Westeros

The latest anthology from George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Dangerous Women, can now be pre-ordered in the US (Amazon: Hardcover, Kindle). Among noteworthy contributors are Sharon Kay Penman, Brandon Sanderson, Lev Grossman, Diana Gabaldon… and GRRM himself, with a novella set in the Seven Kingdoms titled “The Princess and the Queen”. It will recount events leading up to and including the civil war called the Dance of the Dragons, when Rhaenyra Targaryen fought her brother Aegon over the Iron Throne.

It’s adapted from material written for The World of Ice and Fire, distilled down to a narrowed focus on the titular characters… but the world book, we promise, will provide a wider picture of the conflict, and the historical figures involved in it.

Game of Thrones: Ascent, the official social game created by Disruptor Beam in collaboration with HBO, has had great success… and they’re now expanding their reach. After launching initially as exclusive to Facebook, the game expanded to being available on Kongregate and will soon be available on Zynga. Now, Disruptor Beam has announced that the popular game is now also available on their official website. There’s fewer and fewer excuses to not try the game out, so check it out!

German matte painting artist Sven Sauer has shared an article from a German digital painting magazine that ended up having unprecedented access to Pixomondo, the international digital effects company responsible for the award-winning effects of the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. The article focuses on matte paintings, and features quite a few impressive images and details regarding the scope of the use of matte paintings on the show (there’s more than you might realize). Well-worth taking a look at.

The article also includes a video Pixomondo produced featuring some of its effects work on the series, which we’ve embedded below.

HBO’s official Youtube channel for Game of Thrones has posted an interesting video, focusing on the political marriages that are so central to this season of the show. The executive producers, as well as George R.R. Martin, provide commentary:

We have updated our episode guide for this week’s latest episode, “Second Sons”, with our usual complete recap, analysis, and book-to-screen break down. Enjoy!

This week’s extra video over at our Youtube channel may be delayed a day, as we’re a little short on time for recording.

We’re pleased to announce that Westeros.org is co-sponsoring a Game of Thrones pub quiz / trivia night produced by Geeks Who Drink. The event is called Fire Cannot Kill a Quizmaster and will be in twelve major cities on Saturday, June 8th.

Teams of up to six will play together during this eight round event that’ll cover everything on the HBO series up to that point (a small portion of material will cover the books, but with no spoilers past season 3). It costs $5 per player, so expect team prizes of between $200 and $500. Some locations will have costume contests, but feel free to dress up either way.

Find the schedule, times and event FAQs at their Facebook event page, and good luck!

According to George R.R. Martin at “Not a Blog”, he and co-editor Gardner Dozois have finalized and delivered Rogues, a cross-genre anthology featuring quite the list of contributors. The anthology, tied together by the titular concept, will be published by Bantam Spectra.

Martin provides a list of contributors and their stories, which include Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Garth Nix, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Scott Lynch, Carrie Vaughn, and many, many more. A full listing can be found below the cut.

Another late, late night and we’ve just managed to put the finishing touches on our review of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself. You can find it at out episode guide. for the episode.

And if that’s not enough, feel free to check out the lively conversations about the episode over at our forum, as fellow fans dissect and discuss the episode.

The BAFTA Television Awards—as prestigious in the UK as the American Emmy Awards—have named their various winners, and in the special publicly-voted Radio Times Audience Award, a certain show by the name of Game of Thrones proved the winner over such competition as Homeland and the opening ceremonies of last year’s Olympics.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin shares the news and his reaction.

Week after week, Game of Thrones‘s third season has been beating ratings expectations. It hurdled over the 5 million initial airing viewership mark with last week’s excellent episode, “Kissed by Fire”, hitting 5.3 million viewers… and this week? According to TV by the Number, it looks like “The Climb” wins the night with an unprecedented 5.5 million viewers. At this rate, I think it quite likely that the season finale could well clear 6 million viewers.

The second showing also added 1.27 million viewers, bringing the total who watched it on TV to 6.77 million.

We’ve worked feverishly through the night to get fans some of our usual content for the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and are pleased to share our detailed episode recap as well as our views on the episode at the episode guide for “The Climb”. Our book-to-screen breakdown—one of our favorite and most frequently cited parts of our guides— is now also available!

Unfortunately, despite this being a propitious day—my birthday—I have fallen ill, so our video review will be delayed a couple of days, in all likelihood. Apologies!

Also of note, HBO released the preview for episode 7, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself; we’ve embedded the video in the guide page.

Some rather unclear news came out of a HarperCollins show case, in which it was revealed that George R.R. Martin has licensed to them the publication of a small gift book collecting some of Tyrion Lannister’s more insightful and amusing quotes from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. As some might note, HarperCollins is not the publisher of the series in the US… but as it happens, they are in the UK, and it appears that the idea may have originated there. Now Thanks to HarperCollins UK, we now have the official press release:

It’s always a pleasure to interview writer and story editor Bryan Cogman, who has so far written an episode of each season, including what are amounting to two of our personal favorites of the series: “What is Dead May Never Die” and his season three episode, “Kissed by Fire”.

Below, I talk with Bryan about the episode, the introduction of new characters, his proudest moments, and much more. It’s a lengthy one but, we hope, a good one. Enjoy!

Interview

All right, thanks so much for taking the time, first off!

Now, often episodes seem to have their titles decided at the last minute—George’s episode went through a couple of different names before it was settled. Was “Kissed by Fire” always the title you preferred for your episode?

To read the rest, go to the full interview.

UPDATE: We’ve now posted the recap and analysis of “Kissed by Fire”.

As HBO only provided us the first four episodes of the new season, from here on out our Game of Thrones episode guides will get update only after the initial airing. We hope to be able to get at least the analysis and book-to-screen up by the time the west coast airing is completed, but the extensive recap tends to take rather longer than that, and will probably not appear until later on Monday.

Until then, however, we’ve now posted our book to screen information on the episode guide for “Kissed by Fire”.

Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Avatar Press executive Jim Kuhoric spoke at a panel at C2E2 about various Avatar Press projects, and in the course of it he discussed some of what’s coming from George R.R. Martin. First and foremost, of course, is the comic book adaptation of GRRM’s World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Skin Trade, to go along with their earlier adaptation of Fevre Dream. Thanks to that, Kuhoric revealed that GRRM will be at San Diego’s Comic-Con (which GRRM has previously announced), where he’ll make an appearance at Avatar’s booth and sign books.

The most intersting item, however, was Kuhoric revealing that there’s a “George R.R. Martin original” in the works, which “may” be superhero related. Kuhoric suggests this is a departure, as previously the works they’ve published have simply been adaptations. They’ll reveal more later, but what I suspect this is is a brand new Wild Cards original comic book story, which will almost certainly be scripted by someone other than GRRM (possibly Daniel Abraham, responsible for the adaptation of Fevre Dream and the Dynamic Entertainment comic Wild Cards: Hard Call?).

To see Kuhoric’s sremarks, watch below beginning at the 2:50 mark: