Want to discover if you are the hero of a fantasy novel? Take our quick hero quiz to find out:

• Are you a perfectly moral boy or girl—mostly likely a boy, sorry ladies—with traits like honor and courage?
• Do you stand against an evil so great that Nazi Zombies pale in comparison?
• Do you have a special skill that allows you to oppose said Nazi-Zombie force?
• Has a ragtag bunch of social misfits from all walks of life joined your cause for… reasons?
• Have you been required to travel a great distance from your home village in order to accomplish some task or find a MacGuffin of Magical Awesomeness?
• Do you seem oddly invincible, able to fight against entire armies and come out more or less intact?

If you answered yes to most of these, then congratulations, you are a fantasy hero, a gig which comes with protagonist perks. Although you'll struggle against impossible odds, ultimately you will be successful in your task, save the world from the forces of evil, probably get the girl, and likely star in the sequel as icing on the cake. That is, unless you live in a place called Westeros.

Had Eddard Stark taken our hero quiz, he would easily have passed. In fact, most readers of A Game of Thrones assumed he was the hero of the story. But then they reached the end of the novel, witnessed Ned's untimely beheading, and screamed something to the effect of, "What the heck? What's happening here? Has the world gone mad?" And those readers had to wait almost three years to discover how a fantasy story could keep on keeping on without that central hero to follow.

In 1999, they got their answer when George R.R. Martin published A Clash of Kings, the second novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Finally, right? Fans turned out in droves to support the book, and A Clash of Kings found itself sitting pretty on the New York Times's Bestsellers list more than one hundred times. And following in its predecessor's footsteps, A Clash of Kings also won the 1999 Locus Award for Fantasy and was nominated for the Nebula of the same year. Boo ya.

This installment in Martin's series didn't just nail it on the page, though. When it was its turn to receive the television treatment (the novel served as the basis for the second season of HBO's Game of Thrones), the season won six Emmys. And in both 2012 and 2013, it was the most pirated TV show, which feels like a fitting honor for a series that features so many ruffians and sneaks.

A Clash of Kings is far from the final book in this epic fantasy series, though—several books follow it. And while Martin is notorious for taking his time with his writing, this just gives us time to savor each of his epic books, our excitement growing until we feel we might burst if we don't find out what happens next already.

We won't leave you hanging, though, Shmoopers. And now, without further ado, let's dig into A Clash of Kings and see what we can find. After all, winter is coming.

Don't let all the war, political scheming, and fancy-fantasy names fool you: A Clash of Kings is a coming-of-age story about finding one's place in the world. Whether that world sports magic and knights or airplanes and smartphones, we feel that's something everyone can relate to.

After the events of A Game of Thrones, the Seven Kingdoms fractured into civil war, dividing countries, families, and loyalties. As a result, the lives of many characters are forever altered, and whatever place in the world they once had is now lost. Consider a few choice samples here:

• Tyrion, social misfit and libertine extraordinaire, becomes the Hand of the King and is suddenly responsible for keeping his family safe.
• The ever-maternal Catelyn loses her husband and her family scatters across Westeros.
• Ten-year-old Arya Stark is separated from her family and becomes lost in the big old world.
• Daenerys also loses her family—see a pattern here?—and without Khal Drogo's strength to back her up, she has to take charge of her life as well as the responsibility of her people's safety.
• In an ironic twist, Theon Greyjoy returns to his family only to find he has no place among them; his father believes his son has become more Ned Stark's son than his own.
• Finally, Jon Snow travels beyond the Wall to discover the world is a bigger, more diverse place than he's ever imagined—and a more complicated one to boot.

What you might have noticed about these characters is that not all of them are children. We tend to think of coming-of-age stories as literature meant for teenagers and about teenagers. But adults just as often find themselves searching for a place they belong, especially after traumatic events, such as war or death, have altered the course of their lives. As this cast of characters suggests, we're always coming-of-age no matter how old we get.

So A Clash of Kings finds a variety of characters—young and old, rich and poor—struggling to either find or return to a role in the world where they can feel secure and of value. That's something we think everybody can relate to at one point or another in life, and a pretty good reason why we should care about this novel.