While digging around the amazing DeviantArt site, we stumbled across the fact that a group of fan artists decided to create a 2010 A Song of Ice and Fire calendar, to share with fans of George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series, and with GRRM himself. After sending a copy of the calendar to GRRM, they’ve provided a glimpse at all the art for fans to take a look at.
You can find the original news post at DA from last month, with links to the included images and the artists who created them, here (particularly useful for seeing Mathia Arkoniel’s full images used in her compilation for August). A gallery with the full calendar design incorporated can be found here at guad’s gallery. A lot of love and talent poured into this, and it reminds us of just how much amazing fan art the series has and continues to generate.
BSC review has now posted their contest for a copy of the limited edition print from the Meisha Merlin edition of A Game of Thrones, painted by renowned artist Jeffrey Jones. Just one of 375 such limited editions prints, it’s a rare chance to get such a work of art for free.
Contest requirements are below:
Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin posts an update that touches on the fates of his beloved New York NFL teams, but also includes this tidbit regarding his work on the much-anticipated A Dance with Dragons:
“I meant to post yesterday on the weekend’s games, but got busy writing instead, and finished a Tyrion chapter that I’ve been struggling with for six months. Nibbling away at that knot. We’ll see if the finished chapter holds up to reread and polish today.”
The Game of Thrones card game, published by Fantasy Flight Games, is having its price lowered by almost half, while the card count per expansion is increased. This is part of a move that will cover all of FFG’s card games using the Living Card Game format. The article linked above provides in-depth details on these changes. An excerpt below explains the basics of the change:
DriveThruRPG, online retailer of e-text editions of a wide range of roleplaying game products, has a special $10 dollar sale on a number of titles. Among them? The A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game, an award-winning adaption of the setting by Green Ronin. It’s an excellent way to get to look at the game, which has a custom system specifically for the setting, some new pieces of art for the setting, and some basic write ups concerning the setting’s geography, history, and politics.
Over at Mission Unknown, contributor Paul Vaughn mentions the enjoyment he’s had in reading through GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire for the first time this years. Others contributing to the site’s listing of favorite SF/F/H of 2009 are award-winning artist John Picacio (currently working on the 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire calendar), author Sanford Allen, and more.
It’s the season for list making, and Brainz.org pitches in with a top 10 fantasy series of all time list where they rank George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as the greatest series of them all. This has naturally sparked a good deal of discussion on the web, such as at social bookmark site Digg (of course, some of the discussion is focued on the failure of Terry Goodkind’s “masterpiece” in not making the list ...)
Great a fan as I am, I admit I can’t put it ahead of The Lord of the Rings, but a high position in any such ranking is pretty much a given.
Jay Tomio of BSCreview gives a sneak peek at an upcoming contest, planned to be officially launched on January 3rd, for a limited edition Giclée print of Jeffrey Jones’ cover for Meisha Merlin’s Game of Thrones limited edition. We’ve previously reported the availability of this print.
Over on Twitter, Tomio stated that members of the A Song of Ice and Fire forum who enter the contest (and remind him of their membership) will get an extra entry counted in their name, which is a very generous gesture on his part (thanks, Jay!)
GRRM’s official site has been updated with a number of new book covers, and his “Not A Blog” has a reminder on his end-of-year sale on a number of his books that he has for sale. The original post concerning the sale is here.
Green Ronin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game is #4 on Suvudu’s Top 10 Tabletop Roleplaying Games list, the first in a series of “Top 10” lists they’ll be offering through the end of the year.
Following on our previous report, it’s been pointed out to us that Marc Simonetti’s Deviant Gallery also includes a fourth cover painting for A Feast for Crows. The artist seems to have gone to town with these, focusing on strong, evocative color choices. The image, and more information about the “A Song of Ice and Fire” publishing situation in France as well as Marc Simonetti, can be found below:
Thanks to our friends at La Garde de Nuit, we’ve learned that GRRM’s French publishers, J’ai Lu, are republishing the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series in integral paperback editions. The French standard up to now has been to split each book into three volumes, so these new integral editions should be welcome to French readers. Besides standardizing the novels into single volumes, they come equipped with brand-new cover art by artist Marc Simonetti, who has provided art for Fantasy Flight Games in the past.
Simonetti has shared the covers for the first two books, which will be published at the same time in January 2010, as well as the cover for the third at his Deviant Art page in a gallery with his other “A Song of Ice and Fire” pieces for Fantasy Flight Games. The integral edition of A Storm of Swords is set for a June release, and the integral edition of A Feast for Crows is set for a September release.
At Time.com’s new Techland group blog, Lev Grossman—the critic who dubbed George R.R. Martin “America’s Tolkien” and a recently published fantasy novelist in his own right—presents a list of his picks for the ten best SF/F novels of the decade. At #2? A Storm of Swords, of which Grossman writes:
“The third and (so far) best novel in Martin’s bloody marvelous Song of Ice and Fire epic, which depicts the collapse of Westeros into civil war following the death of the king. Martin delivers blow after stunning blow to his characters—the “Red Wedding” is one of the most devastating scenes in contemporary fantasy.”
Barnes & Noble has just released the Nook, a next-generation e-reader that’s causing quite a stir as it takes aim at Amazon’s Kindle. It’s interesting to note that two of the first reviews (right as the embargo lifted at midnight) at major technology websites have mentioned or even highlighted the availability of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones for the Nook in the course of their review. First up is this review from Endgaget, which prominently features a picture of the Nook with Daenerys’s third chapter from A Game of Thrones displayed; the video shows the cover image of the e-book in the Nook’s color LCD screen as well.
The next review, from Endgaget, has the reviewer mentioning that the e-text of A Game of Thrones was one of the two purchases he made with the device. On the whole, the device sounds interesting but as with all E-ink devices it has issues with refresh rates and UI limitations.
Thanks to etacar11, we’ve read this column at the Washington Post which name-checks A Game of Thrones in the course of advising parents not to worry if their teenagers are voracious readers of fantasy.As the article notes, the fact that these students are reading with any kind of gusto is a great thing, and attempting to force them to enjoy “serious literature” such as Moby Dick or Silas Marner at too young an an age is really, truly, likely to lead to “readicide”.