sea’ and reclaim the pretender`s throne. But the dragon thread has other problems.
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