<Tr> <Th> Published </Th> <Td> August 1996--present </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Media type </Th> <Td> Print (hardback & paperback) audiobook </Td> </Tr> <P> A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R.R. Martin . He began the first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and it was published in 1996 . Martin, who initially envisioned the series as a trilogy, has published five out of a planned seven volumes . The fifth and most recent volume of the series published in 2011, A Dance with Dragons, took Martin six years to write . He is still writing the sixth novel, The Winds of Winter . </P> <P> A Song of Ice and Fire takes place on the fictional continents Westeros and Essos . The point of view of each chapter in the story is a limited perspective of a range of characters growing from nine, in the first novel, to 31 characters by the fifth novel . Three main stories interweave: a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, the rising threat of the supernatural Others in the northernmost reaches of Westeros, and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the deposed king's exiled daughter, to assume the Iron Throne . </P>

How many books are in the game of thrones series
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