Aside from the super-obvious, like Asshai & Valyria, what are other locales you think might be, or definitely are, thin places like you call Harrenhal? What evidence or signs would definitively indicate such? Would that weird black stone be one, meaning maybe Pyke & Oldtown are? What about places with possible magic defenses, like Winterfell, the Wall or Storm’s End? Does their long-term magic make a thin place, or does being a thin place make the magic possible?

There’ a lot of places which could qualify: Asshai; maybe High Heart; Chroyane definitely is one, given what’s going on with time and space in that vicinity; the Night Fort is a good contender; the Twins might become one although I think it might need to marinade a bit longer.

However, I think other places don’t fall into that category. We have other terms, like “hinge of the world” for places of power – thin places would be a subset which are places that are concentrations of human suffering as well. Winterfell doesn’t count – it’s clearly a place where human life is protected – and I think Storm’s End, etc. are in that same category, although less important to the narrative.

What does it mean “there are no children in Asshai”?

There are as many answers as you have imagination: they’re all undead, they’re all infertile due to magical radiation, they sacrifice all their children to Moloch, they eat babies, a monster comes and steals them all, etc.

Ultimately, it comes down to that Asshai is a Thin Place more than almost anywhere else in the world:

…beyond the walls of Asshai little grows save ghost grass, whose glassy, glowing stalks are inedible. If not for the food brought in from across the sea, the Asshai’i would have starved.

The ships bring casks of freshwater too. The waters of the Ash glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with a pale green phosphorescence by night, and such fish as swim in the river are blind and twisted, so deformed and hideous to look upon that only fools and shadowbinders will eat of their flesh.

Every land beneath the sun has need of fruits and grains and vegetables, so one might ask why any mariner would sail to the ends of the earth when he might more easily sell his cargo to markets closer to home. The answer is gold.

Beyond the walls of Asshai, food is scarce, but gold and gems are common…though some will say that the gold of the Shadow Lands is as unhealthy in its own way as the fruits that grow there…

The dark city by the Shadow is a city steeped in sorcery. Warlocks, wizards, alchemists, moonsingers, red priests, black alchemists, necromancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, bloodmages, torturers, inquisitors, poisoners, godswives, night-walkers, shapechangers, worshippers of the Black Goat and the Pale Child and the Lion of Night, all find welcome in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, where nothing is forbidden. Here they are free to practice their spells without restraint or censure, conduct their obscene rites, and fornicate with demons if that is their desire.”

This is a place where “nothing is forbidden everything is permitted.”

I have really enjoyed your thoughts on Thin Places in ASoIaF, and my questions chiefly relate to that concept.1: What evidence do you see that Harrenhal really is cursed, rather than simply being a uniquely difficult to manage fief that tends to bring it’s holders down, it being both enormous, subservient to a Lord Paramount, and also awarded directly by the monarchy. 2: Do you think that dragon fire may be particularly linked to the creation of Thin Places?

1. To be honest, it’s mostly Doylist logic – the law of conservation of narrative detail. Not only did GRRM take the time to write about a curse and a backstory of all of these houses which died out under horrible circumstances, but he also went out of his way in ASOIAF to show lords of Harrenhal dying horribly – Janos Slynt, Vargo Hoat, the Mountain, etc. etc. And it’s something he’s been very consistent about rather than changing his mind.

2. Only to the extent that dragonfire is involved in a concentration of violent death. I admit this theory isn’t perfect – what about all of the battlefields from the Dance or the Field or Fire? – but there’s also places like Hardhome or Asshai or Kadath or Carcossa where dragons don’t seem to be involved but weirdness is there.

Would you say that High Heart is a possible “thin place”, knowing what happened their? “When [the Singers] died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered.” (DwD Bran III). RSAFan

Maybe a mini-one? After all, that is where Erreg became known as a kinslayer, so something had to go down there.

The thing about thin places is that it’s not just a place of supernatural power, it’s a concentration of human suffering. Hence why I would say that a place like Winterfell is NOT a thin place. Nor is the Isle of Faces, or similar places. They are places of power yes, but that power derives from sources other than human suffering.