Westeros

Selected for the TIME 100, named one of EW’s entertainers of the year, and so on and so forth—it’s been a banner year for George R.R. Martin and his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. And as we come to the close of 2011, another plaudit: USA Today has named Martin their Author of the Year, citing the booming popularity of the novels and the success of HBO’s adaptation. Congratulations to GRRM!

USA Today has been quite interested in the series, having published a cover feature back in July just before A Dance with Dragons hit the shelves.

Amazon.com is offering quite a few deals on downloadable games, and this one caught our eye: A Game of Thrones: Genesis from Cyanide Studio for just $10, a 75% saving!

For those who don’t mind paying more and prefer Steam, the game is also available there at a more modest 50% off as part of the Steam daily holiday sales. The Steam sale price ends tomorrow, but we’re not sure how long the Amazon.com sale lasts.

Atlus USA doesn’t do things by halves. Yesterday saw the release of this trailer for Cyanide Studio‘s Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game (preorder: XBox, PS3), combined with heaps of new information coming out of Paris thanks to Focus Home Interactive (the European publisher)... but it turns out that Atlus had more up its sleeve.

First, here’s a trailer ocused on the Wall, and features James Cosmo as Lord Commander Mormont and some bloody action when wildlings attack:

But wait, there’s more!

We’ve already posted extensively about the single-player Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game, and we’ve also reported on the development of a licensed MMO and Facebook social game.

However, for various reasons, some fans have been disappointed, having really hoped a really large, well-known studio tackled the license. But not necessarily for lack of interest. EA and Bethesda have considered it at some point… and now we learn that BioWare did as well.

Like clockwork, yesterday’s post with detailed information regarding the officially licensed Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game has been followed up with the serendipitous arrival of a two minute long trailer, which you can see embedded below courtesy of German gaming site GameStar:

And that’s not all, folks, because it turns out that French site Fantasy.fr was also present at the presentation in Paris… and got to record it! See below for those videos, which show off some of the gameplay and cutscenes and locations, and a synopsis of additional details from them. Note that the video presentation is all in French.

This past Saturday, HBO snuck out a brand new behind the scenes video that, so far, has been exclusive to HBO and HBO On Demand. However, it’s wormed its way out there to the Internet, and we thought we’d share it with fans. Lots of neat bits—including our most extensive glimpses of Brienne of Tarth, Melisandre of Asshai, and Stannis Baratheon, three of the primary characters added to this season (don’t worry, there’s a bit of Davos as well!)

We’ve already captured key images for our Behind the Scenes gallery, starting here with this image of Audley’s Castle which serves as the location of Robb Stark’s war camp. As usual, we identify characters and locations, and discuss various details that may be of interest.

We should note that, technically, some of these shots might be considered spoilers—so if you really don’t want to know anything about what’s going to be happening next season, best skip it.

This is nifty. With the end of the year on us, Random House—the largest publisher in the world, of whom Bantam is a subsidiary—posted its list of best-selling ebooks in various categories. And if you scroll down to the top-selling science fiction and fantasy titles…

Well, it starts to feel a bit deja vu-like, because the first six entries are all A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin—A Game of Thrones followed by A Dance with Dragons, then A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows rounding out the top 5… and the four-volume e-book set holding the #6 spot. Rather dominating, to say the least!

This past Thursday, the French media received the first official presentation of Cyanide Studio‘s Game Of Thrones: The Role-Playing Game (published by Atlus in the US and by Focus Home Interactive in Europe).

Some members from the French George R.R. Martin fan site called La Garde de Nuit were invited to attend, and have prepared the following report, which LGdN’s Evrach sent to us in translated form with permission to repost (many thanks to him, and LGdN!):

Over at his website, author Daniel Abraham shares a his 5 minute presentation from a recent Ignite New Mexico event. There, he provides a useful insight into the basics of his adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones into comic book form for Dynamite and Bantam, in their George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones comic series. As noted, the plan is to adapt the first novel over the course of two years and twenty-four issues, a page count that’s actually slightly longer than that of the first novel, but (as Abraham explains) there’s a lot of places where the shift from a written to a heavily visual medium (like comics) means a great deal of changes.

Quite interesting, and as we said, it’s brief at just 5 minutes. Issue 3 of Dynamite’s series has just hit shelves. The first six issues will be collected and published by Bantam, and will feature a striking cover.

Back at the start of December, we shared this missive from Lord Varys, courtesy of HBO, in which Westeros.org was named honorary members of House Lannister and promised some secretive information in weeks to come regarding the Blu-Ray and DVD season 1 box sets due March 6th, 2012.

Well, the time for waiting is over, as we received something sent by special courier from the distant ... ah, lets say Oldtown, where one might suppose the city and suburbs of the greater Los Angeles area might be.

Canadian journalist Chris Lackner has a terrific report from what I believe to be an international press junket to Belfast in November or perhaps October. Some excellent quotes from the producers, as well as Emilia Clarke, Charles Dance, and Kit Harrington as they discuss their experiences on the show and in filming the second season.

The best quote of the article comes from Charles Dance:

See the article for more, and thanks to thremnir for pointing it out.

About a week and a half ago, we saw a tweet from someone who worked at the same building in which Audible.com is housed who noted that they had gone downstairs to the cafeteria and found George R.R. Martin holding forth. We had figured it was something to do with the A Feast for Crows audio book being re-released with Roy Dotrice reading it, but had assumed it’d be something included in that.

In fact, Audible’s released it straight to Youtube, and we’ve embedded it below. As well, we’ve linked it over at the So Spake Martin section of the Citadel, which collects interviews, correspondence, and more from GRRM.

We were waiting for one of these end-of-year lists discussing the most illegaly torrented programs, and TorrentFreak has come through with their report.  Just pipped by Dexter, HBO’s Game of Thrones is said to have scored 3.4 million downloads to secure second place, making it a more popular download target than uber-popular comedy Big Bang Theory, venerable medical drama House, and surprise cable success The Walking Dead.

I wonder if Game of Thrones would have surpassed Dexter, if HBO Adria and Sky didn’t air the series almost simultaneously with the U.S. airing, cutting down on the incentive for subscribers to pirate the show…

In any case, it’s a dubious honor, but at least it can be said to provide yet another piece of data revealing that there’s a great deal of interest in the show.

The HBO Store has recently added quite a few new items… in the form of laptop, netbook, tablet, phone, and MP3 player skins featuring the words and heraldry of the various great houses. Have to say, the Baratheon iPhone/iPod

“phone and MP3 player” skin is actually quite striking. We’ve also added links to the heraldic coasters and a mug set in the last few days.

Presently, the store also has a free shipping offer going on if you use the code FREESHIPDAY at check out.

Although the CDs won’t be out until next year, you can already download the newly re-recorded, fully unabridged A Feast for Crows, read by actor Roy Dotrice who has previously recorded all the other books in the series. And all this, thanks to popular demand by fans, who repeatedly ask the publishers both in the U.K. and U.S. to get Dotrice—who missed recording the book the first time around because of a tight deadline and an on-going theatre committment—to read it.

The book can be found at Amazon.com, and Audible.com is listing the book as well, and offering it for free for a 30-day trial membership.
For those in the UK, we expect Amazon.co.uk will soon list it.