Because he ran out of pages and deadlines, author George R. R. Martin picks up only half the threads of the amazingly intricate tapestry left unfinished in A STORM OF SWORDS, the previous volume of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The remaining storylines continue in the following book, A DANCE OF DRAGONS. As this fourth installment opens, most of the original contenders for the throne of Westeros have been killed in the civil wars ravaging the land. In the wake of their deaths, the survivors scheme to seize what scraps of power still remain. At the center of things in King's Landing, Queen Cersei, regent for her eight-year-old son, King Tommen, takes refuge in her wine cup as her grip upon the Iron Throne begins to slip. Plotters in the realm of Dorne, angry at the death of Prince Oberyn, scheme to put Cersei's daughter, Princess Myrcella, in her younger brother's place. The various relatives of the now-deceased Balon Greyjoy, King of the Iron Islands, stick to local politics as they struggle to determine their own royal succession. Meanwhile, Lady Brienne of Tarth, too ugly to be taken seriously as a woman and too female to be taken seriously as a knight, confronts danger and mistrust on every side as she searches for the two missing Stark daughters, 13-year-old Sansa (actually in hiding at her late aunt's stronghold in the Vale) and 11-year-old Arya (facing mysterious challenges at the Temple of the Many-Faced God on the isle of Braavos).