A Feast for Crows
In May 2005 Martin announced that the "sheer size" of his still-unfinished manuscript for "A Feast for Crows" had led him and his publishers to split the narrative into two books. Rather than divide the text in half chronologically, Martin opted to instead split the material by character and location, resulting in "two novels taking place simultaneously" with different casts of characters. Published in 2005, "A Feast for Crows" is narrated primarily by characters in the South of the Seven Kingdoms and in the new locations of the Iron Islands and Dorne. "A Dance with Dragons" features characters in the North and across the narrow sea, although Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark, Areo Hotah and Victarion and Asha Greyjoy appear in both volumes.