Westeros

HBO has blasted out fifteen new images from the forthcoming 7th season of Game of Thrones, covering a range of the show’s key characters, many of them in their new, black-is-back fashions ahead of what’s likely to be a dark season. You can see the images in our gallery, but here’s a couple of examples to whet the appetite:

Game of Thrones returns to screens on July 16 in the US, July 17 in Europe.

HBO has just released the official season 7 promo for Game of Thrones. See it below:

The song, for those wondering, seems to be “Sit Down”, originally recorded by James; sounds like their version as well, but it may be a cover.

Artist Magali Villeneuve (of 2016 calendar fame) reminded us via a tweet that A Song of Ice and Fire is returning to comics form, with Dynamite Entertainment publishing the first issue in their A Clash of Kings adaptation on June 7 There’s a number of covers for that first issue, but we’ll share Magali’s alternate cover first, featuring her take on Stannis Baratheon and his daughter Princess Shireen:

According to the Previews solicitation, the comic is being adapted by writer Landry Quinn Walker with art by Mel Rubi.

Other covers are provided by Mike S. Miller (familiar to fans for his work on the Dunk & Egg adaptations), Marc Simonetti (well-known to ASoIaF fans thanks to his many covers for foreign editions, as well as his calendar and contributions to The World of Ice and Fire, and Rubi; we’ll show them below:

Miniature gaming fans will be excited by this: Game publisher CMON Limited and Dark Sword Miniatures have teamed up to produce an A Song of Ice and Fire tabletop miniatures game.

Per CMON Limited’s press release, the game will be funded in part through Kickstarter starting Q3, with retail expansions following the publication of the game. We’ll share the full press release below, but we did some digging around on gaming forums and came across two very useful videos from the GAMA trade show where enthusiasts learned more about the game directly from CMON Limited’s team… as well as getting some glimpses of some of the pretty great-looking artwork and sculptures that the game will include.

The Game of Thrones panel at SXSW, featuring producers Benioff and Weiss, as well as actresses Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, has revealed a few tidbits of news as reported by EW.

The most notable items, in my view, are that Benioff and Weiss have indicated that the final season of the series will be only 6 episodes long (although one wonders what odds one or more of those episodes will run long), and that they have no plans of being involved in any Game of Thrones spin-off or prequel project HBO may come up with. Also, this upcoming season will feature a cameo from musician Ed Sheeran, who happens to be a huge fan of the show as you can see in the video below.

While Linda and I were out speaking about The World of Ice and Fire at Gothenburg’s city library, HBO finally revealed the premiere date of season 7 of Game of Thrones: July 16th. And with that reveal, they also launched the first lengthy teaser, titled “Sigils” for its extensive use of the heraldic beasts and objects of the Seven Kingdoms.

This follows after the recent reveal of the Season 7 poster, via Entertainment Weekly. You can find the (brief) press release from HBO below!

Over at George R.R. Martin’s “Not A Blog”, faithful minion Raya revealed the artist behind this summer’s forthcoming the A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar, as well as an image of the cover of the calendar featuring Victarion Grejoy in his plate armor and kraken helm.

The artist, Eric Velhagen—do check out his personal site with its extensive gallery!—has been twice nominated for the Chesley Awards, the premiere awards for the SF&F genre, and has been published in the prestigious Spectrum series of art books.

We also have some hints of the subjects Velhagen will be depicting in the calendar, courtesy of Random House:

The A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar is due to be published July 18th.

Montegrappa, one of the oldest manufacturers of pens in Italy, has quietly released a line of Game of Thrones pens that are quite gorgeous. Drawing inspiration from four of the families—Baratheon, Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen—the series of pens feature three variants: ballpoint, rollerball, and fountain.

Montegrappa’s pens are currently available on some specialty sites, while their own e-commercse store is only available for those who reside in Italy. We noticed, when taking a look there, that the fountain pens are out of stock. We double-checked with HBO and they inform us that Montegrappa will have more available by the end of the month, which means those specialty retailers out there who currently don’t have them in stock will be able to order them in. No word as of yet whether they will be appearing at the HBO Store, but we’ll keep fans posted.

Here’s the full details from Montegrappa, below:

George R.R. Martin has provided new information on an anthology slated for October, Book of Swords, which will contain a never-before-published piece of “fake history” that was originally created for The World of ICe and Fire. We reported on it last week, but waited on reporting more as we knew GRRM was going to provide more information at his “Not a Blog”. Of particular interest to ASoIaF fans are the following:

George R.R. Martin’s friend and regular editorial collaborator, Gardner Dozois, has been working away at an anthology titled Book of Swords since 2015, inviting a host of authors to contribute. One of the invited authors, Matthew Hughes, posted a list of some of the authors that were then on board. The list included Ken Liu (whose contribution, “The Hidden Girl”, was optioned for film last year), Ellen Kushner, Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb, Daniel Abraham, K.J. Parker, Garth Nix, C.J Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, and Cecelia Holland.

Hughes suggested there’d probably be some other significant authors, and as fans have now discovered, one of those names is George R.R. Martin himself. We don’t have a table of contents to share as of yet, but we’ll say that there’s a great deal of speculation among fans related to The World of Ice and Fire and Dunk & Egg.

We’ll see if we can’t shake that table of contents loose.

Sky Atlantic, home of Game of Thrones in the UK, and chef director Dan Doherty of the Duck and Waffle have teamed up with UK delivery service Deliveroo to present “The Drama Kitchen”, a pop-up takeaway which will be open from this evening to Sunday evening. The idea behind the concept? The 12 different meals available to order are all inspired by some of Sky Atlantic’s shows… including, of course, Game of Thrones.

See the Game of Thrones menu created for The Drama Kitchen:

That photo makes it all look quite delicious, although here’s hoping Bowl o’ Brown excludes human flesh! For those interested in ordering, note that availability is restricted geographically:

“The Drama Kitchen” will be open from January 26 to January 29.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has given a short and sweet update on the highly-anticipated The Winds of Winter, despite his general policy (forged from past experience) to not remark on it. It’s a brief comment, which we’ll share here:

And that’s it. As he notes, he thinks it could be finished this year… or maybe it won’t be, as he’s noted he has been wrong before. But for those who’ve irrationally feared he’s given up on the series, this should hopefully settle some nerves.

The New Year has begun, and Random House has informed us that this Friday—January 6—will be the last day they will be taking orders on the GRRM Box with its collection of collectibles and goodies for fans of both A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Thanks to Random House, we’re glad to say that fans can order any of the available boxes at 15% off with the code LASTCHANCE if they order here.

For more about the GRRM Box, you can read our announcement post sharing the full details.

During the airing of the 6th season of Game of Thrones, the Royal Mail and Tourism NI collaborated to release ten limited edition stamps dedicated to the TV series. Each week, a new stamp was released, featuring images that resonated with the series. Now, Westeros.org is pleased to have a contest to win a limited edition stamp sheet—one of only 100 sheets produced!—featuring all ten stamps.

There are three ways to enter the contest, and get a chance to win the stamp sheet:

1) Follow our Facebook page and post on the initial post from us with this title.
2) Follow our Twitter account and RT our initial post from us with this title.
3) Join our forum and post to the thread in the Game of Thrones News section indicating your interest in entering the contest.

At the end of the week we’ll collate all the entries and choose one winner. This competition is open world-wide.

Good luck!

Apple and Random House, continuing the enhanced edition series announced back in September, have now released the A Storm of Swords digital enhanced edition. Just as with the prior two books, this enhanced edition includes a bevy of art, journey maps for POV characters, an extensive glossary, and numerous annotations providing insights and trivia into the text. There’s a brief video featuring George R.R. Martin featuring some nifty animations:

To learn more about the series, you can visit here. The A Storm of Swords enhanced edition, as with all enhanced editions, is exclusive to iTunes.