`Of those who work in the grand epic fantasy tradition, Martin is by far the best'Time Magazine`Colossal, staggering... Martin captures all the intoxicating complexity of the Wars of the Roses or Imperial Rome'SFX`The sheer-mind-boggling scope of this epic has sent other fantasy writers away shaking their heads... Its ambition: to construct the Twelve Caesars of fantasy fiction, with characters so venomous they could eat the Borgias.'Guardian