With the arrival of “A Dance With Dragons,” Book 5 in George R. R. Martin’s rousing “Song of Ice and Fire” cycle, it’s high time we drove a stake through the heart of J. R. R. Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings.” Like its predecessors “Dance” has its share of flagons ’n’ dragons, and swords ’n’ sorcerers, but that doesn’t make Mr. Martin the American Tolkien, as some would have it. He’s much better than that.

The series, which started with “A Game of Thrones” in 1996, is like a sprawling and panoramic 19th-century novel turned out in fantasy motley, more Balzac and Dickens than Tolkien. Mr. Martin writes fantasy for grown-ups, with a blunt and bawdy earthiness that befits the son of a Bayonne, N.J., longshoreman. His on-the-page persona is that of a pint-and-a-shot guy who just happens to know a hell of a lot about the care and feeding of dragons. Anyone who has followed his work on HBO, where the first season of “Game of Thrones” recently ended, knows that too.

The TV series, which has been renewed for a second season, swelled Mr. Martin’s audience far beyond fantasy fans and whetted a larger-than-usual appetite for the fifth book in the cycle. Some 650,000 copies have already been printed.