A Game of Thrones

Winterfell stands as the majestic fortress of the North and the seat of House Stark. It is from here that Lord Eddard Stark must depart to answer the call of his old friend, now king of the Seven Kingdoms, Robert Baratheon. The fate of the king — and of the master of the Iron Throne and the continent of Westeros — hangs in the balance: to the north, dark forces stir beyond the Wall and its Night’s Watch, and winter is coming.

The reader enters A Game of Thrones through a relatively long prologue, in which members of the Night’s Watch confront supernatural beings — the only truly fantastical element to appear for nearly 500 pages, so much does this first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire resemble a historical saga in the vein of Maurice Druon’s Les Rois maudits, an acknowledged influence that George R. R. Martin openly admitted.

Martin began writing the novel in late 1995, producing within a few months an enormous 1,200-page manuscript, which he managed to condense into a first volume ready by early summer: a remarkable feat, given the sheer number of characters and plotlines already present in this opening installment. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die, there is no middle ground”: the tone is set from the outset, and the various courts and factions form veritable nests of vipers, each more devious than the last, where dangers are as numerous as they are unexpected. Boundless imagination combined with clockwork precision explain the novel’s success upon publication; sent to a handful of specialist critics as early as summer 1996, it received glowing reviews and met with immediate success.

A very rare advance press copy, issued one month before the book’s official publication and release.

Fine condition.