The series is told in the third-person through the eyes of a number of point of view characters. By the end of the fourth volume, there have been 17 such characters with multiple chapters and eight who only have one chapter apiece. Several new viewpoint characters are introduced by the conclusion of the fifth volume, setting the stage for the major events of the sixth novel.

The growing popularity of the series led to it being optioned by HBO for development of a television adaptation, Game of Thrones, after the first novel. There are board games and role-playing games based on the available novels, as well as two collections of artwork based on and inspired by the Ice and Fire series.

Source: Wikipedia, "A Song of Ice and Fire", available under the CC-BY-SA License.