A.A. Attanasio’s The Last Legends of Earth. This book is absolutely bonkers, and I don’t mean that as a slight. It has, among other things, a race of sentient spiders called the zotl which feed off of the pain of sentient creatures. It’s a wild ride.
I believe op is referring to Bakshi’s Fire and Ice, not martin’s books. The rest of your point still stands though.