It’s a Song of Ice and Fire fanatic’s wildest dream: a website that allows fans to search through the complete text of every book in the saga, plus offshoots like The World of Ice and Fire, The Rogue Prince, The Princess and the Queen, and all the stories from the recently released A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms collection. It’s A Search of Ice and Fire, and it’s just become more useful than ever.
If you’ve never heard of the site, here’s how it works: you check off the particular books you want to look through, type in a keyword, and hit the ‘Search’ button. The website will produce relevant excerpts from the complete texts of the chosen works. It’s a beautiful time-waster. You can, for example, use it to find out how many times George R.R. Martin mentions that Stannis grinds his teeth (just seven, although it feels like more), or how many times he describes Tyrion’s walk with some form of the verb “to waddle” (just shy of 60). Also: all but one of the references to something being “as useful as nipples on a breastplate” are made by the Lannister children. You think that’s something Tywin said when they were growing up?
The proprietor of A Search of Ice and Fire recently modified the site so fans can search through the released sample chapters from The Winds of Winter, which have been leaking out slowly since 2011. There’s still no word on a release date for the book, and with the sixth season of the show approaching, people are getting antsy. Perhaps A Search of Ice and Fire can help with the cravings a bit.