A Dance with Dragons recap

Jon Snow, as Lord Commander, gambles on peace with the wildlings and lets them pass south through the Wall to save them from the coming enemy, a choice that enrages his brothers. Daenerys, besieged by insurgents in Meereen, marries a local nobleman to buy peace and reopens the fighting pits, but when her great dragon Drogon descends in blood and fire she flees the city on his back and ends up lost and starving on the open grasslands, found by a Dothraki horde. Tyrion is swept east, falling in with exiles escorting a mysterious young man who claims a lost royal name, then is captured, enslaved, and finally schemes his way into a sellsword company outside Meereen. Bran reaches his teacher, an ancient greenseer beneath a hollow hill, and begins to see through the eyes of trees and beasts. At Winterfell, the broken captive Theon is forced to serve at the wedding of a false Stark bride to the sadistic Ramsay Bolton, until a flicker of his old self drives him to flee with the girl into the snow. Stannis marches on Winterfell through a killing blizzard as a great new claimant lands in the south with an army.

Previously: The war set off by Eddard Stark's execution broke the realm. By the end of A Storm of Swords, Robb Stark and his mother Catelyn were slain at the Red Wedding, the boy king Joffrey was poisoned, and Tyrion Lannister killed his father Tywin and fled into exile. Jon Snow became Lord Commander of the Night's Watch with Stannis Baratheon at the Wall; Bran Stark traveled beyond it seeking a hidden teacher; and Daenerys Targaryen conquered the eastern slaver cities and settled to rule Meereen. This volume runs alongside the events of A Feast for Crows, so its threads also matter here: in the south, Cersei Lannister's paranoid regency for her son Tommen unraveled after she rearmed the militant Faith, which then imprisoned her on charges of adultery and treason. Jaime Lannister grew estranged from his sister and set out to end the river wars. Sansa Stark remained hidden in the Vale under the schemer Petyr Baelish, while Arya Stark trained among the servants of a death god in Braavos and was struck blind as a test. The ruthless Euron Greyjoy seized the crown of the Iron Islands and looked outward to conquest.

The book closes on a string of cliffhangers. Jon Snow, having pushed his hard choices too far, is set upon and stabbed by a group of his own sworn brothers in a mutiny at the Wall, and falls apparently dying in the snow. Daenerys, borne away by her dragon Drogon, is stranded on the vast Dothraki sea, sick and alone, and comes face to face with a mounted khalasar, her fate uncertain; behind her, the old knight Barristan Selmy takes command of a Meereen teetering toward war. Tyrion, alive and sardonic, ends among the sellswords of the Second Sons, plotting his next move toward the dragon queen. Cersei, after a degrading walk of atonement through the capital, is freed from her cell to await a trial by combat, defended by a monstrous, silent new champion. At Winterfell, Theon Greyjoy and the false Stark bride leap from the castle walls to escape Ramsay Bolton and flee toward Stannis, whose army struggles through the snows nearby with battle imminent. Bran Stark, safe beneath the earth, has become a greenseer in training. And in the far south a bold young invader claiming Targaryen blood lands with a seasoned army, opening a wholly new front in the endless contest for the throne.