A Song of Ice and Fire has a well-earned reputation as one of the longest fantasy series in print. Readers who approach it having watched the television adaptation sometimes assume the books will feel familiar territory, quickly covered. Readers who have never encountered the story at all look at the physical dimensions of the first volume and wonder how anyone finds the time. Both groups are working from impressions rather than numbers, and impressions tend to overstate the difficulty of a long book while underestimating the value of a consistent daily habit.
The five published books in the series contain approximately 1,770,000 words in total. At a reading speed of 200 words per minute, which is a comfortable adult pace for prose fiction, the complete published series takes approximately 147 hours and 30 minutes to read. At a careful study pace of 100 words per minute, that extends to approximately 295 hours. These are large figures, but they are specific ones, and specific numbers can be turned into plans in a way that vague impressions of difficulty cannot.
The series is structured across five published novels of very different lengths. A Game of Thrones is the shortest at approximately 298,000 words. A Storm of Swords is the longest at approximately 424,000 words, and A Dance with Dragons is close behind at approximately 422,000 words. The variation in length across the five books is large enough that reading one book gives no reliable indication of how long the next will take, which is one reason why reading plans built around the series as a whole tend to work better than plans built around individual volumes.
At a daily reading commitment of 30 minutes, the full five-book series takes around 295 days at 200 wpm, just under ten months. At 15 minutes a day it takes around 590 days, close to a year and eight months. Those timelines are longer than for shorter reading projects, but the series is also more than twice the length of the full Lord of the Rings trilogy and much longer than most other popular fantasy series. The numbers are proportionate to the text.
The two planned future books in the series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, are not included in this calculator because they have not been published. The calculator covers the five books that exist in their final form.
How the Calculator Works
The calculator uses verified word counts for all five published books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. A Game of Thrones contains approximately 298,000 words. A Clash of Kings contains approximately 326,000 words. A Storm of Swords contains approximately 424,000 words. A Feast for Crows contains approximately 300,000 words. A Dance with Dragons contains approximately 422,000 words. The series total across all five books is approximately 1,770,000 words.
The reading speed slider sets the words-per-minute pace for all time estimates. The default is 200 wpm, a reasonable average for adult readers of prose fiction. Preset buttons allow quick selection of common reading speeds, or the slider can be set to match a personally measured pace. Adjusting the slider updates every estimate in the calculator in real time, including the per-book table and the daily and weekly plan outputs.
The study speed slider is separate and set to zero by default. This setting is for any reading mode slower than standard forward reading: re-reading passages, pausing to track character connections, or engaging with the text at a more deliberate pace. A study pace of 100 wpm is a reasonable estimate for careful analytical reading.
The audio toggle adds a comparison figure based on the full series audiobook. The complete five-book series narrated by Roy Dotrice, which is the most widely used recording, runs to approximately 193 hours at standard playback speed. The calculator adjusts this figure for any playback speed between 0.75 and 2.0 times standard.
The daily reading slider and the weekly planning option both return a personalised completion estimate in days or weeks. Entering the realistic minutes available per day or per week shows exactly how long the full series, or any individual book, would take to complete at that pace.
The book-by-book table shows word count and reading time at the selected speed for each of the five books individually, making it straightforward to plan any volume as a standalone reading commitment or to track progress through the series against a set schedule.
A Song of Ice and Fire contains approximately 1,770,000 words across 5 published books and 344 chapters. Adjust your reading speed, study pace and audio narration speed below, and the calculator works out exactly how long each book and the full series takes at your personal pace.
📖 What do you want to read?
Choose the full series, a specific book, or a section.
📖 Reading speed
Most adults read prose at 150–250 words per minute. Use the presets or fine-tune with the slider.
Used to calculate your personalised daily completion plan.
✏️ Study speed
Study reading or a careful re-read is slower. Set a pace that reflects how attentively you want to engage with each book.
🎧 Audio narration speed
Standard audiobook narration runs at around 110–150 wpm. Adjust to match your preferred listening pace.
📅 Reading plan
Plan by daily or weekly minutes to see how long your reading schedule takes across the full series.
—
At your reading speed—
At your study pace—
At your narration speed—
Reading time ÷ your daily minutes—
at your reading speed—
📚 Time per book
| # | Book | Section | Year | Ch. | Words | Share | Reading | Study | Audio |
|---|
Share it with friends or family who might find it helpful.
Reading vs Studying A Song of Ice and Fire
Reading and studying are meaningfully different modes of engagement, and the distinction matters more for a series of this length than for shorter books.
Reading in the standard sense means moving through the narrative at a consistent forward pace, following the point-of-view chapters as they unfold. At 200 words per minute, the full five-book series takes approximately 147 hours and 30 minutes. This is the estimate for working through all five published books at a comfortable adult reading pace without extended stops for reflection or re-reading.
Study reading is slower. It involves pausing at key passages, re-reading sections where the narrative is particularly complex, tracking character arcs and their relationships across hundreds of chapters, and generally spending more time per page than continuous reading requires. At 100 words per minute, the complete series takes approximately 295 hours.
A Song of Ice and Fire presents a particular version of this challenge because of the scale of its cast and geography. The series features hundreds of named characters across multiple continents, with point-of-view chapters switching between characters who may not interact directly for entire books at a time. Keeping track of those connections, particularly across the long stretches of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons which run in parallel chronologically rather than sequentially, naturally slows most readers somewhat regardless of their intended pace.
For a first read of the series, a realistic total time sits somewhere between the reading and study estimates for most people, typically in the range of 170 to 220 hours depending on individual pace and how much attention is given to the wider world-building material alongside the main narrative.
Time Per Book
The five books in the series vary a lot in length, and those differences have a direct effect on how reading plans need to be structured.
A Storm of Swords is the longest book at approximately 424,000 words. At 200 wpm it takes around 35 hours 20 minutes to read. It covers the largest amount of narrative ground of any book in the series and is the longest individual volume by a significant margin over the first two books.
A Dance with Dragons is the second longest at approximately 422,000 words, taking around 35 hours 10 minutes at 200 wpm. It runs in parallel chronologically with A Feast for Crows for a large portion of its length, meaning these two books together represent a single narrative period told from different perspectives rather than two sequential stages of the story.
A Feast for Crows is approximately 300,000 words, taking around 25 hours at 200 wpm. It is notably the book that covers the fewest point-of-view characters of any in the series, having split the full cast between itself and A Dance with Dragons.
A Clash of Kings is approximately 326,000 words, taking around 27 hours 10 minutes at 200 wpm. It covers the events immediately following A Game of Thrones and expands the cast and geography of the series significantly compared to the first volume.
A Game of Thrones is the shortest book in the series at approximately 298,000 words, taking around 24 hours 50 minutes at 200 wpm. Despite being the entry point to the series, it is not a short book by most standards, running to more than twice the length of the average contemporary novel.
The average book length across the five volumes is approximately 354,000 words, or around 29 hours 30 minutes at 200 wpm.
Daily and Weekly Reading Plans
The full series at 1,770,000 words and approximately 147 hours 30 minutes of reading time at 200 wpm produces the following completion timelines at different daily and weekly commitments.
At 10 minutes a day, the full series takes approximately 885 days, just over two years and five months. This is a long timeline, but it is the honest figure for a very small daily commitment applied to a very large text. At this pace, A Game of Thrones alone takes around 149 days and A Storm of Swords takes around 212 days.
At 15 minutes a day, the full series takes approximately 590 days, just under a year and eight months. This is still a substantial commitment in calendar terms, but it is realistic for anyone who reads consistently at this pace. A Game of Thrones completes in approximately 99 days. The two longest books each take around 141 days.
At 30 minutes a day, the full series takes approximately 295 days, just under ten months. This is a genuinely achievable pace for most readers who can protect a daily reading window of half an hour. A Game of Thrones takes around 50 days. A Storm of Swords takes around 71 days. The full series is complete in under a year.
At 60 minutes a week, the full series takes approximately 885 days, the same as 10 minutes daily. A single one-hour weekly session is the least efficient schedule in terms of narrative continuity for a series this complex, since the gaps between sessions are long enough for character and plot details to fade. More frequent shorter sessions tend to serve complex multi-perspective narratives better.
At 120 minutes a week, the full series takes approximately 443 days, around fifteen months. This is the equivalent of just over 17 minutes a day. At two hours per week, roughly one-third of a book per month is covered, and the full series completes in around a year and a quarter.
Reading vs Listening
The complete five-book A Song of Ice and Fire audiobook narrated by Roy Dotrice runs to approximately 193 hours at standard playback speed. This is much longer than the silent reading time of approximately 147 hours at 200 wpm, meaning the audiobook takes around 31 percent more time than reading at a standard adult pace.
At 1.5 times playback speed, the full series audiobook runs to approximately 129 hours, faster than standard reading speed for most listeners. At 1.25 times speed it runs to around 154 hours, broadly comparable to reading pace. The density of named characters and geographic detail in the series makes this one where many listeners find a moderate playback speed increase, around 1.2 to 1.35 times, more appropriate than the maximum, since keeping track of the cast and their relationships requires some processing time even for experienced readers.
The practical case for audio with this series is similar to that for any long multi-volume narrative. The total commitment is large enough that making progress during otherwise unoccupied time, commuting, exercise, household tasks, makes a real difference to how long the series takes in calendar terms. Adding 30 minutes of audio during a daily commute to 15 minutes of silent reading triples the effective daily intake without requiring three times the dedicated sitting time.
The series also benefits from audio in one specific structural respect. The point-of-view chapter headings, which name the character whose perspective that chapter follows, are naturally emphasised in a narrated performance in a way that can help new readers track which thread they are following through the parallel narratives of books four and five.
The calculator’s audio toggle allows any playback speed to be entered and compared directly against the reading and study time estimates.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to read A Song of Ice and Fire?
At 200 words per minute, the full five-book series takes approximately 147 hours and 30 minutes. At 15 minutes a day that is around 590 days. At 30 minutes a day it is approximately 295 days, just under ten months. At a careful study pace of 100 words per minute the series takes approximately 295 hours. Individual reading speed varies, and the calculator allows any wpm rate to be set to produce a personalised estimate.
How many words are in each book?
A Game of Thrones is approximately 298,000 words. A Clash of Kings is approximately 326,000 words. A Storm of Swords is approximately 424,000 words. A Feast for Crows is approximately 300,000 words. A Dance with Dragons is approximately 422,000 words. The full five-book series total is approximately 1,770,000 words.
How long does each book take to read?
At 200 words per minute: A Game of Thrones takes approximately 24 hours 50 minutes, A Clash of Kings approximately 27 hours 10 minutes, A Storm of Swords approximately 35 hours 20 minutes, A Feast for Crows approximately 25 hours, and A Dance with Dragons approximately 35 hours 10 minutes.
Is the audiobook faster or slower than reading?
Slower at standard playback. The Roy Dotrice recording of the full five-book series runs to approximately 193 hours at standard speed, compared to approximately 147 hours of silent reading at 200 wpm. At 1.5 times playback speed the audiobook runs to approximately 129 hours, which is faster than standard reading pace for most listeners.
Does the calculator include The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring?
No. Both books are unpublished as of the date of this calculator. The calculator covers only the five books that exist in their final published form. If either book is published in future, the calculator will be updated with verified word counts at that time.
Can this calculator help with a re-read plan?
Yes. The daily and weekly planning tools work as well for a re-read as for a first read, and the per-book table makes it straightforward to set a schedule for any individual book in isolation. Many readers approaching a re-read move faster than their first-read pace because they are not tracking as many unfamiliar names and places. The reading speed slider can be set higher to reflect a quicker re-read pace if appropriate.
Who built this calculator?
The Savzz Game of Thrones Reading Time Calculator was built by the team at Savzz.co.uk, a UK money-saving site. We also build free, practical tools designed to give honest answers to time and cost questions. We built it because a series of this length benefits more than most from a clear time estimate before starting. Knowing that the full five books take approximately 147 hours at a comfortable reading pace, and that a specific daily commitment produces a specific end date, changes the conversation from “this will take forever” to “this will take ten months at 30 minutes a day.” That is a much more useful thing to know. The calculator is completely free and requires no sign-up.
Final Thoughts
A Song of Ice and Fire is genuinely one of the longest fantasy series in print, and that fact is not in dispute. At approximately 1,770,000 words, the five published books represent a reading commitment that is larger than most other popular long-running series and considerably larger than most individual novels. That is the honest picture.
What tends to get lost in the reputation for length is that large reading commitments are not the same as unmanageable ones. At 30 minutes a day, the full series completes in under ten months. At 15 minutes a day it takes around a year and eight months. Both of those are real plans with real end dates, not open-ended ambitions.
The calculator above gives the book-by-book breakdown, the daily and weekly planning tools, and the audio comparison. Use them to set a daily commitment that fits the actual week rather than an ideal one, and a series that looks impossibly long at first glance becomes a specific project with a specific timeline.
