Novelist Daniel Abraham and illustrator Tommy Patterson are not merely turning George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy A Game of Thrones into a graphic novel: They are meticulously translating one art form into another, and capturing the intricate nuances of Martin’s novels just as HBO is doing with the blockbuster series. The Abraham/Patterson collaboration is more than just a faithful adaptation. It is a labor of love and a thrilling masterwork in its own right.

Now, in the second volume, the sweeping action moves from the icy north, where the bastard Jon Snow seeks to carve out a place for himself among bitter outcasts and hardened criminals sworn to service upon the Wall to the decadent south and the capital city of King’s Landing, where Jon’s father, Lord Eddard Stark, serves as the Hand of King Robert Baratheon amid a nest of courtly vipers . . . to the barbarian lands across the Narrow Sea, where the young princess Daenerys Targaryen has found the unexpected in her forced marriage to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo: love and with it, for the first time in her life, power.