Yes, A Clash of Kings Is Banned!

George R. R. Martin’s second entry in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga picks up after the death of King Robert Baratheon as five claimants battle for the Iron Throne. The War of the Five Kings tears Westeros apart while supernatural threats gather beyond the Wall. Martin’s signature approach, treating fantasy with the brutal realism of historical fiction, means that characters die without warning, power corrupts without exception, and the line between hero and villain barely exists. The 2012 HBO adaptation brought the story to a massive audience, but the novels remain far more detailed and, in many passages, far more graphic.

A Clash of Kings was challenged 15 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with all recorded bans in Florida school districts including Broward, Hillsborough, Lee, Okaloosa, Orange, and Palm Beach County. The challenges target the novel’s graphic violence, sexual content (including sexual violence), and language. Martin’s entire series has drawn fire, but individual volumes keep appearing on ban lists as schools go title-by-title through library catalogs. The books are shelved in the adult fiction section of most bookstores, but their presence in school libraries, where teens who watched the TV show went looking for them, keeps them in the crosshairs.