There’s a fresh review and interview of the George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois edited anthology, Warriors (US, UK), at the Suvudu publisher site. The anthology, due March 16th, contains the third in Martin’s “Dunk and Egg” novellas set about 90 years before the events of the series. Shawn Speakman rates the novella as the best of the three, citing the story arcs for the characters and the tensions as they face their most dangerous challenge yet.
In the follow-up interview, Marti and Dozois discuss the origins of the anthology series, their efforts to include the late, great mystery writer Tony Hillerman, and GRRM’s hope to write the next Dunk & Egg novella once A Dance with Dragons is completed.
In an update we’ll get into more soon (Suvudu has delayed the opening of the “Cage Match” event), GRRM does drop a piece of information that appears to be about A Dance with Dragons: “There are fifteen others matches you can weigh in on too. Single elimination. If I was a betting man, I’d put my sheckles on Cthulhu myself, but maybe that’s just because I’ve been writing all those ironborn scenes.”
A brief update, in the course of sharing his happiness at the news of HBO picking up A Game of Thrones: GRRM notes that he’s now at 1311 completed manuscript pages, 50-60 pages up from his last page count, but he’s not done yet. For those wondering, 1311 MS would equal roughly 834 pages, according to the rule of thumb Martin has provided in the past.
Over at the Fantasy Hot List, there’s a contest to win one of three copies of George R.R. Martin’s and Gardner Dozois’s Warriors (US, UK) anthology. Among the many stories to be found within? “The Mystery Knight”, the third Dunk and Egg novella set in the Seven Kingdoms.
At “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin indicates that the “Meereenese Knot” may be “fraying”, suggesting he’s made some forward progress in finally resolving one of the central structural problems that have delayed A Dance with Dragons. He’s rather cautious about it, however, which implies that he doesn’t yet know for sure that this will move things forward once he continues pursuing this.
It seems that Fantasy Flight Games‘s new Battles of Westeros board game is a greater departure from the BattleLore system then some suspected, according to this report on the Heroscapers forum.
Over at the Hopeless Gamer, they’ve released some more package images, including depictions of the hero figures for the Lannister and Stark sides.
Fantasy Flight Games has unveiled a brand new A Song of Ice and Fire board game yesterday at the opening of the grand opening of their new event center. The game, titled Battles of Westeros, is a BattleLore-system based tactical war game using hexagonal grids, plastic miniature army units (these would be unpainted, as far as I know; besides generic units, it will likely have ‘hero’ units representing the likes of Eddard, Catelyn, Edmure, and more), and a card system for orders and special tactics.
The BattleLore system and its publishing history is summarized at Wikipedia. At BoardGameGeek’s entry, my eye was caught by the fact that there are two different ways of playing the game on-line using either Vassal (as seen here) or ZunTzu, which should be a significant boon once players virtualize any new rules, cards, and units for these systems.
The initial news flash came by way of The Hopeless Gamer, who also provided a photo of the contents list on the back of the box. One notable detail that gamers have pointed out: the explicit reference to this being the “Core Set” on the front cover, showing FFG has long-term expansion plans for this game system. In fact, posts at BoardGameGeek note that this appears to focus on House Stark versus House Lannister, certainly leaving room for expansions which introduce the rest of the great houses of the Seven Kingdoms.
Finally, an additional note: it seems that some time in November, FFG will host a “Days of Ice and Fire” event at their Event Center in Roseville, Minessota, in which George R.R. Martin will be a guest. More details when we have them.
Green Ronin has announced a pre-order special for their A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay Campaign Guide, the table of contents of which have been previewed recently. Those who pre-order the hardcover guide via the Green Ronin store will automatically get a free PDF document of the guide. The PDF seems to be available for direct order as well, for $20.
According to reports on Green Ronin’s own forums, the Campaign Guide does not seem to contain any notable new information on the setting, but it does contain significant amounts of statted characters from the novels.
George R.R. Martin provides a brief update at “Not a Blog”, sharing this views on the new The Wolfman film (he gives it a C) and then mentions that a new producer has come on board Mike the Pike Production’s Skin Trade adaption as reported in this press release.
As to A Dance with Dragons, Meereen still presents problems despite the progress GRRM has been making: “Can I just drop a hydrogen bomb on the damn place?” It seems the Meereenese Knot remains a concern.
It’s been around for awhile, but we just had to share these hilarious webpage mockups for various houses, organizations, and individuals in the A Song of Ice and Fire series:
Thanks to Daena the Defiant at the forum for pointing out guad’s clever, amusing creations.
George R.R. Martin’s recent series of small updates concerning progress on A Dance with Dragons has caught the eye of the Guardian’s book blog, discussing the level of anticipation there is for the fifth novel in the bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire series. The lead image is a spoof political advertisment created by regular forum contributor and moderator, Adam Whitehead of The Wertzone.
George R.R. Martin has made an enlightening A Dance with Dragons update while stating he now has left behind the Isle of Cedars (in Slaver’s Bay near Meereen) and that the manuscript is at 1261 pages.
That alone is notable: that’s up 56 MS from last week, leading one to assume that at least some of the chapters he completed he already had in rough or partial form. However, GRRM goes on to discuss the matter of timelines and how difficult it would be to fit A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons in a single book. Besides that, he reveals that he caught up to the timeline of A Feast for Crows at 800 MS in Dance, and everything since then has been post-Feast which is allowing him to wrap some of the cliffhangers from the previous book and continue the story further. He admits its a rather awkward structure, and that Dance directly paralleling Feast would be more elegant, but so far it’s the direction he’s taking the novel.
George R.R. Martin shares the news that he’s finished another chapter in a productive day of work. The only downside? It’ll require writing some minor parts of a chapter he finished last week, but he supposes he can get that done today.
At least, the return of the first Tyrion chapter in the official A Dance with Dragons samples. Read only if you want to be spoiled, as it’s the complete first chapter and answers the question of just where Tyrion goes after the end of A Storm of Swords.
George R.R. Martin shares links to several excerpts from the forthcoming Warriors anthology. The three excerpts come from Diana Gabaldon‘s Outlander-set story, Cecelia Holland‘s “The King of Norway”, and GRRM’s own “The Mystery Knight”, the third in the Dunk & Egg sequence of “A Song of Ice and Fire” prequel novellas.