

Jon receives a taunting letter from Ramsay Bolton, who claims to have crushed Stannis's army at Winterfell.

To protect Alys and aid the wildlings' integration into Westerosi society, Jon arranges for Alys to marry Sigorn of Thenn, a wildling leader. However, the girl in Melisandre's visions turns out to be Alys Karstark, a young noblewoman fleeing to the Wall to escape her treacherous uncle. He is sent to the Starks' ancestral castle Winterfell, now occupied by the enemy Boltons, to rescue Arya. Mance is revealed to be alive, thanks to Melisandre's magical trickery. Stannis's advisor, the sorceress Melisandre, warns Jon that his half-sister, Arya Stark, is in trouble. This results in a fragile peace but creates unrest among the Night's Watch, who have considered the wildlings their enemies for centuries. Jon negotiates with wildling leader Tormund Giantsbane to let the wildlings past the Wall in exchange for their assistance in defending it. Jon Snow, the newly elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, the order that defends the Wall, prepares the defense against the Others, hostile inhuman creatures from the far north. Stannis executes Mance Rayder, the leader of the wildlings, for refusing to submit to him, and marches his army south to seek support in his bid for the throne. Stannis Baratheon, a claimant to the Iron Throne of Westeros, occupies the Wall at the realm's northern border, having helped to repel an invasion of wildlings from the northern wilderness. The novel has been adapted for television as the fifth season of Game of Thrones, although elements of the book have also appeared in the series' third, fourth and sixth seasons. 1 on both Publishers Weekly and USA Today bestsellers lists. The US hardcover was officially published on July 12, 2011, and a few weeks later went to No. It was the only novel in the series to be published during the eight-season run of the HBO adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones, and runs to 1,040 pages with a word count of almost 415,000. In some areas, the paperback edition was published in two parts, titled Dreams and Dust and After the Feast. A Dance with Dragons is the fifth novel of seven planned in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by American author George R.
