Westeros

As promised, Linda and I are very pleased to present a second excerpt from The World of Ice and Fire  (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), following George’s excerpt from last month. Our own excerpt features the beginning of “The Ten Thousand Ships”, the section devoted to the events leading to the arrival of the Rhoynar in Westeros, beginning with the relationship—and eventual conflict—between the people of the Rhoyne and the Valyrians. Those of you who’ve looked at the other available glimpses of the book know, the book’s richly illustrated with beautiful artwork from many artists. Below, you’ll find one of those pieces of art, a depiction of Princess Nymeria by artist J.K. Drummond.

And as an added bonus, at the end of the extract is a video Linda and I recoreded from our Youtube channel, discussing the origins of the book, the writing process, and going over some of its content. Enjoy!

The Ten Thousand Ships

The last of the great migrations into Westeros happened long after the coming of the First Men and the Andals. For once the Ghiscari wars had ended, the dragonlords of Valyria turned their gaze toward the west, where the growth of Valyrian power brought the Freehold and its colonies into conflict with the peoples of the Rhoyne.

The mightiest river in the world, the Rhoyne’s many tributaries stretched across much of western Essos. Along their banks had arisen a civilization and culture as storied and ancient as the Old Empire of Ghis. The Rhoynar had grown rich off the bounty of their river; Mother Rhoyne, they named her.

No, not our excerpt—that’s for Wednesday—but instead you can see some of the updated sample pages that the publishing site Above the Tree Line now features for The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK).

The updated page reveals more of the beautiful art… and reveals the table of contents for the first time. While it doesn’t reveal the full break down of pages devoted to each section, it should give a real sense of the sort of information that will be contained herein. Lots of stuff about far eastern lands, a great deal about the Targaryens, substantial information on the various regions of the Seven Kingdoms before the Conquest, and so on. It’s been a great pleasure and privilege for Linda and I to have been a part in it, and we hope everyone will enjoy it when it hits shelves in October!

Our analysis and book-to-screen breakdown for “The Laws of Gods and Men” are now live at the episode guide.  As with last week’s episode, this week’s recap will have to wait—hopefully we’ll have it up tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest.

Besides our material, HBO has released three post-episode videos which are linked in the Extras section of the guide.

GRRM has just shared the cover of the forthcoming The World of Ice and Fire  (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK). We’re very excited to share it here as well, co-written with Linda and myself.

As he notes, the text was originally contracted for 50,000 words…. but suffice it to say, it’s much, much longer than that (especially if one includes the text of the World of Ice and Fire app (Buy: iOs, Android) which was originally intended for the book. The book itself is now at the 330-odd page mark, and is chock-full of some truly gorgeous art, more of it being added as we speak. Lots of new information, about the ancient history of the world, about the various regions, about the Targaryens and the Lannisters, and even about the strange, far-off places of Essos, from the Free Cities to Asshai and the Summer Isles.

The process of settling on the exact cover design certainly took awhile, especially when you’ve seen some of the early mock-ups. The three-headed Targaryen dragon really fits, although as you might guess from the above, this isn’t a work exclusively focused on the Targaryens (though it has a great deal to say about them!)

And with that said, stay tuned next week, as we’ll have an exclusive excerpt from the world book to share concerning another group of people who arrived in Westeros, and weren’t necessarily welcome to begin with…

The episode’s done, and our episode guide for “First of His Name” has gone live with our initial analysis of the episode, as well as our book-to-screen breakdown and a number of HBO’s post-episode videos. Our own video—as well as our exhaustive recap—will have to wait until tomorrow this time around, as neither of us can stay up much longer out here!

But to tide you over, there’s always the forum, and HBO has also released the preview to the next episode, which you can find at the guide for “The Laws of Gods and Men”.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview a number of actors in London. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has been our most frequently interviewed actor, I believe—he’s always been quite game to talk to us!—but they’ve always been just with him. This time around, Gwendoline Christie joined him, and I finally got to see at first hand what the show is like as the two actors spark off one another, sending zingers one another’s way with much laughter. And sometimes the zingers aren’t just directed at one another, as you’ll see below ...

Interview

Nikolaj, since we spoke last year we’ve seen that your character has become more human and likable. Do you feel that progression continues this season?

Read the rest of the interview at the Feature page!

More than a week has passed since “Breaker of Chains” aired to some controversy, all thanks to the sept scene between siblings Cersei and Jaime, a dark moment between them made grotesque by the presence of their dead son’s body in the scene. Outrage was exceptional on many sides as a general opinion formed that what was depicted was a rape scene with Jaime forcing his sister. Matters were thrown into some confusion by certain remarks from director Alex Graves and actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, compounded by a very brief remark from executive producer David Benioff in the Inside the Episode featurette which were construed by some as being contradictory.

This week, however, a pair of new interviews with the actors involved in the scene sheds some further light on what they had intended to achieve. Speaking with Sweden’s Expressen newspaper, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau expanded (Google Translate version) on his earlier remarks, speaking forthrightly but with a clear acknowledgment that what viewers took from it was in many cases different from what he, Lena Headey, the director, and the executive producers had intended. Two brief excerpts:

Last night’s episode, “Oathkeeper”, now takes its place as the highest-rated episode of the series to date, with a tremendous 6.9 rating according to HBO, as reported by EW’s James Hibberd. The premiere and the third episode each tied for the previous highest mark, of 6.6 million viewers, so that’s approximately a 5% increase. Hibberd also adds that across three viewings, the episode reached the 8.4 million mark viewing it on the day.

Our episode guide for “Oathkeeper” has been partially completed now, thanks to a mad scrabble of post-episode work. The most time-consuming part, the full recap, shall take awhile longer. HBO has also kindly released a number of post-episode videos, which you can find in our Extras section, while our own video discussion will be up some time tomorrow. It looks like there’ll be a lot to discuss.

HBO has also released the trailer for episode five, which you can find at our “First of His Name” guide.

The latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine features a lengthy, very interesting interview with George R.R. Martin, covering some early formative experiences and getting into a number of topics related to his work, particular broader themes that he finds important. Short excerpts have been published to now, but the full interview can be read at the magazine’s website. Very worthwhile reading for those interested in the genesis of the series, and how he views certain topics that are very present in the novels.

Our episode guide for Breaker of Chains is now live! Featuring the usual detailed recap, review, and book-to-screen breakdown, we cover all the bases.

One note, though: Youtube’s taking abnormally long to process our video (which was more in-depth than our previous episode-focused videos, in a try at a new format), so it’s not available at the moment. Apologies about that! We’ll try to include as soon as possible… which may be after we wake up, as it’s rather late here and I don’t think we’ll be staying up much longer.

George R.R. Martin has published an excerpt from The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), the guide to the setting and history that Martin has co-written with Linda and I.

The sample includes a piece of brand new art from the book, which will be extensively illustrated. The sample features the opening few pages of the section devoted to House Targaryen, describing briefly their time on Dragonstone… and ending with Aegon’s declaration of war against the kingdoms of Westeros, as he and his sisters prepared to invade.

Another episode of Game of Thrones draws to an end, and we have a full recap, review, and book-to-screen breakdown—plus a bonus video—available over at the “The Lion and the Rose” episode guide!  And if that’s not enough for you? The A Song of Ice and Fire forum is already filled with discussion, so why not join the conversation?

George R.R. Martin has updated “Not a Blog” with a lengthy post discussing the status of the Dunk & Egg novellas, set about 80 years prior to the time of the novels. Besides the fact that the fourth novella is partially complete but on hold for now, Martin notes he already has a fifth story roughed out in his head, with a prospective title of “The Village Hero” and its setting being the Riverlands. Perhaps more saliently for many who have patiently been waiting for the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms collection of the first three novellas is the explanation from Martin that the collection will arrive some time in 2015. But it won’t just be a straight-up collection: it will be richly illustrated by award-winning (and, frankly, legendary) artist Gary Gianni. Well-known for his work bringing Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Solomon Kane, and others to visual life, as well as many other pulp figures, most recently Gianni provided the artwork for the 2014 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar.

According to Martin, Gianni’s pitch for illustrating the collection is far beyond the initial handful of illustrations originally envisioned, and instead will feature much more artwork. Very exciting, for fans of Gianni’s work, as well as for fans of the novellas. Martin does not that some foreign language editions of an unillustrated version of the collection have already been published, but the English-language edition will have to wait until 2015 while Gianni finishes the work.

Below, a bit of speculation on “The Village Hero”.

I recall reading in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien a letter where Tolkien responded to a query from an admirer hoping for more extensive maps. He remarked on how he received a great number of requests, all asking after the special interests of the requesters: botanists wanted detailed descriptions of mallornx and niphredil, archaeologists desired information on metallurgy and ceramics, musicians wanted musical notations and tunes, and so on. One thing that he noted among them were the desire from some to have more “geological indications” on the maps, rather than place names.

Doubtless there have been fans of A Song of Ice and Fire who have wondered all these things, and more… but I must admit that I never thought that the geology of the world of Ice and Fire would get such attention as it’s received from Generation Anthropocene, a group-blog hosted by Stanford University. Featuring researchers and writers working together to write about the ways that humanity impacts the geology of the world. Their latest work is something of a light-hearted diversion from their more serious study, as they’ve examined the geology of Westeros in tremendous detail. Drawing on details drawn from the novels, they’ve attempted to backward-construct the geological history of the world as far back as 500 million years prior to the present. It’s all quite a heady read, pointing out things that Martin himself—who, so far as I know, has no geological training to speak of—likely created in haphazard fashion, but which can be explained by the very learned academics at Generation Anthropocene.

Very much recommended for idle reading, simply to marvel at how much can be made out of passing background details!