Free Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas by Valerie Frankel

2012) and as a standalone children’s book may be the closest. This story features a girl living in a medieval world of dragonriders that could be Westeros. She befriends an ice dragon and uses him to fight in their war. Ice dragons have been mentioned in Ice and Fire, and this book only lends fuel to readers’ speculations.
     
    “A Song for Lya”
    The Hugo Award winning “A Song for Lya” is available in the collection of that name and in Dreamsongs Volume 1. This novella features a tragic love story…the heroine is even named Lyanna! As she and her boyfriend struggle with romance and the meaningful questions of life, they touch on many Game of Thrones themes, like acts that can truly change a person, love, faith, and the nature of religion.
     
    Windhaven  by George R.R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle
    Windhaven  shares many of Game of Thrones’ trappings. In a fantasy world of ballads, ships, and heroes, a girl longs to fly – not on dragons but on metal wings. However she’s denied them in favor of her half-brother. As Maris (a name repeated in Ice and Fire ) competes, she’s proving she’s as good as those born to the birthright. It also led to Martin’s most beloved character. Martin notes:
 
In 1981 I wrote a novel with Lisa Tuttle called Windhaven. In fact, we wrote three different short stories with the same main character, Maris, and once we had them written we decided to put them all into one book with three different parts. So while we were writing the books we thought about a dwarf who would have been the Lord of one of the islands. He had to be the ugliest person in the world but the most intelligent too. I kept that idea in my mind and it reappeared to me when I was starting to write Game of Thrones. So…That’s Tyrion Lannister. [15]
 
    Other Authors
    Of course, readers looking for more books in this style could read Martin’s favorites, both fantasy and historical. Martin said:
     
I really like the young fantasy authors out there; they are doing some terrific work. I really like the work of my friend Daniel Abraham, who’s just started a new fantasy series with The Dragon’s Path and already has written a terrific one called The Long Price Quartet. I think Joe Abercrombie is doing some terrific work. I love Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora series. So those are three right there that they can take a look at.
   I also think that fantasy fans should go back and read the classics: obviously Tolkien if you haven’t read him, but also works like Fritz Leiber’s classic Fahfrd and the Grey Mousers stories; the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard and his other characters like Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane; Jack Vance, one of my all-time favorites, the marvelous The Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance. We just did a tribute anthology to him just a couple years ago called Songs of the Dying Earth. Original Dying Earth stories written by old fantasy writers who were shaped and influenced by Jack Vance’s classic stuff…Oh and Roger Zelazny. Nine Princes in Amber. I mean that’s an all-time classic. They should definitely read those. […] [16]
Also, I read a lot of historical fiction, both the classic writers of historical fiction that I read many decades ago – people like Thomas B. Costain and Frank Yerby and so forth – and some of the more contemporary writers of historical fiction, like Bernard Cornwell, Sharon Kay Penman, and Philippa Gregory. [17]
 
    It’s been noted that Martin’s work fits smoothly among the most popular of high fantasy series, drawing on what came before and creating a standard for what came after:
     
Just as he followed in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, and more contemporary fantasists such as Robert Jordan and Tad Williams, other authors have been influenced in turn by the [gritty and realistic] traits that Martin’s readers associate with his series of novels. [18]
 
    Along with historical fiction, many fantasy epics