Westeros

Continuing the series of guides to various regions of Westeros, made in collaboration with Random House, we’re back with a new one: the Iron Islands. We draw from The World of Ice and Fire, of course, but you’ll see images and details drawn from The Lands of Ice and Fire map collection and the A Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook. Enjoy the video below:

The previous two entries were the North and King’s Landing. And we’re not quite done yet—keep an eye out in the weeks to come!

Deadline has reported on an interview with Casey Bloys, the president of HBO, following HBO’s strong showing at the 2020 Emmys. Towards the end of the article, Deadline reports:

On October 6th, Asmodee Digital and Dire Wolf Digital‘s A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition will launch, but until then Asmodee has offered a substantial discount of 20% for those who pre-order the game on Steam.

Based on the well-regarded, popular board game from Fantasy Flight Games, the game will support single-player (with up to five AI opponents) as well as full multi-player with up to six players. A new trailer has been released for the game, showing a deal of gameplay, which you can see below.

We’ve reported previously that James Hibberd will be publishing an in-depth oral history of Game of Thrones—filled with new interviews and never-before-heard anecdotes from behind the scenes—titled Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon. Over at EW, a lengthy excerpt has been posted sharing a wide-array of comments from producers (Benioff and Weiss first and foremost, as well as Bryan Cogman), actors (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Jason Momoa, Mark Addy, Iain Glen), and executives (most notable Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler) concerning the original pilot which was heavily reshot by Tim van Patten, including recasting of several key roles. There’s some decidedly new details just in this short excerpt, which bodes well for the rest of the book’s insights. Below are a couple of quotes from GRRM himself that are interesting.

According to the BBC, borough councils in County Down, Northern Ireland, have given permission for the Linen Mill Studios Game of Thrones tour experience which was first announced in April. It seems the global pandemic has delayed plans, as the original notion had been to open over the Spring in 2020, which obviously did not happen. The tour will essentially be a permanent exhibition of sets, props, and costumes with interactive elements at the studios that were used for some of the filming of the production (most notably one or more ship sets were made on site).

Last week, it was reported that George R.R. Martin has filed suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against Blackstone Manor, LLC, the company that holds the rights to producing “The Skin Trade”, his award-winning 1988 horror novella. According to reports of the suit, it’s alleged that on the day before its option lapsed, Blackstone Manor threw together a skeleton crew and filmed “a few scenes” to try and claim rights to “The Skin Trade” in perpetuity, an act which Martin’s lawyers suggest is tantamount to an “artifice”, a “token production” insufficient to retain the rights.

The second in the series of travelogue videos we’ve made in collaboration with Random House—you can see the first here if you missed it—is now out! Leaving the far North, Linda and I now discuss the royal city of King’s Landing, with some notes on notable architecture and cuisine!

Three more to come in the coming weeks!

George R.R. Martin has posted a new entry to his Not a Blog, titled “Back in Westeros”, which discusses the self-imposed isolation he’s been in for much of the year. In a mountain cabin somewhere in the mountains of New Mexico, George has been making progress on The Winds of Winter, and reflects on how the periods in his career where he’s been the most isolated have also been among his most productive.

Towards the end, he gets a little more specific about what he has been working on lately in terms of point of view characters, and one of the one he names is a bit of new information as their presence as a POV had not been confirmed until now.

(No, this is not actually his cabin!)

Devolver Digital Games, who have previously published the charming Reigns: Game of Thrones, are at it again with a Game of Thrones-themed mobile game. This time, That Silly Studio has developed Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows which has been released as an Apple Arcade exclusive for subscribers to the iOS service. The particular genre of mobile game—an “idler”—means that actions and decisions are made periodically, sometimes after hours or even days of nothing in particular going on.

George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood has now been released in paperback both in the US and the UK. This history of the Targaryens from the Conquest to the end of the regency of Aegon III has seen some updates to it in this new edition, most notably through the addition of five new images from artist Doug Wheatley.

The 2021 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, illustrated by Sam Hogg, is now available at Amazon, other online booksellers, and retail bookstores! With thirteen illustrations from Hogg, one for each month plus a bonus, this is another entry into the now-venerable A Song of Ice and Fire calendar series from Random House, with the first calendar having been Ted Nasmith’s 2011 calendar.

Before Linda and I headed out on vacation, we were approached by our publisher to record a brief series of travelogue videos focused on The World of Ice and Fire. The first of these was very recently unveiled, highlighting the people, sights, and cuisine of the North:

A few more of these to come in the coming weeks!

In a new Not a Blog post titled “Writing, Reading, Writing”, GRRM has written from his cabin hideaway about his isolation during the global pandemic. In the course of being up there, his assistant captured two mice that they’ve now made into pets named Timmy and TomTom, and George notes they have not been too helpful in advising him on The Winds of Winter...

... but he actually has a deal to say about the progress he has made, even if he thinks he won’t be able to recapture the blazing rate of speed in which he wrote A Storm of Swords (which peaked at about 150 manuscript pages a month).

Here’s what he has to say:

And below the fold, here’s some additional details that are slightly spoilerish in nature:

First announced last year, the Asmodee Digital‘s and Dire Wolf Digital‘s PC and Mac adaption of the popular A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (originally created by Fantasy Flight Games) now has a release date,  namely the 3rd quarter of this year. Along with the announcement, they’ve dropped a number of new screenshots showing off what looks like a beautiful, faithfully-rendered map of the Seven Kingdoms with all the bells and whistles you can expect from a digital version of a board game.

A year after the Folio Society revealed that it was publishing A Game of Thrones, they’ve already achieved that and now released A Clash of Kings with Jonathan Burton returning to provide illustrations.

This looks like another spectacular piece of work from the Folio Society. Below, we have two illustrations to feature, as well as the press release that the Folio Society has sent out with more details.

Published in two volumes, this image featuring Meera and Jojen Reed playing with Summer in the godswood comes from the first volume of A Clash of Kings.