Westeros

Linda and I have cooked up our latest article for Tor.com, this one dealing with masterminds—characters that fans generally love to hate, or in some cases fawn over and admire! It’s definitely spoiler material, so avoid it if you’ve not read the books. There’s also a few notes comparing the “masterminds” to their representation in HBO’s Game of Thrones, because the show has taken a different tack with some of them, at least in regards to certain aspects of their scheming.

We’ve been invited by the Daily Beast to take part in a post-Finale roundtable! Jace Lacob, Maureen Ryan, Myles McNutt, Phil of Winter is Coming, and (I’m told) others will take part in the chat starting at 11AM PDT / 2 PM EDT on Monday June 20.

We’re embedding the chat below, and will be promoting this post on occasion so that you don’t forget—should be fun!

Our recorded discussion with Tom & Daniel of MTV Geek is now available! In it, we discuss episode 9’s scoring, the expansiveness of the show versus the novels (with some hints about the next season’s challenges in that area), the introduction of Shae and Tyrion’s revelation of his tragic marriage, and more.

Enjoy!

The sneak peeks continue, as artist John Picacio adds a new glimpse at the forthcoming 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, joining his earlier Bran and Sandor Clegane glimpses. This time, we get an awesome look at Arya Stark. As with all the previous calendar images, these are quite cropped, so it’ll be interesting to see the full-sized images.

John (and GRRM, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and probably a lot of other interesting people connected to the TV show and novels) will be present at San Diego Comic Con, so if you’re out there, keep an eye out.

The big delay in our episode 8 write-up was due to a lot of things, and those things made covering the post-episode coverage quite difficult. Then the massive flood of visitors post-episode 9 left us scrambling to keep the servers (yes, servers, plural) from melting down, with traffic spiking as high as 200% of normal—crazy! So, this list of links to what some of the top-flight critics have to say on the web is a bit belated… but better late than never, we say.

Originally, Ramin Djawadi’s soundtrack for Game of Thrones was scheduled to be released today, only to be pushed back to the 28th. We’re not sure of the whys or wherefors….

.... but HBO has gone ahead and given the soundtrack an early release on iTunes! Hear previews of all 29 tracks, which can be purchased at $0.99 apiece, or $9.99 for the whole collection. The iTunes digital album download appears to include a special “digital booklet” as an iTunes exclusive. Will be interesting to see if it includes never-before-seen stills.

Episode 9, Baelor, just had its ratings in for both the U.S. and U.K. In the U.S. the show held steady at 2.7 million viewers with only a small drop for the additional screening to a total of 3.4 million. This, despite the most-viewed NBA final in 16 years! That sounds good to us, and we’ll take it. It’ll be very interesting to what sort of draw next week’s season finale will have.

In the U.K., the picture is a little less rosy, but we’ve found that the U.K. viewership figures show remarkable amounts of variability: 507,000 viewers, down from 523,000 last week. The numbers for Episode 7’s total viewing are also a bit down on the previous episode, episode 6, with a total of 1.556 million viewers. Thanks to WyvernWood for those figures!

Grok! Studio, an entertainment company founded by Vince Gerardis, a co-producer on Game of Thrones and representative of various entertainment rights connected to a number of SF/F authors, is teasing that HBO and GRRM will be making an announcement connected to games at San Diego Comic Con. Gerardis was partner to the late Ralph Vicinanza of the Created By agency, and it looks like Grok! has inherited all or most of the client base from that company.

As we reported back in March 2010, HBO applied for a broad trademark category that did include games, though we speculated that these were for Flash-based games such as the ones HBO did eventually produce as part of the Maester’s Path and the Iron Throne marketing efforts. But… could HBO’s rights include video and/or PC games based on Game of Thrones (as distinct from those based on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, such as A Game of Thrones: Genesis and Cyanide‘s as-yet-untitled RPG)? We’ll have to wait and see what news comes down the pipe next month.

We should have the rest of our usual material on this week’s episode tomorrow, but Linda and I have—with a bit of help and more sharing of the work flow—stayed up way, way too long to squeeze out a full recap and book-to-screen breakdown comparing the “Baelor” to the corresponding chapters in the novel. Any spelling/grammar errors, we blame on the late hour and short timeline!

Our analysis/review part will have to wait, but until then, enjoy the guide!

On the heels of our “The Pointy End” episode guide being complete, we also have Pearson Moore’s essay on the episode, “Mighter Than the Sword: The Culture of Duty and Honour in Game of Thrones 1.08”. This is probably my favorite essay from Pearson yet, touching on a thematic topic of great interest to me ... and referencing one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite films, no less! A man of good and discerning taste, is Pearson.

You can read more of his articles at our Features page, where he is one of our contributors. At his own site, Winterfell Keep, you’ll find additional, thought-provoking essays and discussions related to the episodes and characters. He has also released the second volume of his Dragons & Direwolves series collecting his articles, including some exclusive content, which you can now purchase at Amazon.

HBO has released a few more items to the HBO Store, including some rather neat family tree shirts (for the Starks, Baratheons, and Targaryens—when’s the Lannister shirt coming, I wonder?), fine examples of good design work from the graphics team over there. And, of course, they’ve finally placed the original soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi (more details here), which is due to start shipping on June 28th. Not very long at all!

Our web storefront carries all the items, including the soundtrack (as well as a link to the pre-order page for it at Amazon.com, if one prefers). It’s going to be interesting to listen to Djawadi’s music out of the show, and perhaps see if the music he wrote was minimal or if the discreet usage of it was a choice by the producers.

Yes, very delayed, we know! Unfortunately, our brilliant plan to get our write-up out as quickly as possible proved… not so brilliant, and various delays that followed just kept pushing it back. But, after much effort, it’s all done: recap, analysis, book-to-screen breakdown, and even the audio discussion with our friends at MTV Geek (only Tom, Daniel, and I, as Linda wasn’t available at the time).

No worries, we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen with this next episode, “Baelor”... Speaking of which, below you’ll find the preview for the episode.

The Monte-Carlo Television Festival has been going on, and a number of actors from Game of Thrones were present: Sean Bean (Eddard Stark), Mark Addy (King Robert Baratheon), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen). There’s a great picture of the actors together here, posted by Roxanne Centola.

Naturally, there were interviews with the actors, and a couple of video interviews have surfaced on the web with Coster-Waldau and Clarke. Coster-Waldau (whom we’ve interviewed) has a very amusing remark regarding Hodor in “The Pointy End (see our interview with actor Kristian Nairn—where he hinted at that scene—here) and also appears to give first confirmation of the fact that he’s scheduled to appear at San Diego Comic Con as part of HBO’s promotion of the show. As to Clarke? She gets asked about the nude scenes and sex scenes, and has a surprising answer as to what was the most difficult of those scenes to film.

Via the forum, it’s been pointed out that there’s now an audio excerpt from A Dance with Dragons (Preorder: US, UK, Audio US, Audio UK) available at Random House’s site.

Due July 12th, we know from GRRM that the great Roy Dotrice—the popular reader of the first three books, the first of which he won a Guinness Record for the total number of distinct characters he voiced—is back for this book. In the excerpt (available after clicking the Audiobook button), Dotrice reads from a “new” POV, although it’s not all that it may seem… Spoilers below!

The latest Wild Cards title, Fort Freak, is due on June 21st from Tor and the Wild Cards Trust ... and it looks like Tor has decided to promote it by releasing a full story: “The Rook”, by Melinda Snodgrass, one of the original founders of the Wild Cards universe!

It’s a fun read, really reminding us of some of the early novels in the feel and the focus on New York City as the location. The eponymous “Fort Freak” is the nickname for the 5th Police Precinct which is responsible for Jokertown, and which is the central setting of the novel.

Go ahead and check it out!