Westeros

Games have been a part of the A Song of Ice and Fire licensing universe for a long time, starting in 2002 with Fantasy Flight Games and their award-winning A Game of Thrones collectible card game, followed by their A Game of Thrones board game. Since then there have been two different RPGs, two different computer games, a tactical tabletop game—and that’s just counting the A Song of Ice and Fire games; Game of Thrones has led to yet another computer game, board games, and more.

After a bit of silence on the A Song of Ice and Fire gaming front, suddenly two exciting projects are advancing towards publication.

The official 2018 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar will be hitting shelves in just two weeks. Our understanding is that they’ll be available as well at the Penguin Random House booth at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, as previous calendars have been.

This year’s calendar is illustrated by noted genre artist Eric Velhagen, who recently met George R.R. Martin in Santa Fe as Martin’s Jean Cocteau Cinema is showcasing some of Velhagen’s artwork. Only a couple of pieces have been publicly revealed so far, including the cover above, but make sure to take advantage of Amazon’s Look Inside feature to see a two more piece of art featuring an Other and everyone’s favorite pint-sized assassin.

Artist Magali Villeneuve (of 2016 calendar fame) reminded us via a tweet that A Song of Ice and Fire is returning to comics form, with Dynamite Entertainment publishing the first issue in their A Clash of Kings adaptation on June 7 There’s a number of covers for that first issue, but we’ll share Magali’s alternate cover first, featuring her take on Stannis Baratheon and his daughter Princess Shireen:

According to the Previews solicitation, the comic is being adapted by writer Landry Quinn Walker with art by Mel Rubi.

Other covers are provided by Mike S. Miller (familiar to fans for his work on the Dunk & Egg adaptations), Marc Simonetti (well-known to ASoIaF fans thanks to his many covers for foreign editions, as well as his calendar and contributions to The World of Ice and Fire, and Rubi; we’ll show them below:

Miniature gaming fans will be excited by this: Game publisher CMON Limited and Dark Sword Miniatures have teamed up to produce an A Song of Ice and Fire tabletop miniatures game.

Per CMON Limited’s press release, the game will be funded in part through Kickstarter starting Q3, with retail expansions following the publication of the game. We’ll share the full press release below, but we did some digging around on gaming forums and came across two very useful videos from the GAMA trade show where enthusiasts learned more about the game directly from CMON Limited’s team… as well as getting some glimpses of some of the pretty great-looking artwork and sculptures that the game will include.

Over at George R.R. Martin’s “Not A Blog”, faithful minion Raya revealed the artist behind this summer’s forthcoming the A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar, as well as an image of the cover of the calendar featuring Victarion Grejoy in his plate armor and kraken helm.

The artist, Eric Velhagen—do check out his personal site with its extensive gallery!—has been twice nominated for the Chesley Awards, the premiere awards for the SF&F genre, and has been published in the prestigious Spectrum series of art books.

We also have some hints of the subjects Velhagen will be depicting in the calendar, courtesy of Random House:

The A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar is due to be published July 18th.

The New Year has begun, and Random House has informed us that this Friday—January 6—will be the last day they will be taking orders on the GRRM Box with its collection of collectibles and goodies for fans of both A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Thanks to Random House, we’re glad to say that fans can order any of the available boxes at 15% off with the code LASTCHANCE if they order here.

For more about the GRRM Box, you can read our announcement post sharing the full details.

Apple and Random House, continuing the enhanced edition series announced back in September, have now released the A Storm of Swords digital enhanced edition. Just as with the prior two books, this enhanced edition includes a bevy of art, journey maps for POV characters, an extensive glossary, and numerous annotations providing insights and trivia into the text. There’s a brief video featuring George R.R. Martin featuring some nifty animations:

To learn more about the series, you can visit here. The A Storm of Swords enhanced edition, as with all enhanced editions, is exclusive to iTunes.

Although the ultra limited edition of the GRRM Box, with a run of just 200 priced at $600 each, sold out almost instantly (the limited and deluxe limited sets are still available), publisher Random House has announced that they are donating the rarest of them all—Ultra Limited Edition Box #001—in an auction to benefit the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.

Here’s the press release with the full details regarding the auction, which will be hosted on EBay and will begin tomorrow, December 2nd:

UPDATE: Editor Anne Groell has gotten back to us to confirm that Ben Avery has adapted the script, and that the page count is 148 pages, not 240 pages as previously reported. We have corrected the report below.

“The Mystery Knight”, the third in the Dunk & Egg series of novellas set in the past of the Seven Kingdoms, is finally getting the comic book adaptation fans of the first two adaptions have beeing waiting for, according to Amazon. The adaption was first announced in 2013.

With a July 4 release date—matching the date on Random House’s own site—it looks like it’ll be released directly in collected format.

The Hedge Knight, the well-regarded first adaptation from Dabel Bros Productions, had art by veteran artist Mike S. Miller (who is listed as illustrating The Mystery Knight) and script by Ben Avrey (also returning). Eventually rights for the collected series shifted to Jet City Comics, Amazon’s own imprint, who followed up by then eventually publishing the The Sworn Sword collection which for a time was published by Marvel Comics.

Random House has kindly taken some of illustrations fromthe A Game of Thrones: The Illustrated Edition (which is the central item in the limited edition GRRM Box) and has turned them into wallpapers. The artwork comes from Magali Villeneuve and Marc Simonetti, and while some are previously published some of the pieces are exclusive to the illustrated edition. Grab them while you can!

The storming success of the GRRM Box limited edition collection—Random House reports that only 4 of the initial 200 Ultra Limited boxes remain—has led to the publisher and HBO offering fans in the United States (and the U.S. only, alas!) to enter a sweepstakes with the chance to win limited-edition and collectible Game of Thrones prize packs! Three winners will be selected on Tuesday, November 15th. All you have to do to enter—besides live in the U.S. and meet the other rules and requirements—is enter your email address.

What’s in the prize pack? Some amazing stuff, we have to say:

Random House have just announced that the first in a series of digital, enhanced editions of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has been released exclusively for Apple’s iBooks.

Featuring new cover art, numerous illustrations, enhanced maps, sigils, a glossary, and detailed annotations to provide a richer experienced for readers, and to help guide new readers through the dizzying number of characters and locations in the novels. As it happens, Linda and I have known all about this for awhile, since we’ve worked with Random House and Apple on the project—it’s been a really interesting, often very complicated, project!

There’s a lot more information, so here’s Random House’s press release. A tip, however, for those who simply can’t wait and read through it all: if you have iTunes installed, make sure to visit Apple’s launch site for an exclusive video interview with GRRM about the novels and the project, which features some really cool animation:

Valyrian Steel, who have created a range of officially licensed replica swords and other items based on both the books and the TV show, have announced a new replica weapon—or two of them, rather—based on the A Song of Ice and Fire books. Daario’s Ladies are a recreation of the notorious arakh & stiletto set worn by the equally notorious Daario Naharis. Designed with input from George R.R. Martin—meaning that we now know what an arakh is supposed to look like—the swords come with a certificate of authenticity personally autographed by GRRM. The set will be produced as a limited edition of 5000 pieces where each item will be engraved with the edition number.

• Blades: Stainless Steel
• Lady Parts: 24k gold plating, matte finish, antique wash.
• Hilt: Cast metal, antique brass plating
• Plaque: Silkscreened fiber board. Includes mounting hardware.
• Arakh Blade Length: 33 1/8 inches.
• Stiletto Blade Length: 12 1/4 inches.
 

Preorders for Daario’s Ladies open on the 27th of August and the estimated shipping date is late Winter or early Spring 2017. The price for the set will be $350.

Here’s a pleasant surprise: the Spanish translation of our The World of Ice and Fire, El mundo de Hielo y Fuego (published by one of the very best SF/F publishers in Spain, Gigamesh), has been nominated for the Ignotus Award!  The full list of the nominees can be found here; amazing to see our names on a list that includes the great John Clute.

The premiere Spanish SF/F award, the Ignotus winners are announced at the annual Hispacon Spanish national convention… which, this year, also happens to be this year’s Eurocon.
As it happens, Linda and I are likely to go, because we adored our visit to Barcelona last year, but knowing we’ll be in attendance as nominees is kind of remarkable.

Many thanks to everyone involved in making this book happen, both in the U.S. and in Spain (especially the team of translators with the thankless task of getting such a massive tome translated, and the inestimable Corominas for his striking covers!)

(Thanks to Spanish fan blog el Caballero de la Arbol Sonriente for the tip about the nominations!)

Over the course of three years, the novel A Game of Thrones was adapted to the graphic form by writer Daniel Abraham and artist Tommy Patterson. 24 issues in total, it hews very closely to the novel that started off the A Song of Ice and Fire series, not least because Abraham had weekly lunches with Martin during the process during which they discussed adaptation issues. In fact, in an interview, the writer revealed that he had learned of a connection between an early line of dialogue and the end of the series:

Suffice it to say, many have tried to figure out what the line might be. And for those who haven’t had the chance to read the comic? It turns out that Comixology has you covered because of their massive bundle of an assortment of comics which includes the first four issues of A Game of Thrones, as well as issues of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and the Pathfinder comic based on the roleplaying game setting. The 18 comic bundle is just $2.99 in the US, (2.69 euros in Europe!), and as it happens it’s very likely that the dialog Abraham was speaking of is in one of those first A Game of Thrones issues.

For those who have the comics, or get the bundle, feel free to comment below as to which line(s) in the comic are connected to the finale of the A Song of Ice and Fire series!