Rekindle Your Love of the Seven Kingdoms with These Game of Thrones Books, Ranked
While we eagerly await the HBO prequel “House of the Dragon,” airing on August 21, delve into these George R.R. Martin books.
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Winter is coming in August this year with the release of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon (premiering August 21 on HBO), which means it’s a superb time to look back at the beloved fantasy books by George R.R. Martin that spawned the massive hit TV series. While fans have been in an agonizing kind of purgatory waiting for the sixth novel, Winds of Winter (it’s been 11 years since the last one released!), all eight seasons of the show have come and faded away like the last vestiges of summer.
The main difference between Game of Thrones on the screen and on the page is that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had to wrap up the plot of the final few seasons without source material to base it on—with, shall we say, mixed results. Endings to popular series are notoriously hard to pull off, and ever since Happy Days inspired the term "jump the shark," stellar TV shows from The Simpsons to Seinfeld to The Sopranos have perfected the art of taking something audiences love and leaving them with as much disappointment as Jorah Mormont on Daenerys’s wedding day. That said, it’s difficult to imagine a finale less satisfying than the final two seasons of Game of Thrones. It was almost enough to make waiting for the rest of the books to come out feel not so urgent. (Just kidding, GRRM: Hurry up and deliver the goods!)
While we suffer the long night waiting for Winds of Winter to be released and try to keep an open mind about the new HBO prequel, here are the first five books in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series ranked so you can rekindle your love of the glorious Seven Kingdoms.
Sam McKenzie is a tech employee by day and fantasy author by night. He writes about fiction, technology, and culture. Follow him on Twitter @samckenz
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