Westeros

Via Czech fan site Ice & Fire, it seems that HBO Central Europe has confirmed that they’re repeating what they did last year: the second season of Game of Thrones will air the day after it premieres in the United States, meaning April 2nd for a broad swath of Central Europe. They join Sky Atlantic as being offer next-day airing of the show, eased in great part by being part of the HBO corporate umbrella. Whether any other broadcasters or cable companies will be able to provide the same service in Europe remains to be seen.

Thanks to Indigo Books, we’ve learned that George R.R. Martin will be speaking and signing books at the Indigo store at 55 Bloor Street West, at 7 PM on March 13th. Great opportunity for Canadian fans to meet GRRM. This appearance hasn’t apparently made it onto his Appearances page just yet, so it must have been recently finalized.

And we’ll just mention that his official page is a great way to see where he’ll be in coming months. Trips planned for this year include London in April for Eastercon, as well as such varied places as Portugal, Montana, Seattle, and Spain.

Subtext, makers of the iPad free social reading app of the same name, have launched a completely overhauled version of their application. The UI is sleeker and more informative, a brand new book search tool has been set, and more.

Last summer, Subtext invited me to be one of three “experts”—joined by series editor Anne Groell (who’s also our editor on The World of Ice and Fire)  and Sean T. Collins of Boiled Leather)—to add notes to A Game of Thrones. It was a fun, interesting project, and we amassed something north of 1,000 notes covering the sublime (Sean’s entries are particularly thought-provoking) to the amusing (Anne has some good stories about the behind-the-scenes) to the trivial (well, that’d be my entries, filled with little facts and heraldry and quotes direct from GRRM). The feedback has been quite positive, I’ve been told.

A growing range of books are supported by the app, so that readers, experts, and writers can comment on and communicate with one another about the books they’re reading. It’s a fantastic way to bring books even further into the 21st century, by making them social. Want to argue why a character made a bad choice on page 633? Want to respond to an editor’s funny story about how the author worked his way to writing a particular scene as she did? Want to take argue with someone else’s gloss of the text? You can do all of that with the Subtext app. Or how about embed videos or images that you associate with particular characters, scenes, or events? You can do that, as well.

Books can be imported from various sources, or bought through the Google Books store, and there are nice, clear instructions for how to do it in the app. I believe an Android version is in development, so for now it’s just for iPad, and available only via the siTunes US store. If youv’e an iPad, I really recommend checking it out—I believe there’s a few 50 page previews, with the notes, so you can see what each book they have has to offer.

Kotaku, the gaming-focused site that’s part of the Gawker Media empire, has an excellent write-up for A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Amazon: US, UK) from Fantasy Flight Games.

As the review indicates, it really is a fantastic game—runs a bit long and works best with a full complement of players, and the rules take some learning, but once you have it down, it’s extremely good. So good, that it’s just shy of the top 100 at BoardGameGeek, which ranks something like 5,000 board games. The new 2nd edition is said to be particularly good, bringing in rules from past expansions and marrying them to beautiful art and graphic design. If you’re a fan of deep, strategic board games, the Game of Thrones board game is a terrific choice.

This is almost the most we’ve heard from any of the new cast members, and it’s certainly interesting. In this interview with Blackfilm, actor Nonso Anozie—cast in the role of Xaro Xhoan Daxos—spills some details about his role, his familiarity with the books, and his experience working on the show

Thanks to HBO getting the Art Direction video up on Youtube the day after it was released on HBO.com, we have screenshots of notable bits, with commentary on details.

Featuring the most extensive glimpses we’ve had of Qarth and Harrenhal to date, the screenshots begin here, with what’s also the most spoilery image in the whole thing. Tread carefully!

Thanks to Blastr for bringing this IGN interview with Steve DeKnight, executive producer and writer of Starz’s Spartacus series, we learn that the writing staff of Spartacus are all big fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones while he explains why a certain storyline they had planned for the new season fell by the way side:

Another day, another guild award nomination! This time, according to Deadline Hollywood, the Costumer Designers Guild has announced its nominees, and Game of Thrones‘s Michele Clapton is included in the Outstanding Period/Fantasy Television category. We suspect there’ll be stiff competition from Showtime’s The Borgias (costumes by Gabriella Pescucci) and fellow HBO show Boardwalk Empire (John A. Dunn, Lisa Padovani), to say the least.

HBO’s gone ahead and released another video, first via the HBO app for iOS and Android, and that so shortly after the Croatia video hit the air. This one, focused on art direction, gives us some of our best looks at sets such as Harrenhal, Qarth, and Craster’s Keep. There’s a couple of seconds of kind of spoilerish material, as well, so if you haven’t read A Clash of Kings, you may not want to watch.

Screencaps and the usual commentary when the video hits the official Game of Thrones channel and we can get a hold of 720p images.

Valyrian Steel has announced that pre-ordering of the Night’s Watch Dragonglass Dagger Set—also known as the “Beyond the Wall Survival Kit”—will begin from this Saturday.

This is one of the coolest things they’ve done in their line of officially-licensed “A Song of Ice and Fire” replicas—including Longclaw, Needle, and Ice, as well as the forthcoming King Robert’s Hammer (also available for pre-order)—and features a real obsidian blade crafted by hand (no two weapons will be exactly alike!), a belt pouch, five obsidian arrowheads, a sheath, and a collectible wooden storage box.

Bear in mind that there may be some restrictions depending on where you live, so read the details carefully at their site.

The David Gemmell Legend Award is a U.K.-based award for fantasy, divided into several categories according to the sub-genre. Presently, the Legend Award has opened up its polls to determine the short lists, and in the Legend category for Best Fantasy Novel of 2011?

You guessed it: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, along with many other books besides. The polls close on March 31st, and then voting will open to determine the final winners in each of three categories. To vote, visit the poll (and make sure to check the radio button above the title you want to support).

Some new photos from the filming in Iceland in November and December have turned up, courtesy of the Location Guide—a site specializing in covering and promoting foreign locations for film and television purposes—and Pegaus Productions, the local production company that faciliated the filming.

Among the notable production details: 200 crew and 15 horses, minimal need for building anything, and snowfall was needed to minimize costs (a lack of snow would have meant they’d have to film on the glacier itself, which would take longer and be more expensive, and would also have revealed ash from a recent volcanic eruption).

We should note that at least one of the images is potentially a spoiler if you’ve not read A Clash of Kings, so if you don’t want to be spoiled… well, don’t look!

In their round-up of their plans for 2012, roleplaying game publisher Green Ronin spend a good deal of time discussing their Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game. The huge boom in interest in all things Ice and Fire thanks to HBO’s Game of Thrones has seriously depleted their stock of the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying rule book. Instead of reprinting it, they’re announcing a brand new edition, called the A Game of Thrones edition, which will include the entirety of the Peril of King’s Landing adventure that was separately released.

Besides being full color, the RPG will feature a brand new cover from the amazing Michael Komarck, whose provided some of the finest artwork for “A Song of Ice and Fire” to date. Green Ronin’s plans extend past that May release of the AGoT edition, however.

We’ve updated our gallery with images from the last two videos, with the usual commentary drawing from the books and from other, relevant information. But in the course of watching the Croatia video, a new bit of information slipped out.

To the right you can see director Alan Taylor, who directed “Baelor” and “Fire and Blood”, and whom we recently confirmed was directing four of the ten episodes…

... and something new: he’s now a co-executive producer on Game of Thrones!

An interesting revelation. This puts him on the same footing as GRRM, as far as “official” credits go, and suggests two things to us: if there are further seasons, he’s going to be leaving a major mark as a director in them (bearing in mind that he’ll certainly be busy this summer, when shooting on Thor 2 starts), and that he’ll have a good deal of input on the directiorial aspects of the show. His extensive experience as a director should be a boon for the production.

Two new brief interviews have been published with George R.R. Martin regarding HBO’s Game of Thrones series, looking at his view on the show as an old hand at Hollywood television and as the creator of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on which its based. The first of the two pieces came from the LA Times blog, Hero Complex, in which GRRM discusses his concern for how viewers will treat the second season after a major character leaves the show, drawing on experience on “Beauty and the Beast” where the controversial departure of Linda Hamilton mortally wounded the show.

The other article, posted today, is a brief interview with THR’s Live Feed blog. He notes that fantasy has been around for thousands of years, but it’s been treated as material exclusively for children in the modern era until relatively recently. Asked about how season 2 will compare to his novel, A Clash of Kings, he says: