Westeros

Pearson Moore, who’s contributed a number of featured articles in our Features section, has published a book “Direwolves and Dragons”, collecting his current essays related to Game of Thrones, plus some additional articles published exclusively in the book.

See below for more details, including a brief description for each essay included in the e-book. With his unique insight and his experience in examining television narrative (gained through his exceptional series of posts concerning Lost as well as Mad Men), this is sure to contain some thought-provoking material for fans of the novels and/or the hit HBO series.

“Direwolves and Dragons” is the Game of Thrones series of essays and analysis by Pearson Moore, Featured Writer at Westeros.org.  Moore, best known for over one hundred LOST essays and his #1 Bestselling book, “LOST Humanity,” brings his inquisitive mind and entertaining prose to this compendium of thought-provoking essays on the best television series this season.
Learn more about “Direwolves and Dragons” at Moore’s website:  http://www.winterfellkeep.com
If you own a computer, ipad, mobile phone, or Blackberry, you can read the “Direwolves and Dragons” ebook using free software available from Amazon.  The Kindle ebook device is not required.
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Purchase “Direwolves and Dragons”

“Direwolves and Dragons” author Pearson Moore
Included in this first volume are essays available nowhere on the Internet.  These are the most insightful essays on the HBO series Game of Thrones, now available in a single volume.  Packed into these 86 pages (21,000 words) you will find Pearson Moore’s analysis of the symbolism of Game of Thrones and his piercing essay on the thesis of the series.  Anyone who wishes to truly understand this powerful new drama needs to read these intriguing, entertaining analyses by the internet’s most trusted interpreter of television drama.

• 1. Instinctive Honour:  The Decency of Eddard Stark The qualities that define a hero are not solace to his spirit, but hardship to his existence.  Virtue does not call us to something greater, for true virtue is not on display to our casual eye.  It is integral to the hero, no more welcome than a headache or a pain in the side, but necessary to his life, to his destiny.  Not something summoned, but something endured.  2000 words.
• 2. Five Paths of the Maester Game of Thrones does not only upset genre convention and viewer expectation.  The series takes us to levels of significance rarely attempted in television.  A Song of Ice and Fire is probably the most tightly and intricately plotted set of novels I have ever read… challenging us to apply every bit of analytical and literary skill in understanding characters, plot, themes, and thesis.  Game of Thrones does this, but in a silent, fearsome, breathtaking way.  3300 words.
• 3. A Mad Man Sees What He Sees:  GoT 1.01 Tonight we saw many instances of men who knew themselves to be above the fray, who treasured the virtues to which they had entrusted their offices, their high positions, their very lives, and their families’ lives, to such an extent that virtue itself became their means of discerning truth from madness, knowledge from fear.  A mad man does indeed see what he sees.  But in truth, he sees.  Can we say the same of Ned Stark?  Of King Robert?  Of Viserys Targaryen?  Perhaps without the eyes of mad men they have all become blind.  3100 words.
4. Meat and Blood:  GoT 1.02 Tonight’s episode was deliciously unsettling, precisely because Jaime and Tyrion are both wrong.  There is more holding us together than meat and blood, more inside us than dust and dreams.  We observe a simple game of thrones, but every player in this fantasy game carries in her heart a song more profound—;a song of ice and fire.  3100 words.
• 5. Symbolism and Allusion in the Direwolf Scene This scene formed the genesis of the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin.  Anyone who wishes to truly understand Game of Thrones needs to take a close look at the events of this scene, seek the meaning behind the elements, words, and actions, and gain an appreciation for the depth of thought that is required to attain fullest enjoyment of the program.  5200 words
• 6. The Grotesques:  The Thesis of Game of Thrones The thesis I extract from Game of Thrones may be quite different from the one you pull from scenes and episodes.  There are no right or wrong theses, but I believe some theses are more suited to our greater enjoyment of the series.  My intention in this essay is not to convey some maxim that must be accepted as inerrantly true fact… My single intention in writing this essay is to provide some ideas—;some things I noticed along the way, basically—;that might be useful in expanding our awareness of connections between ideas in Game of Thrones.  3900 words