Oh, a song of ice and fire is a fantasy series.

There are elements of other genres present as well.

Perhaps the most prominent is horror.

It starts right away with the prologue, a chapter that could probably work as a standalone

short story.

In that prologue, we feel the fear building within will until it peaks when he sees the

others.

It's not just a fear of death.

He's faced that before, though it is clearly present.

It's not like it's not important, but it's the fear of something that should not be.

A thing that shouldn't exist.

This is what he's never seen before, and Will grapples with that as he's frozen in place

clinging to the tree.

What he's seeing is outside his reality that he cannot deny that it's happening.

In the Clash of Kings, we meet a man who claims to worship these beings, though maybe worship

isn't the right exact word.

He calls them by another name, too, the cold gods.

So worship that maybe isn't worship, others that aren't actually other than anyway.

For this, he considers himself a godly man who says it a lot.

This despite his blatant practice of incest, which is very much not godly in the eyes of

most northerners and most others, too, really.

The old gods don't really approve of incest, and the old gods and the cold gods are not

...