Westeros

Just in time for the holidays, the folks over at award-winning RPG publisher Green Ronin have announced a “Winter is Coming” sale featuring some great deals involving the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay rule book and campaign guide (with their amazing covers by Michael Komarck) and various ancillary books, such as the narrator’s kit.

Also, if you missed it, The Night’s Watch is on a special pre-order deal for its PDF, with $5 off—and that one features another nice cover. We haven’t seen much more than the preview ourselves, but it looks like another well put together supplement from Green Ronin.

Nice. Cyanide has released a brand new DLC for the Game of Thrones RPG (X-Box, PC). Not just featuring new items, weapons, and armor, this DLC actually adds two hours of content to the game in the form of a quest that goes “Beyond the Wall”.

It’s presently available for the X-Box and PCs (I’m guessing this doesn’t mean it’s available on Steam yet). A few screenshots can be found here.

Although the game may not have been an unabashed critical hit, one thing worth noting is that just about everyone who’s ever played it seems very impressed with the story and its ability to capture the tone and themes of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. From the look of these screenshots for the new DLC, it looks like they may be adding a deal more depth to Mors Westford’s already-complicated history. Should be worth checking out.

For our third and final preview image from the Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), we’ve placed over on our official Google+ page a glimpse of a slice of Essos never before seen, nor ever even hinted at in the novels:

I know enough about the new lands that Martin created in the course of making these expanded maps to say that the choice of this area for this image was very deliberate on my part. There’s a couple of neat things hinted at herein that expand the world-building for Essos quite a bit. But as to what that is… well, maybe The World of Ice and Fire will reveal more, or perhaps GRRM will in some interview or Q&A down the road. We shall see!

The Lands of Ice and Fire is due out at the end of the month in the US, and soon after in the UK.

UPDATE: Io9 also has a preview with a number of small slices. A bit more of Braavos, a glimpse at Asshai and the Shadow, and a snippet of the journey map that Linda and I helped with are among the items. And Tor.com has a few more.

Following up from last week’s first preview of The Lands of Ice and Fire, the collection of a dozen poster maps featuring all-new maps of Westeros and Essos (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), here is our second preview: a key slice of the Free City of Braavos!

I call this a “key” section because, if you look at it, it features a number of locations mentioned in the course of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, all of them based both on Martin’s own map of Braavos checked against the published texts for any changes or inconsistencies that Bantam, the artist Jonathan Roberts (FantasticMaps on Twitter, and yours truly could find. Looks nice, right?

Courtesy of Bantam, we have a very first glimpse of The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of poster maps that we know many fans are anticipating.

The posters are due October 30th in the US (Amazon US)  and November 8th in the UK (Amazon UK).

With art by freelance cartographer Jonathan Roberts, this map collection doesn’t just feature places we have all seen mapped before, though for our first (yes, first) preview we figured a familiar image was the best start. These poster maps also include the first, almost-complete series of maps featuring the eastern continent of Essos, maps of Braavos and King’s Landing, a map focused on the Wall, and more.

We’ve placed that new image as our Twitter cover image, for everyone to see when they wander by, but a higher resolution version can be found in our Gallery.

Keep an eye out next Tuesday when we release another snippet of the map, this one featuring something quite new…

World Fantasy Award, Chesley Award, Locus Award, and now (finally) Hugo Award-winning artist John Picacio has set up an online shop to sell prints of his work. There’s a nice range of prints, but of particular interest to fans of George R.R. Martin’s are his 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar artwork. Prints are limited to 100 for each image, and come signed by the artist.

There’s a mass of beautiful work to consider, so do give it a look.

Yesterday, we posted about a pin-up calendar for charity that GRRM and a number of other authors had provided their support for, and mentioned in passing the 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Order: US, UK) calendar by Marc Simonetti. This morning, we saw Sweden’s SF Bokhandeln tweet about the fact that Random House has put up a video to promote the calendar, produced by Simonetti. It’s a fine speed-painting video, depicting the painting of a scene from A Dance with Dragons that graces the cover of the calendar. Particularly interesting is the significant change to the composition part way through, and how smoothly Simonetti was able to work it in:

Funko, a well-known maker of pop culture toys such as bobbleheads and vinyl figures, has just sent out a press release revealing that they’ve licensed rights to produce a series of vinyl figures based on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

They are, to say the least, amazing (and amazingly cute). These are going to make amazing stocking stuffers come the holidays, I expect.

Looking around on-line, these vinyl figures are also likely to be very affordably priced, which is all the better. The only question is, why not make bobbleheads? Though I suppose a Ned Stark bobblehead would tend to have its head fall off…

To see the rest of the figures joining the Imp— Eddard Stark, Daenerys Targaryen (with dragon!), Khal Drogo, Sandor Clegane, and a White Walker (an interesting choice, that one)—just visit the gallery. And hopefully these will do well enough to merit more in the series! What characters would you like to see added to the collection, if a second series is released? Arya, surely. Jon seems pretty likely. Jaime, of course. I’d like to see Varys and Littlefinger, myself.

It’s that time again, folks: the World Science Fiction Convention is presenting the Hugo Awards, the oldest literary award for works of science fiction and fantasy. A number of the nominees may be of particular fans of George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, and HBO’s Game of Thrones:

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has published his schedule for Bubonicon 44 in Albuquerque, New Mexico between August 24th the 26th. As usual at these convention appearances, there’s a reading ... and this time, the reading’s a surprise: rather than read the extract from The Winds of Winter that Martin has read at his last few appearances, he’s treating everyone to the very first public reading of an extract from The World of Ice and Fire, the setting guide that Linda, George, and I have been working on, on and half, for… well, awhile. ;)

As GRRM’s hinted in earlier “Not a Blog” posts, he’s recently written a few historical pieces for the book, pieces that answer questions that some fans have had about the history of the Seven Kingdoms and the early reign of the Targaryen dynasty from the very start of the series back in 1996. If you’re in the ABQ area and don’t have plans for that Friday, you can get yourself a day pass for $15. And, hey, evenings? Parties are where you’ll find GRRM hanging out. His advice for those going to Worldcon holds for Bubonicon, and will give you a sense of how approachable GRRM can be at an SF convention.

Two weeks ago, we reported that George R.R. Martin was being honored with a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, shared with British fantasy author Alan Garner. And now we’ve learned that on the final ballot has been released, and Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, fifth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, is nominated in the Best Novel category!

Having spotted this already on the shelves in our local SF/F speciality bookstore, I decided to check what the word is on Bantam’s 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), with art from Marc Simonetti.

It looks like July 10 is the official release date, though it may well be that some booksellers have already put it on the shelves (as our local shop did).

We’ve only seen a few preview images up to now, so getting a chance to at last look through the whole calendar was quite a pleasure. Particularly noteworthy was a fantastic image of Daenerys in the House of the Undying and a vivid landscape featuring the Rhoyne. Well worth sticking on your wall next year, but make sure to order one sooner rather than later—these tend to sell out their print runs within a couple of months, and after that finding them at reasonable prices can be difficult at times!

Over at “Not a Blog”, George has posted a lengthy update on various projects, from those that are done (The Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection [Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK]) to those in-progress (such as The Winds of Winter, Dangerous Women and the fourth Dunk & Egg novella, the latest Wild Cards novel Lowball, and Old Mars), and on to those just in the planning stages (Old Venus).

One in particular might be of special interest to followers of Westeros.org, since it’s The World of Ice and Fire, the world book that we’re are co-authoring with George. Here’s what George has to say:

Speaking of that last stuff… yeah, there’s some really neat details in there, and perhaps a new mystery or two for fans to ponder. Some fans have long wondered just how Aegon’s Conquest was carried out, how the Vale of Arryn fell under their control, the status of Dorne in that time, even the order in which the Targaryens conquered each region… well, they’ll be wondering no more, on those topics, and quite a few others!

The very popular SF/F web video series, Sword and Laser, will have a kind of “A Song of Ice and Fire” double-header this Friday. They’ll be talking to Professor Henry O. Jacoby, editor of Game of Thrones and Philosophy (Order:  US Paperback, US Kindle, UK) . And then, of course, they’ll also be speaking with George R.R. Martin about the Game of Thrones, “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and more.

You can find the episode some time this Friday, posted at the official Sword and Laser site, as well as Sword and Laser‘s page at Geek and Sundry or the Sword and Laser Youtube Channel. Note that presently they feature an interview and extended interview with James S.A. Corey—aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who may be better known to fans as George R.R. Martin’s assistant)—regarding his/their book, Leviathan Wakes.

In his introduction to A Feast of Ice and Fire (Order Now: US, US Kindle, Amazon UK), George R.R. Martin writes that he has been accused of writing “food porn” with his lengthy, detailed descriptions of what his characters eat. Fortunately, it is this very habit of his that inspired the mouthwatering exploration of the food of A Song of Ice and Fire that this book represents.

The two women behind it all, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, started their foray into the food of Westeros—and Essos!—by way of a blog, Inn at the Crossroads, around the time of the first season of Game of Thrones. Their attempts to recreate favourite dishes from the books eventually caught the attention of George R.R. Martin and this led to the book that now has been released, just in time for your Game of Thrones season finale parties.