Westeros

Below is the official press release announcing the availability of the A Song of Ice and Fire calendar, but just to get you extra excited, here’s some art! Two of the pieces will be familiar to fans who purchased the limited edition prints from Dabel Brothers productions, but you can glimpse a couple entirely new pieces among the dozen total. Linda and I have had the good luck to see most of the art, and it’s everything you could have hoped for from Michael Komarck. These look to be some of the definitive pieces of A Song of Ice and Fire art.

Oh, and if you want to pre-order the limited edition variants from DB Pro? Go here.

An attendee of Gencon has let slip and provided a few details concerning a new board game, A Song of Ice and Fire: The Adventure Game, secretly being developed by Fantasy Flight Games. The system in use is apparently similar to the already-published World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game. FFG has also published the A Game of Thrones Living Card Game and the A Game of Thrones strategic board game, as well as The Art of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

GRRM will be making an additional appearance while in Portugal, on the 3rd. Full details can be found (in Portuguese) at FNAC’s here.

From Subterranean Press’s latest update, it seems that the limited edition of A Feast for Crows remains in a holding pattern. Everything is ready for printing, except the color art by Tom Canty. Problems such as a hard drive crash have significantly delayed the progress of the work, and Subterranean extends their apologies to those who are waiting for the book. In brighter news, March Fishman has already begun work on his illustrations for the limited edition of A Dance with Dragons.

Although the speculated date for release of A Dance with Dragons is now proven incorrect in this article from Publisher’s Weekly, Bantam’s confidence in the series is made plain by their planning an initial print run of 350,000 copies, which is an overall increase compared to A Feast for Crows.

Via “Not a Blog, George R. R. Martin reports that he’s landed safely in Europe, but was unable to complete A Dance with Dragons before taking his trip. Beginning July 1st, he will make a series of appearances in the Iberian peninsula, beginning with three dates in Lisbon before travelling across Spain. More details about specific events may be found in the July event calendar.

GRRM’s official site has been updated with a new sample chapter, Tyrion’s first chapter in A Dance with Dragons. This chapter has been previously posted.

Thanks to a board member, we’ve been pointed to this blog post by Damien G. Walter of the Guardian recommending various works of fantasy (and a bit of science fiction sneaking in) to read over the summer. A Song of Ice and Fire gets a paragraph to itself, in the course of which Westeros.org is linked.

GRRM’s official site has been updated with a new “Not a Blog” post concerning progress on A Dance with Dragons. He has been working steadily on it, but it has not been progressing as quickly as he hoped. He does note he’s finished two chapters, one of which features a character previously not associated with the book. He’s also making a lot of forward progress on the Dany chapters.

Recently, David Benioff was the subject of a Q & A with New York magazine. At the end, when asked what he’s working on, he again states he’s working on the A Song of Ice and Fire series for HBO, which he describes as “The Sopranos in Middle-Earth” (although with the caveat that that’s a “crappy” explanation). He also expresses his love of fantasy.

The latest Green Ronin podcast discusses both the A Song of Ice and Fire Role Playing Game and the Wild Cards Campaign Sourcebook, starting at the 22 minute mark. Among other things mentioned are the forthcoming Quick Start Rules for the Ice and Fire game, which will be made available for Free RPG Day, the great interest the game drew from retailers at the GAMA Trade Show, and George’s involvement in approving art that fits his vision of the series.

A small tidbit of news concerning the proposed HBO series adapting A Song of Ice and Fire comes from this interview with David Benioff at Words to Mouth. At the very end, Benioff is asked by the interviewer what’s coming up next for him. He notes a script of his being filmed, the forthcoming Wolverine, and then mentions that he’s, “the showrunner for an HBO series adapting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.” While this doesn’t mean anything new, as such, it certainly shows that the proposed series is alive and well, in line with GRRM’s most recent remarks and contrary to some pernicious rumors coming from certain corners.

Fans interested in the spectacular artwork for the Japanese editions of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (examples of which may be found in George R. R. Martin’s cover art gallery) may be interested to know that The Art Book of Yasushi Suzuki will include at least some of his covers, as well as nearly a hundred other pieces of art he has created in his career.