Westeros

When the news broke revealing Rose Leslie (formerly of Downton Abbey) had been cast in the role of Ygritte, I had made an effort—as I usually do with the casting announcements—to try and find a nice clip online of the actor, whether in a role or in an interview, but I had to do without for Ms. Leslie. Yesterday, however, Leicster Square TV released just the thing: an interview with the actress, filmed during a premiere of the Ewan MacGregor-Eve Green film, Perfect Sense.

And not just any interview… one from October 4th, nearly a week before the announcement, in which she spoke rather extensively about her involvement in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

I’ll note that there’s an implied spoiler in the interview, so if you haven’t read the books, I’d strongly suggest not watching the interview. We’ll provide a spoiler-free recap after the video:

EW has the scoop: British actress Rose Leslie is playing the role of Ygritte, a red-haired wildling spear wife who’ll meet Jon Snow when he joins Lord Mormont in ranging north beyond the Wall. Ygritte is one of the last major roles to be officially announced, we believe.

Leslie is a graduate of LAMDA, and may be recognized by fans of the hit British mini-series Downton Abbey due to her role as Gwen, one of the housemaids, in the first series. The coincidence of her involvement in that show leaves us hopeful that next season (*knock on wood*) Dame Maggie Smith might be wooed over from the show to play the Queen of Thorns…

A fine photo of the actress in her role as May in Nell Leyshon’s Bedlam which we think might give a nice sense of how she might look with wilder, more unkempt hair, which we’d expect for Ygritte. Ygritte’s red hair is considered lucky among the wildlings, who say it’s “kissed by fire.”

Swedish fans—you’ll be interested in this, I’m pretty sure. Stockholm’s famed Nalen night club is playing host to the Nalen TV Club’s second themed party, and—you guessed it—this time around the theme is HBO’s Game of Thrones!

Not just by one artist, but by two! First off, Tommy F. Patterson—the penciler for Dynamite’s A Game of Thrones series—has pages from A Game of Thrones #1 up for sale over at Cadence Comic Art. These are all original pencils, uninked and uncolored.

Also involved with Dynamite’s Cover is Mike S. Miller, best known by fans for his exceptional work on the adaptations of “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword” (and, we hope, “The Mystery Knight” in the next year or two). At his Facebook page, Miller offers both original art and prints of his cover work for A Game of Thrones, as well as other “A Song of Ice and Fire” related work.

Make sure to check them both out!

After many years of hoping and praying, fans in the UK are finally getting their wish: Voyager is re-releasing the first four novels in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series in matching hardcovers.

The U.K. hasn’t seen a wide-release hardcover of A Game of Thrones since the book was first published in 1996. The same can be said for the lack of re-release of A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords.  Unlike in the U.S., the U.K. market meant that it did not make sense for Voyager to re-release hardcovers on a wide scale, even as Martin hit #1 on both sides of the pond with A Feast for Crows.

The new editions are due to hit shelves on November 11 for the first two volumes, and December 5 for the last two (just in time for the holidays, one notes!)

We should add that these are not, technically, the first hardcover re-releases from Voyager. That belongs to the “special edition”, slip-cased copies of the books that Voyager quietly began to release shortly after A Dance with Dragons: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. These special editions are more limited runs, however, and may only be available for purchase on-line, so far as we’ve been able to discover. And, while slip-cased, they lack cover art beyond a stamped sigil for each book.

What can we say? The production’s decision to be quite open with local press has paid dividends for fans—to the point where some fans are feeling like the proverbial kid in the candy shop who’s sick to the stomach. We can’t say if this is too much of a good thing, all this photography and film of the Game of Thrones filming in Dubrovnik, so we’ll let you decide by sharing a few more pieces… including an excellent 1080p video showing some filming from pretty close up.

Author Peter Orullian has been interviewing some of his fellow fantasists, and thanks to Tor.com we have a new interview added to the So Spake Martin collection.

The first of two parts (the second has not yet been posted), the interview discusses A Dance with Dragons, the purpose of fantasy, and the old adage of “writing what you know”.

George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois have once more teamed up as editors to put together a new, themed anthology, and it’s hit shelves today!

Down These Strange Streets (US Hardcover, UK Hardcover, US Kindle) features more than a dozen authors writing urban fantasy short stories, including such notables as Carrie Vaughn, Patricia Briggs, Diana Gabaldon, and Martin’s fellow HBO-adapted author, Charlaine Harris. Other contributors include Melinda Snodgrass, M.L.N. Hanover, Simon R. Green, and Lisa Tuttle.

A complete table of contents can be found below:

Dubrovnik continues to be a leaky sieve, as far as photographs go—the production just doesn’t seem too bothered by it, when they’re shooting in public locations often frequented by tourists. There are some interesting—and spoiliery—photos to be found below, and we’ll provide a bit of context for them based on the second novel, A Clash of Kings.

We’re experimenting with a new nameserver host for all Westeros.org sites. We’ve switched to Cloudflare, which uses its nameservers to cache static content (images, scripts) on its servers distributed across several continents, and to serve that content from the server nearest to the user. This should, in theory, improve site performance and marginally improve server load, as the server will spend less time pushing images and scripts and have more time to churn through the database which powers Westeros-proper, the wiki, and the forum.

For most of you, this change should happen in the background and will require no action from you. However, in some cases your ISP’s domain name server may change in an incorrect fashion, or your own computer may be holding on to outdated information. This may lead to your not being able to reach some Westeros sites but not others.

In this case, we recommend flushing DNS on your computer (if on a Windows PC: Start -> Run -> cmd -> ipconfig /flushdns; for Mac OS X users, please see this.) That should correct the problem in many cases. If your own ISP’s name resolver is at fault, usually they will update their records in anything from 2 to 4 hours. Please be patient and try again after that time (making sure to use ipconfig /flushdns again).

If problems persist, please e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll try to help you resolve them.

Valyrian Steel has placed the very first “Damascus steel” replica of Ice—part of an extremely limited edition of this version of the officially-licensed, George R.R. Martin-approved—on Ebay. And, well, you can see where things stand: from an opening bid of $700, it’s hit $1625 in just over 20 minutes.

How much higher will it go before the auction ends in a week? We’re very interested in finding out!

The Subterranean Press limited edition of A Dance with Dragons is about to open its pre-orders widely after having an exclusivity period for customers who had purchased the previous book, A Feast for Crows. And just in time for that, if you’re on the fence… award-winning artist Marc Fishman has posted a great deal of art from the book, featuring both some of the color pieces he’s created as well as a number of black-and-white work which will head each chapter.

Go and check it out—but two notes: some of the art is marginally NSFW, and given that it depicts events and scenes in A Dance with Dragons, there are definite spoilers.  But if you’re concerned about spoilers, here are two of our favorite images which aren’t really spoilery at all: Varamyr Sixskins and Daenerys Targaryen.

According to the announcement at the Inn at the Crossroads, their recipe book—titled A Feast of Ice and Fire—will be published by Random House in Fall 2012, with a tentative September date. Congratulations to the chefs! For more on the project, see our earlier report on the initial announcement of the project, and interviewed Sariann and Chelsea for Suvudu.

The ever-sharp eyed Rabbit has spotted a previously-unrevealed member of the cast: Tony Way is listed as Dontos—as in Ser Dontos Hollard—on his agency’s page. Perhaps she was put on the trail by this tweet from the actor, indicating he had spent the day in armor. As we’ve learned from sources with the production, Joffrey’s nameday festivities were being filmed around now,  and Dontos plays a significant role in that scene. The character was actually first introduced in A Game of Thrones, but only mentioned in passing. He plays a significantly more substantial role in A Clash of Kings.

George R.R. Martin has alerted us to the fact that Amazon.com has secured an exclusive box set of the first four novels in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. All four novels are in hardcover and feature matching cover designs, sold together with a slipcase that features the Iron Throne from HBO’s Game of Thrones, This set is sold only through Amazon.com.