A Song of Ice and Fire would be forever known as the Mother of all Duds if we didn't.
In the very first chapter we get the White Walkers, who we learn are magical ice humanoids from a legendary 8000 year old past slaying the point of view character and his companions.
This helps create a slow (very slow) building sense of dread in the Night's Watch storyline(and to a certain extent Bran's story line) that casts the political shenanigans and petty wars of the rest of the five books into sharp relief--so many plans made, schemes hatched, betrayals turned, tragedies born, tears cried....
It all seems so trivial when the greatest threat to humanity is knocking on your north door. Yet that is human nature, isn't it? My son complains and weeps when he's lost a lego; meanwhile there are a million or more refugees in Europe surviving on charity alone; and a global warming crisis causing mass extinction of animals, fueling wars and who knows what changes it will bring?
When life is good it's filled with petty concerns and worries.
The more of them we have and the pettier they are, the luckier we are. A natural theme ofA Song and Ice and Fire.
At the same time we've got the dragons. Who are obviously sources of destruction and whose 'Mother' has been planning to take back the 7 kingdoms she thinks are hers for several thousand pages.
Readers may voice their concern at what they feel is the lag in Daenerys' chapters, but the fact is she is going to make it to Westeros eventually and I doubt if it's going to be pretty.
Somewhere hidden in plain sight in the heroic, courageous, messianic curve of Daenerys' arc and the fantasy reader's natural love of dragons is the simple fact that the Dragons are really weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, they may not be sapient like the Others. But they are capable of wiping 0ut thousands in an amazingly short time, as the unlucky participants in the Field of Fire during Aegon's conquering found out.
And what seems more antagonistic to Fire, as an elemental force, than Ice?
These two elements of Fire and Ice have to come together. And no one thinks it's going to be a tea party.
The thing is, who are you going to root for? Who do you want to win? Because if you were caught between them, I don't think that whichever side you support is going to take that into consideration.
When they come together, humanity will be caught in the middle.
Because even as a symbol of magic, the dragons are anti-human. Magic is anti-human. It's anti-reason. It's anti-progress.
Fire consumes but it does not build. Ice preserves but it doesn't make.
Fire and Ice have to be neutralized for humanity to survive.
But you take your Ramsays, your Cerseis, your Tywins, Ghrazans mo Dakknabs and Joffreys...and you have to be wonder.
Should humanity survive?
I hope only the wolves remain.
A2a, thanks.
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