Westeros

Almost three weeks after the premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones, and the effect on sales of George R.R. Martin’s backlist is palpable. The New York Times Bestseller list features the series all over it:

• Paperback Mass-market Fiction: A Game of Thrones #3,  A Clash of Kings #13,  A Storm of Swords #19,  A Feast for Crows #26.
• Paperback Trade Fiction: A Game of Thrones #8.
• E-book Fiction: A Game of Thrones #7, A Clash of Kings #27.
• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction: A Game of Thrones #5, A Clash of Kings #26.

On Amazon.com, the series dominates 8 of 20 spots in the SF/F Bestseller list, with the four-book set also holding the #8 on the overall bestselling books list. And on the other side of the Pond, Amazon.co.uk features the series on its overall list, with A Game of Thrones currently holding the #2 spot, and A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords also in the Top 20.

Speaking of the U.K., A Dance with Dragons is now available for Kindle pre-ordering. We’re also regularly asked about digital downloads of the audio book, but we’re afraid there’s no information on that as of yet. You can, however, order the audio CDs from Amazon.co.uk, which are imports from the U.S.

Just two days away from Episode 3, titled “Lord Snow”, and HBO has set out some excerpts from the epsiode to whet the appetite. First up is Jon Snow training at Castle Black with his future sworn brothers, followed by an excellent scene between Jaime and Eddard that has certain resonances for events at the end of Robert’s Rebellion. Enjoy!

Pearson Moore, who’s contributed a number of featured articles in our Features section, has published a book “Direwolves and Dragons”, collecting his current essays related to Game of Thrones, plus some additional articles published exclusively in the book.

See below for more details, including a brief description for each essay included in the e-book. With his unique insight and his experience in examining television narrative (gained through his exceptional series of posts concerning Lost as well as Mad Men), this is sure to contain some thought-provoking material for fans of the novels and/or the hit HBO series.

As we’ve previoiusly reported, HBO is making great strides in expanding the coverage of HBO GO—its online, subscriber-only streaming service—among cable providers, and it’s recently been announced that Suddenlink and (most recently) Comcast Xfinity now also offer the HBO GO service. This means that fans of Game of Thrones and many other shows (HBO’s placed over 1400 titles on the service so far) will be able to stream the show from their computers.

Because they weren’t happy with the quality of that first video, Del Rey Spectra took it down ... and put up a brand new one! It features more snippets of text, which we’ve placed below. To see fans speculating on these, visit the spoiler-filled A Dance with Dragons section of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” Forum, and this particular thread.

See blow for a run down of the new lines.

NOTE: This video has now been removed. However, discussion of the spoilers contained in it can be found here. A second video has been posted, see our next post.

Anne Groell, editor of A Dance with Dragons (US, UK), has shared a video where she shows off the massive, massive ADwD manuscript—all 1547 pages of it. And, best of all, she reads tiny little snippets from it at random, giving a taste of what’s to come. See below for some spoilers!

HBO has been keeping busy with the HBO Store, adding new shirts, jewelry, steins, and more in the last month. We’ve compiled most of these at our store page (which benefits the continued maintenance and operation of Westeros.org), but two new items have cropped up that might be interest. First, there’s an awesome new shirt featuring Needle and the text, “Stick Them With the Pointy End” (that’s going to be popular!), and a poster map featuring the Seven Kingdoms and a bit of the coastline of Essos.

Have at them!

Varese Sarabande, leading publisher of soundtracks, has announced that the Game of Thrones soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi is on its way! Due June 14th, there’s no more information about just how many tracks there’ll be, but we can be sure that the title theme (and perhaps one or two variations) are going to be a part of it.

With the big announcement today of the completion of A Dance with Dragons (preorder: US, UK), it might be easy to forget that just last week GRRM was named on the Time 100 list. Last night, Parris and GRRM attended the gala event for those honored on the list, and NY Magazine’s Vulture has an exclusive conversation with GRRM from the gala.

Featured in it? The fact that he and Carlton Cuse (of Lost) fame had a chat about George’s remarks concerning the show’s finale which started a “feud” with Damon Lindelof. Sounds like it went quite well. Also notable is the fact that Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation) is a fan of Game of Thrones, and in particular of Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen. To quote the article:

So suggests George R.R. Martin’s latest “Not a Blog” post! Titled, “twas beauty..” and then followed by a picture of a dead King Kong, it’s clear “Kong”—A Dance with Dragons (US, UK)—is down for the count!

UPDATED: And just to hammer the point home, series editor Anne Groell confirms it also.

A Dance with Dragons is due to hit bookshelves in North America and the United Kingdom on July 12.

Sky Atlantic’s Thronecast has been a terrific approach by the broadcaster to making the show accessible to fans, especially viewers who’ve never read the novels before. Professional produced, each episode (which goes up each Monday after the show airs in the U.K.) offers pointers, brief guides, and more. And, yeah, it includes Linda and I doing brief segments (Linda really is a lot better at this sort of thing than I am!).

On top of all that, Sky’s also releasing interviews with the cast each week. First up was Mark Addy, and now Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who particularly impresses us with his handle on the character. And, to gild the lily a bit more, Thronecast is also available via iTunes, and there they’ve released the BAFTA Screening Q&A with members of the cast and crew: Sean Bean, Harry Lloyd, Mark Addy, and production designer Gemma Jackson.

Now, I’ll wait for this iTunes download to crawl along so I can check it out…

Linda and I have again joined with Tom and Daniel of MTV Geek to discuss last Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Kingsroad”. We spend some time discussing the difficulties in conveying the passage of time in the story, the use of the direwolves, and mention some of the things we’re most looking forward to in the next episode.

You can find it in our “The Kingsroad” episode guide in MP3 downloadable and streaming format,

An article in the U.K. film and television industry trade website, Broadcast Now, notes that Northern Irish companies are gearing up for the return of Game of Thrones to production. While a representative of HBO has indicated that it’s premature to say that any locations have been set in stone, I think we can say that odds are extremely good for Northern Ireland again being the headquarters for the production.

And of note? A “late July” start has been stated by the production. This fits with what we’ve heard elsewhere. Some may find it a bit surprising that they’ll start that long after the greenlight, especially with the difficulties this past autumn and winter caused for them due to weather, but it seems like the production is very comfortable with this date.

Late July causes another question, though. That’s when San Diego Comic Con takes place. Is HBO skipping out on it? We find that incredibly unlikely, and just as unlikely is their giving the show a presence there but not having key cast members on hand for the inevitable, massive panel. So we’re going to have to suppose that “late July” could mean some time after July 24th (the final day of the convention).

The L.A. Weekly’s “Squid Ink” page, which focuses on “Food in Literature”, discusses the George R.R. Martin unofficial fan club, the Brotherhood without Banners, in relation to the traditional “quest” GRRM assigns fans at various conventions around the world. A leading light of the fandom, David McCaman (who really was the driving force behind the creation of the group) explains the origins of the quests, and gives some examples of past events.

But why is it on “Squid Ink”? Because the quests have inevitably involved tracking down some particular item of food, usually a local delicacy. Those who succeed in the quest—whether it was collecting burnt ends in Kansas City, tasting lamprey pie in Toronto, or finding haggis in Glasgow—were “knighted” by GRRM into a special order. It’s great fun. To add a bit of local color, David notes that at the Worldcon in Anaheim scores of fans participated in getting a hold of hot dogs from Pink’s Hot Dogs. The writer, Margy Rochlin, noted that that was a 70 mile round trip. Now I know why Linda and I didn’t tag along with anyone on that particular quest…

The next change to get knighted by GRRM? Renovation, the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Reno, Nevada. Having attended two Worldcons, if you’ve any interest in genre literature, or want a great opportunity to meet George and fellow fans, Renovation is going to be a great opportunity. And, you know, the knighthood ain’t bad!

To learn more about the Brotherhood without Banners, feel free to visit the forum at westeros.org

Although the show already landed the greenlight for a second season, some have been wondering how the ratings would go in the second week. James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly provides the answer: steady. Despite it being an Easter Sunday, the show seems to have held onto the premiere viewership of 2.2 million people, and added an additional 723,000 viewers when it was repeated at 11PM.

Hibberd also notes that the first episode, including all repeats through the week, On Demand viewings, and other such outlets, has reached 6.8 million viewers so far.

It’s hard to gauge whether “holding steady” under the circumstances is a good, bad, or rather neutral sign. At a guess, the viewership across the whole of this week will be a more interesting indicator of what the show’s early impact will be, but even then it’ll be too early to tell if it’ll have legs and start growing an audience.

According to Valyrian Steel, the supply of the very limited “Damascus” steel version of Longclaw is running low, with only ten left in stock. For some, these are the only “real” examples of Longclaw, using pattern-welding (also known as “damascus”) to create the pattern, rather than paint as with the regular edition of the sword. This is the officially authorized version of the weapon, designed with George R.R. Martin’s direct guidance and approval; the HBO weapons were designed by the production company without GRRM’s direct input, and currently HBO does not have the rights to licensing out replicas of those.

If you’re interested in learning more or ordering, go here.

Thanks to our content partnership with MTV Geek, we’ve a new feature article to share for those interested in the series. Dr. Catherine Smith-Akel, a scholar of Medieval studies, approaches her first read of A Game of Thrones from a historical perspective, teasing out parallels between history (English history, primarily, in this first piece) and the story. It’s a good read if you’ve an interest in the historical antecedents to some of the characters and places.

Read Part I of Smith-Akel’s A Historical Dissection of A Game Of Thrones.

Besides our episode guide, with our commentary and recap, there were quite a few notable recaps, reviews, and reactions released immediately following the airing of “The Kingsroad”. Plus, HBO’s released a preview of the next episode. See below for some of the highlights!

Enjoyed that episode, didn’t you? With maybe a quibble or two?

See our detailed recap and analysis, our list of notable changes and added scenes, and a few sample images depicting scenes and moments from the episode! And after that, make sure to visit our forum to discuss it with fellow fans.

We’ve posted a new item in our Game of Thrones Features section, an interview with the weapon master for the production, Tommy Dunne. With over fifteen years of experience, he has worked on some very high-profile projects, both on Hollywood film projects and for HBO. Now leading the Armory department for Game of Thrones, Mr. Dunne fills us in on some of his background, some of the decisions made for the weapon and designs, and what’s become of King Robert’s warhammer.

Read the interview!

Due to some hard drive issues, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum was down for a bit. Our wonderful host has done some things to try and stabilize it to (hopefully) handle the post-Game of Thrones crush of traffic, but some time next week the system will have to go down to have the disk replaced and an image restored. We don’t have a day or date as of yet, but bear that in mind if it goes down at some point at next week. And bear in mind that if it goes down this weekend, it’s probably that disk acting up.

There’s been a bit more movement on the RPG and strategy game fronts, thanks to Focus Home Interactive and Cyanide Studio. First, we were remiss not to note that Game Banshee has an interview with one of the designers of the roleplaying game, which features a couple of new images, including a nicely moody bit of concept art which we really hope they translate into the game proper.

On top of that, Focus and Cyanide have released a few new screen shots of the game, along with a press release providing just a bit more information about the game’s concept:

A number of little things to post about, so here they go in easily digestible chunks. Make sure to watch the clips at the bottom, as they’re good fun.

• HBO has revealed that their subscriber streaming service HBO GO has some exclusive (and fascinating) content attached to each episode. This exclusive content includes detailed maps, pop-up “author commentaries” with remarks from GRRM, 360-degree looks at locations and even objects (some amazingly high-resolution-seeming shots of Robert’s crown, Ice, and Lyanna’s effigy), family trees, and more.
• For Swedes, it’s worth noting that Cinema magazine has a contest to secure tickets for the May 3rd screening of the first two episodes in a theater in Stockholm.
• Similarly, HBO has a sweepstakes you should really check out (U.S. residents only). A chance to win a clutch of dragon eggs? Awesome. It should be noted that Sky Atlantic has a similar contest (U.K./Ireland only).
• A couple of clips for this Sunday’s episode have been released, featuring Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister in an interesting (and non-book) scene, as well as a scene from the books featuring Daenerys and her handmaidens. You can find them below. Can you spot Mikken in the first one?

AOL TV in the UK has a few exclusive interviews with members of the cast of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which airs in the UK exclusively on Sky Atlantic. The cast members in the following videos include Sean Bean, Jason Momoa, Mark Addy, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau:

A report has just gone out revealing HBO’s category placements for Game of Thrones (as well as HBO’s other big show, Boardwalk Empire). The voting members have apparently received an “impressive screener package”, and HBO has noted the following category placements for the show:

TIME magazine has honored George R.R. Martin on it’s Top 100 most influential people list for this year, and with a write-up by none other than humorist (and fan!) John Hodgman. At the end, Hodgman writes:

Tyrion Lannister is the best character in fiction since Stringer Bell and that if you have not read these books, you should be ashamed of yourself.

A ringing endorsement, both from, Hodgman and TIME!

In the wake of the first episode, we have seen several people take issue with—on Twitter as well as on various forums—the show’s portrayal of certain issues relating to race and gender. There has also been some lively discussion on our own forum, such as here and here. Please note that both topics are ones that allow spoilers from the books to be posted.

A commentary of our own can be found in our newest article, a brief consideration of the criticism directed towards the show and the books on these matters.

All the great press around the show has started to overshadow some of the interviews, but we thought that these two interviews with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) were worth noting. First, this “tease” from TV.com which includes his musing question, “The one thing I don’t understand is that sex [in this show] has to be from behind. Why is that?” Don’t worry, Nikolaj, sometimes the ladies are on top!

And then we have Den of Geek with an excellent interview. Note, though, that at one point Coster-Waldau speculates about what his character might be up to in the fifth volume of the series. He is, I reiterate, speculating, and simply emphasizing something about the way GRRM writes his characters. It is not a spoiler!

James Hibberd on EW had a chat about the renewal with HBO executives Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler, in which they discuss their happiness with the viewership. They note that its numbers are stronger than True Blood‘s were in its first season, and they predict it’s a “slow build” show that will win over more viewers as more episodes air and they decide that it’s worth watching even if they don’t consider themselves a fan of the genre.

On the other hand, they note that Benioff and Weiss are largely writing this on their own, without help of staff (except the odd free-lanced episode), and they think 10 episodes would be best to keep quality high. Which is, one supposes, an imminently reasonable reason to stick to 10 episodes. But the next season, if we are so lucky (*knock on wood*)? This may be why Benioff and Weiss have suggested that they wouldn’t mind splitting the third book into two seasons.

Via Variety (and, actually, a recent interview or two), George R.R. Martin has revealed what section of the second series he’ll be writing. A bit of spoiler protection is in order…

Apologies for the down time ... but surely it mitigates a bit to know…

... that Game of Thrones has been renewed! GRRM has posted the press release, which we’ll copy below. He is, obviously, very excited! A minimum of ten new episodes seems sure, but George expresses his hopes (and ours, we may add) that HBO will order up 12 episodes. Fingers crossed!

This comes after news that while the initial airing had a modest number of viewers—2.2 million as opposed to Boardwalk Empire‘s sensational 4.8m—it had much more competition in terms of the NBA playoffs and baseball. When the two repeats afterward are added to the mix, total viewership on Sunday reached 4.2 million. No numbers are yet available on the Monday airings across six HBO channels, or DVR figures and the like, but we expect we’ll hear more about those soon.

Here’s the release below:

Explosions of tweeting, post-episode recaps, and more followed yesterday’s premiere of Game of Thrones. We’ve contributed a bit to that, with a recap and review for Suvudu, and a audio podcast with Tom and Daniel of MTV Geek in which we discuss the show.

And, on top of that, we do a star turn *cough* on Sky’s post-episode Thronecast, where we discuss Westeros a bit, and just some quick views on the episode just seen. Uhm ... just ignore the fact that I look like an idiot, glancing down at the monitor rather than looking at the camera. I’ll attempt to do better next time! On the bright side, Linda’s much, much better than I am.

Finally, HBO has joined in the fun, not only releasing an “Inside the Episode” video, but by popular demand they’ve placed the title sequence on Youtube in glorious 720p, exactly as it was meant to be watched! See the embed below:

So… how was your night last night? Was it everything you wanted? Almost? Not at all? Join the discussion and discuss the series with fellow fans! And while you’re at it, feel free to check out our extensive episode guide! Or ... how about going inside the episode with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, or a preview of episode 2, The Kingsroad?

See below!

Now that the first episode, “Winter is Coming”, is up, we provide a lengthy recap plus a detailed analysis in our episode guide. More content to come tomorrow, including a look at the changes from book to screen.

In the mean time, after reading up, why not join the discussion?

Today is the day! Today, the Game of Thrones begins. For those who haven’t followed the anxious wait ever since the pilot was announced, an introduction to what we offer in terms of Game of Thrones coverage here at Westeros is in order.

Ahead of tomorrow’s premiere of Game of Thrones, we’ve made our newest skin for the A Song of Ice and Fire forum go live. The largest change is that we’ve moved from two columns (on either side of the forum) to one, somewhat larger one on the left side (however, overall the forum now dominates more of the dispaly). With the kind permission of Ted Nasmith, who’s allowed us to use his 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar imagery in other parts of Westeros.org, we’ve added his amazing depiction of the Hightower of Oldtown on the sidebar as well.

We’re aware this skin is not 100% yet, but it’s mostly there, and in the next week or so we manage to deal with most outstanding issues. In the interim, however, we’re leaving the “old” skin—renamed Legacy Song of Ice and Fire—available for those who need some time to transition, especially those members of the forum who are using one of the mods that turn the skin much whiter (ala the old “Stark” skin) for whatever reason. Note that it’s staying put only for a limited time, however, just to help with the transition—we’ll probably remove it entirely in a month or two.

As we said, it’s not 100% yet, but we’ve a list of things we’re going to tweak.

So, for the last several days I’d been compiling links to every review, for one great big review post… but, forget it, check out Metacritic instead, it’ll have some of the highlights (however, listen to Myles McNutt when he tells you to ignore the arbitrary metascore). Of particular note are this long review from James Poniewozik, a fan of the novels, and this one from Alan Sepinwall, who hasn’t read the novels.

On the other hand, we should probably highlight the controversy that Game of Thrones sparked, when two critics spent far more time complaining about the genre and its fans (including implying that there can’t possibly be many women interested in watching or reading something like the series) than they did actually reviewing the series itself. Tony Patterson at Slate and Ginia Bellafante New York Times win plaudits for stirring up controversy, if nothing else. Ms. Bellafante’s sexist attitude was especially enraging to most “geek girls”, and I can attest to Twitter being absolutely filled with dialog about it. Geek Femme and Geek Mom gave two excellent responses to Ms. Bellanfate, while today we have Daniel Abraham at Orbit and Matt Zoeller Seitz remarking on both reviewers in terms of their allowing genre bias to get in the way of their job as rviewers.

So, we’ll leave that for reviews, except that we must absolutely plug Todd VanDerWerff and Libby Hill’s podcast, “Television on the Internet”. The last half hour of Episode 59 is dedicated to Game of Thrones. It’s very good, with a nice casual style and some excellent back-and-forth. Both like it, and both have worthwhile things to say about it.

Below are links to interviews and some interesting articles related to the series, which premieres tomorrow:

With all the buzz and excitement—HBO’s Game of Thrones just two days away, A Dance with Dragons due on July 12—there’s a great deal of writing and analysis devoted to A Song of Ice and Fire, and we’ve been asked by Suvudu.com (the official portal for SF/F/H of all kinds for Random House) to start posting post-episode reviews and commentaries on various facets of the novels in relation to the TV show.

We’ve introduced ourselves and the project, but you’ll have to wait for until Monday for our first episode analysis.

HBO has unveiled a Visual Guide to the new Game of Thrones. Featuring interactive maps—including an excellent look at the coast of Essos and the placement of most (but not all) of the Free Cities, apparently based on GRRM’s own maps—and details on various characters, organization, and history, it’s a great guide to the TV show’s version of the novels. There are little changes, here and there, and it’ll be fun spotting some of the departures from the setting’s history in particular.

Ever wondered what an arakh is? Or a weirwood? Game of Thrones will introduce those new to the series to more than a few new words. In the Citadel we have extensive resources for A Song of Ice and Fire but some of it is too extensive to serve as handy guides for newcomers and others contain spoilers. Because of this we are planning to add some resourced geared specifically towards TV-show viewers to the Features section of our Game of Thrones site. The first such resource is A Lexicon of Ice and Fire, covering some of the words you might want to look up. Enjoy, and let us know about any additions you want to see to the Lexicon or any ideas you have for other Features in this vein.

Ah-ha, this is the last Artisans featurette before the premiere on the 17th. Graphic artist Jim Stanes discusses a subject near and dear to our hearts: Heraldry and Maps. This video’s full of some of the heraldic images I had a sneak peek at when I visited the production in Belfast, and now everyone else can see them too!

Suvudu.com, the SF/F gateway produced by Random House (of which Bantam Spectra, publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire, is an imprint), has teamed up with Scribd to offer an exclusive e-book excerpting the “first episode” of HBO’s Game of Thrones—in this case, the first 80 pages of A Game of Thrones, covering almost all the events covered in the premiere episode of the series.

It can be read online (we’ve embedded it below), or even downloaded (in PDF format) for readying an appropriate mobile reading device. Have a friend who’s leery about watching the series or reading the books? Get them to read this preview and see if they can keep themselves from reading more when they get to that last page!

Bryan Cogman has a new post at Making Game of Thrones, describing a bit of post-production life, his visit to the food trucks in Los Angeles, and an update on what he’s currently doing (extras for the season 1 Blu-rays [and, presumably, DVDs, though really, you’ll want this show in Blu-ray we suspect…])

But, as it happens, that’s not all that features Bryan out there. As he mentioned in our interview with him, he’s a trained actor. A trained actor with a focus on Shakespeare. Yes, ladies and gentleman… he’s a Shakespeare guy. As he proves in this short webisode of Tiny Apartment, a comedy created by some friends of his:

TitanCon, a convention in Belfast that’s grown out of the very successful Moots, has announced its first confirmed guest from HBO’s Game of Thrones: KristianNairn, the actor playing the beloved Hodor. TitanCon is trundling along with their plans, and to promote the convention, “Game of Thrones Joe”—Joseph Campo—has created a promotional video for the convention with his usual good-humor.

Speaking of Campo, he’s created a last video entry in his “Get Joe On the Show” campaign, and this may be the best one yet. Good luck to Joe on his quest to join the production!

As the premiere of Game of Thrones barrels along, we have an exclusive interview with Kit Harington, who plays one of the most significant of the young leads in the series, Jon Snow. We discuss his early career and how he got into acting, the audition process, his interactions with some of the other actors, and his views and hopes for the second season if it goes forward.

Read our interview!

John Picacio, artist of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, reminds us that tomorrow is the deadline for getting your nominations into the Locus Magazine Poll. Locus is the chief trade magazine for SF/F publishing, and for many years it’s been polling subscribers—and the general public—about the works most deserving of attention.

There’s quite a bit you can nominate, but we’ll particularly note that Warriors was nominated, GRRM’s “The Mystery Knight” also nominated, and several writers published in his anthologies (Warriors and Songs of Love and Death) are also listed. Get to it!

As a write-in, we’d recommend Ted Nasmith for his gorgeous 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire work.

If you’re in New York City, you may see the Iron Throne whizzing by… on pedicabs, offering complimentary rides through the city streets. And that’s not the only place where you’ll find them it, as HBO reveals that you can sit in a replica of the throne at various locations, not just in New York City, but in several major cities in the United States: Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles join NYC as seats of kings. It’s all part of an incredible campaign to make sure everyone knows that Game of Thrones will be premiering this Sunday, April 17th at 9PM.

And just to whet the appetite further, there’s a massive billboard featuring the Wall, the towering structure that defends the realms of men from whatever lives in the frozen heart of winter beyond, at Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles. Every evening through the 16th, the Wall and Westeros is brought to life using architectural projection and audio. Learn more details about time and locations below!

Tor.com, one of the best sources of SF/F news, short fiction, commentary, and reviews, has invited Linda and I to start blogging on topics concerning A Song of Ice and Fire while HBO’s Game of Thrones gets set to start airing. We’ll be discussing the novels with a focus on various aspects about the setting, story, and characters.

First up? A brief look at the magic in the books, with a particular attention to its historical decline and its recent resuregence.

Ryan McGee and Maureen Ryan invited Linda and I to a special, Game of Thrones-centric podcast, along with Phil of Winter is Coming. It was a good discussion of the series, including the voicing of some questions from Ryan and thoughts from Maureen Ryan that both have since expanded on on their reviews (McGee at his site, Boobtube Dude, and Mo at AOL’s TV Squad). The reviews are worth reading carefully—they’re not unmitigated praise, and because they want the show to be a great success, they discuss the flaws in detail in a way that may be helpful to the showrunners going forward if there’s another season of the series; but on the whole, both like it, and both see a great deal of potential.

To listen to the podcast, go here!

The latest (and last before the premiere?) Artisans is now up, featuring the production designer Gemma Jackson as she gives viewers a detailed look at the throne room in the Red Keep… and, of course, the Iron Throne:

Boy, these things are piling up! A quick roundup of the latest reviews, interviews, and other Game of Thrones-related items:

• One of the biggest pieces of news is HBO’s innovative plans for airing the first episode of the series. After the initial airing at 9PM, two follow up airings will take place back-to-back. More amazingly, however, on Monday HBO will air the series on six of its channels simultaneously at 9PM. The cumulative viewership numbers should be quite remarkable, if everything goes to plan. More information can be found at The Hollywood Reporter.
• George R.R. Martin shares his Top 10 Fantasy Films over at the Daily Beast.
• A quick look at some reviews: Slice of Sci-Fi, On the Stick, Variety blogger Jon Weisman, The Phoenix
• And a particular pointer to this podcast discussion from Daniel Feinberg and Alan Sepinwall, where they spend 20 minutes(!) discussing the show, and that with a great deal of praise.
• The Radio Times in the UK has an exclusive gallery of photos, a number of which we’ve not seen before.
• Interviews and profiles galore: remarks from Mark Addy, Alfie Allen and Emilia Clarke, Richard Madden, executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, Kit Harington, and piece with Sean Bean.
• The Atlantic has begun a series of five posts with takes on the series. First up, Alyssa Rosenberg, followed by Adam Serwer. These are particularly thoughtful pieces, written by writers more generally involved in cultural and political commentary than television criticism.
• David J. Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language for the show, attended a screening in Los Angeles and wrote a report.

Sort of!

The latest episode of the spy adventure sitcom with a fervent cult following, Chuck, has a juicy reference to A Game of Thrones in its latest episode, “Chuck vs. the family Volkoff”. And better yet, it’s now on Hulu.com! Watch for the reference around the 1:50 remark, as Chuck is reading the A Game of Thrones novel (interestingly, it’s one of the earlier reissue hardcovers, which incorporated Stephen Youll’s paperback art) and remarks with a laugh, “Eddard, you don’t let your kids keep a direwolf! That’s a terrible idea.”

Whether the TV show’s writers are showing their fandom, or if it’s just a clever bit of product placement from Random House or HBO, we don’t know, but we like it either way.

Now, just to get a Community or Robot Chicken parody…

And now the Daily Beast follows through on George R.R. Martin’s list of favorite science fiction films by posting his list of top 10 Fantasy films. A good and eclectic list, though the lack of mention of Conan the Barbarian or The Neverending Story, and relegating Excalibur to an honorable mention make me shake my head a little. Nigel Terry may have been awkward in the early part of that film, but once he’s in full-on kingly mode, his performance is wonderful. On the other hand, we have no quibble with his #1 selection.

The biggest surprise for us? Despite having “one of the worst scores ever put on film”—a fact I recall laughing about with GRRM and Parris when we were visiting the sets—Ladyhawke ranks pretty high on the list. I may have to rewatch it… with the judicious use of MUTE.

Just finished a great conference call with George R.R. Martin regarding HBO’s Game of Thrones, with a full write up later in the week. But there was one very interesting piece of information that we thought fans would want to know now, rather than later:

According to GRRM, a character is killed in this 1st season of the series who does not die until the 3rd novel. Because of spoilers, he chose not to discuss it further (I tried!), but he did indicate it was a male character.

Benioff and Weiss deliberately made the change, which has interesting implications all of its own… such as already looking to find ways to trim down a potential third season by closing out or greatly compressing elements of A Storm of Swords.

And now, let the speculation begin! For our part, we’ll note that we’re quite certain it’s not a “POV” or “major” character, but someone who might be considered on the second or even third tier.

The final reward in the Maester’s Path promotion from HBO (created by Campfire) is now available! It’s meant for those users who managed to gain five “novices” (people who completed at least one puzzle after following your custom link to the game), and includes a video message from George R.R. Martin himself, plus some excellent “sigil packs” from which you can choose your allegiance as a maester!

Hat’s off to HBO and Campfire, as this was great fun!

John Picacio, the lauded artist who’s creating the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, notes that the calendar is now #4 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases (Calendars) list. #1? Thomas Kinkade’s latest calendar, apparently.
As John notes, are fans really going to let Kinkade beat out A Song of Ice and Fire?

For those HBO subscribers lucky enough to have access to HBO GO through their cable provider, the Wall Street Journal has revealed very interesting news: some episodes of the series will air on HBO GO even before they air on television! No specific details of this initative, such as how much earlier (an hour? a day?), are provided in the article. However, it does have a lot of very interesting things to say about the prospects of the show…

This Friday, George surprised fans by appearing at the last of the Game of Thrones food trucks (a great hit—thanks, Campfire, Chef Tom Colicchio, and HBO)—and trying some of the venison and lemon cake, plus chatting a bit with those going up to the truck. It was also a great publicity occasion, with several interviews being conducted both with fans and George.

Two of them featuring GRRM were conducted by HitFix and another fun one—with video and pictures!—can be found at Think Hero. Some interesting remarks in there, including George’s reminder of Faulkner’s quotation, “the human heart in conflict with itself”, is a central tenet of his writing. We expect to see more videos and photos in the next few days.

As to guides, Andrew Leonard of Salon.com has published an essential guide to the series which is, admittedly, rather spoilerish. But as it happens, Leonard also seems to make his feelings on the episodes he’s seen quite clear:

“A Song of Ice And Fire” is to normal fantasy what “The Wire” was to typical cops-and-robbers drama, packed with grit, complexity and flawed human beings making their way through a corrupt and intimidating world… HBO’s treatment of the text is scrupulously faithful—and terrifically entertaining in the best HBO high drama tradition…

That sounds promising. As does, Variety’s very positive review from Brian Lowry:

Although “Mad Men’s” Don Draper partially scratched the itch, premium TV has been actively seeking its next Tony Soprano. While Showtime’s medieval “The Borgias” directly promoted that analogy, HBO comes much closer with “Game of Thrones,” which reaches even farther afield—to Westeros, a mythical land of seven kingdoms where dragons once lived—to deliver a mob boss (OK, king) beset by plotting, intrigue and fractious families on all sides. Massive in scope and cinematic in detail, this dense piece of storytelling should resonate beyond just fans of George R.R. Martin’s novels, providing HBO its own formidable seat of power.

Interestingly, Lowry felt the pacing uneven in the later episodes, while Linda and I preferred the greater room for scenes to breathe in in those late episodes; it was the earliest episodes where we felt that the pacing was not utterly ideal as they raced to cover a great number of pages). Finally, Matt Fowler of IGN has some glowing words for the show:

As with any book adaptation, fans will worry and wonder as to what will be left out and what will be kept in, but the premiere episode, “Winter is Coming,” not only effortlessly takes us along, faithfully, through the book, but it also manages to capture the majestically morbid spirit of Martin’s pages and turn them into thrilling television.

Not all the reviews have been unanimous in their praise, unfortunately, but in some cases some of the remarks may appear aimed more at the story’s genre than the story itself: Wall Street Journal, IndieWire, and Zap2It. If you feel like remarking on these reviews in their comments, please be respectful, no matter how much you might disagree with them or believe them to be unfair.

This is probably not what you’re expecting—someone fisking the bare handful of negatives reviews, pointing out how awful they are. Instead, this is largely about the impulse to indulge in that sort of meta-criticism in the first place. Myles McNutt—who’s quickly becoming our favorite commentator on the intersection between media and culture—has a terrific piece that examines and ultimately calls into question the reactionary response of some fans towards negative criticism, especially when there’s a danger of that response being characterized in some unsavory ways.

If you’re the sort of fan who can’t help but respond to reviews you disagree with, McNutt’s post is one you really ought to read.

A brand new promotional trailer for the show, perhaps the very last full trailer before the premiere on April 17th. Titled “Poison”, it has a handful of shots we’ve never seen before, including some moments late in the series (Rugen!)

A quick round-up of some more media coverage as we enter the weekend:

• The New York Times discusses the adaptation from book to screen with GRRM, the executive producers, and HBO executives. There’s some interesting details here, such as the fact that reshooting in Malta for Pentos was partially driven by the fact that their Moroccan location was landlocked and didn’t work as well for the coastal Free City.
• io9 reports on a recent conference call with the executive producers (more from us on that call next week), including a hint about direwolves…
• TV Guide follows up the “controversy” with Damon Lindelof following GRRM’s remarks on the ending of Lost. The executive producers say quite a bit about the fact that they know, through Martin, the broad outline of what the final season and final episode will be like. They add that they’ve read the first 600 pages of A Dance with Dragons, as well.
• Finally, Dorkshelf has a great interview with Kit Harington about working on the show, with some interesting tidbits (and some small spoilers for the potential second season) along the way.

Beginning a new series of features, essayist and writer Pearson Moore has joined with Westeros.org to provide in-depth looks at the series, its characters, and the rich, dramatic themes at the heart of George R.R. Martin’s creation. Moore, perhaps best known for his insightful essays into the TV show Lost, is the author of 63 essays about that show, as well as two thought-provoking novels, including the Amazon bestselling Lost Humanity and Lost Identity.

Our first featured essay from Mr. Moore is “Instinctive Honour: The Decency of Eddard Stark in Game of Thrones”, a detailed look into the central figure of A Game of Thrones.

You heard right: we’ve teamed up with MTV Geek, MTV’s destination for news of all things cool, wonderful, and otherwise downright geeky! What this means is that MTV Geek will be highlighting HBO’s Game of Thrones, giving Westeros a broader platform to review each episode as it airs, while MTV Geek’s Tom Akel and Daniel Craft will be joining us for a weekly podcast about the show. And who knows, there may be some other tidbits here and there…

Keep your eyes peeled for our first, in-depth review at MTV Geek starting from the 18th!

The Wall Street Journal has a great article on the production of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which notes a couple of tidbits likely to make fans salivate. First up, a hint as to where the production may do some filming if it goes forward:

¨Before production began, fans posted renderings online of how they imagined colorful King’s Landing, the lush, chilly Winterfell and the eerie blood-covered Castle Black. “I of course ignored all of that because I wanted to make it my own world,” production designer Gemma Jackson said from Croatia, where she was scouting locations for season two before heading to Turkey.

The new “Making of…” video has been released. Wonderful, wonderful stuff, as always ... especially that opening theme at the 22:38 mark, right? ;)

A brand new interview with David Benioff and Dan Weiss as gone live over at AOL, courtesy of critic (and A Song of Ice and Fire fan—she knows whereof she speaks!) Maureen Ryan. This one’s good ... and that last paragraph is spoilerish, if you haven’t read the books ... but if you have, that should cause a bit of pleasure.

Go over and read it!

A frequent collaborator with George R.R. Martin, Daniel Abraham has turned his sights on epic fantasy in his latest series, which is hitting store shelves today with its first installment, The Dragon’s Path. The novel has been receiving good reviews on the web for those who’ve had access to the review copies. After his brilliant Long Price Quartet (a series we’ve often recommended and consider to be among the best fantasies of the last decade; it begins with A Shadow in Summer), he’s written quite a bit else, from urban fantasy to contributions to the GRRM-led Wild Cards shared-world series, with a science fiction collaboration with new writer (and GRRM’s assistant) Ty Franck forthcoming as well as his scripting of the A Song of Ice and Fire comic book series for Dynamite Entertainment and Bantam Books.

What else can we say? It’s Daniel Abraham. It’s his take on epic fantasy, a subject he discusses at length over at Orbit’s website. He knows what he’s doing. Read it!

Below, find an exclusive excerpt from The Dragon’s Path, published with permission of Abraham and Orbit Books. The book hits store shelves today, April 7th.

Fantasy Flight Games, publishers of the Battles of Westeros board game and its expansions, has announced a miniature figure painting contest with a pretty sweet grand prize: all Battles of Westeros releases, including their upcoming Clans

Tribes of the Vale (I know, I know, nitpicking!)

To learn more about the contest, visit the official site.

Thanks to CountDice for pointing the competition out.

The role of Lord Renly Baratheon was one that many fans were interested in seeing cast. Filling the role is Gethin Anthony, who brings his talents to bear on a character whose role in this season culminates in a crucial decision . . . and who may well go on to become one of the chief players of the game of thrones if a second season is commissioned. Below is our interview with the actor, discussing his early career, the auditioning process, his views on Renly and Renly’s family, and more…

Read the interview.

The Lindelof-GRRM “feud”—which was mostly Lindelof sharing some tongue-in-cheek “salvos” while highlighting that he took a bit of issue with some of GRRM’s remarks—seems to have wound up with nary a casualty following some coverage. James Poniewozik shared an excerpt from his forthcoming interview with Martin in which his views of Lost were touched upon when Poniewozik asked him if he watched the show. As Poniewozik notes, he himself has often compared the two, which may have prompted the question.

This ultimately led to James Hibberd’s interview with Lindelof, which cleared the air (such as it was). Particular kudos must go to him for admitting that his appreciation of GRRM dates back to reading Wild Cards (he even remember the Ace-Joker-Black Queen distinction!), which made use start day-dreaming about a Lindelof-Martin co-produced Wild Cards TV series…

In any case, that seems all quite well settled. GRRM himself has made no public remark on the matter, although we’re told he is aware of it.

For a good summing-up of the storm in a tea cup, check out Maureen Ryan’s piece at AOL’s TV Squad.

The re-release of A Game of Thrones in the U.S. has led the book to climb up onto the bestseller lists again, this time breaking into the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly top 10 lists in paperback, in the highest placement that the first volume series has ever had. Previously, it briefly reached #24 back in January.

Thanks to Olaf Keith for pointing it out.

The San Francisco State University is holding a special advance screening of the first episode of Game of Thrones today, between 6PM and 7PM. First come, first served seating, though they prefer that those attending have an interest in television as an art form. See the Facebook page for more details.

On top of that, the UK’s BAFTA has a free screening on the 15th which sounds particularly interesting, as there’ll be a Q&A with the “creative talent behind the production”. There are limited free tickets available, which you can request via e-mail.

Se acerca el invierno! HBO Latin America—which covers a dizzying array of countries—has just updated their schedule into next month. There, they reveal that Game of Thrones will be airing on May 8th on HBO in the countries it serves. Among them? Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Jamaica, Panama, Colombia, Chile, and many more!

We’ll update our International Air Date listing accordingly. We expect HBO Latin America may soon have a formal announcement, if they haven’t released it already.

Damon Lindelof, one of the producers and writers of Lost, had a turn yesterday when he learned of GRRM’s remarks in the New Yorker concerning his concerns for his series:

Martin knows what it’s like to be provoked by a serial entertainment. He experienced it himself as a faithful viewer of “Lost,” the ABC adventure series about a group of castaways trapped on a mysterious island. “I kept watching it and I was fascinated,” he recalls. “They’d introduce these things and I thought that I knew where it was going. Then they’d introduce and I’d rethink it.” Like many “Lost” fans, Martin resented the series’s mystical ending, which left dozens of narrative threads dangling. “We watched it every week trying to figure it out, and as it got deeper and deeper I kept saying, ‘They better have something good in mind for the end. This end better pay off here.’ And then I felt so cheated when we got to the conclusion.”

In response to this, Lindelof tweeted, “George RR Martin is terrified of “pulling a LOST” by ending Game of Thrones shittily. In related news, my therapist just hit the jackpot.”

Coverage of Game of Thrones is bigging to reach tidal wave-proportions. EW and io9 now have GoT-specific categories, the New Yorker has spoken with George, as has the New York Times, Jason Momoa has given a terrific, fun interview… Lets link some of those up, for those who are eager to get at them:

According to a short piece in Variety, HBO’s Game of Thrones is likely to be HBO’s biggest seller in international markets! Citing that Boardwalk Empire, which was HBO’s best-selling series to international markets (with licenses sold to some 160 countries), the article notes:

Bidding wars broke out among European webs determined to licence the show… Schreger, said, “We knew we had a pair of hot properties in ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and ‘Game of Thrones,’ but buyers’ interest in ‘Thrones’ is phenomenal.”

The article goes on to note some new international market sales that have been eagerly awaited: TNT Serie will air the show in Germany, while Telenet will broadcast it in Belgium. Showtime in Australia is now fully confirmed, as well. The article adds that deals are in the works for Italian, Japanese, and Russian market sales.

We’ve updated our international air dates listing accordingly.

The New Yorker has profiled George R.R. Martin, looking both at his work and his relationship with his fans. It’s a several pages-long piece, including comments from Parris, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss from Game of Thrones, GRRM’s editor, and your humble web admin, among others. There’s also an audio portion to the interview.

Only an excerpt is available on the web, but we note a digital subscription trial is entirely free.

As promised, here’s the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of Game of Thrones, “Winter is Coming”:

Visit the forum to discuss it. The series will premiere April 17 at 9PM ET. Be there!

As we’ve noted, HBO very kindly sent us the six episode screeners that critics received earlier last week, and we’ve rather devoured them all. Linda and I have spent a good deal of time considering and discussing them, and we’ve written an article sharing—in a non-spoiler way—our first impressions. It’s very long, so for those who haven’t the time, here’s our final paragraph that sums things up:

From the point of view of extremely invested fans such as ourselves, the things that we wish were there that aren’t give us a pang, but there’s so much to be joyful about, the gracenotes, the acting,  the visuals, the direction, and the writing [or, to put it more clearly, Linda and I loved it even while feeling that some things had to be sacrificed that we’re sorry to not have on the screen]. But we need to emphasize that we don’t believe that viewers unfamiliar with the books will have the same concern. There’s enough meat in the show, there’s enough depth, that those who are entirely new to it will find something to enjoy. It is really well done fantasy, unlike anything ever produced for television. It is a quality drama, a rewarding one, and we think those who stick through the dizzying number of characters, plotlines, and locations in the first two episodes will be appropriately hooked. If you want the full depth and complexity of the world, all the nuances and subtleties, there’s always the books to turn to.

If you want more, read out first impressions.

To add to the media coverage, here’s the U.K.‘s Evening Standard magazine feature on Game of Thrones, interviewing three of the younger stars of the show: Harry Lloyd (who proves the anecdotes we had about geeking out over the books), Richard Madden, and Emilia Clarke. Some excellent material, from the fact that Richard insisted on carrying his “hero” sword (the one out of actual steel) as much as possible rather than the lighter cast resin or aluminum weapons, to Emilia’s efforts to write a movie script of her own.

HBO has unveiled Win the Throne, a social networking game featuring minigames, intrigues, and various rewards. Grand prize? A cool $10,000, plus there’s an additional prize for Comcast subscribers only of $10,000 (only one grand prize per winner). Plus a number of lesser prizes, like gift cards, T-shirts, and so on.

The game sounds fun. The only downside? It’s U.S. only, at least as far as prizes go. Ah, well. The minigames sound like they may be fun to play all on their own, even if you don’t play the game of thrones…

We’re not going to review the show just yet after the episodes we saw, although we hope we might give some vague first impressions soon, but we feel compelled to make a special note to highlight just how amazing the opening titles for the show are. Gorgeously produced, innovative, and best of all completely acknowledging the breadth and scale of the setting. And for our money, it’s much cooler than what the pilot script allegedly described, which was simply a raven flying over a map of Westeros from point to point; that was a good idea, but this ... this is inspired.

Via MSN.com, we now have the episode titles for episodes 5 through 7. Episode 5 is “The Wolf and the Lion”, episode 6 is “A Golden Crown”, and episode 7 (this is a new one for Linda and I) is, “You Win or You Die”. With GRRM’s episode 8 title of “The Pointy End” already known, this just leaves the final two episodes to be titled.

Entertainment Weekly is leading the way among the major media, being what can be considered the first US media out of the gate with major coverage of Game of Thrones, with a featured article in this week’s issue, an open call for fans to submit questions for the cast and crew, and an exclusive gallery of ten new photos. We expect a lot more content is coming in short order.

On top of that, it seems the embargo on reviews is going up in the U.K., because Den of Geek has the very first, spoiler-free review of the first episode and interviews with Alfie Allen and Emilia Clarke, while back in the states the Grand Old Lady of newspapers, the New York Times, features an interview with George R.R. Martin about the series.

Finally, on a very different note, here’s this fascinating article on Mixonline—a website for audio industry professionals—regarding the sound mixing and editing on Game of Thrones. We do love these behind-the-scenes pieces.

Now, as for ourselves, we have something to watch...

Bryan Cogman (Twitter) probably needs very little introduction to the inner core of fans who’ve been hanging on every word of the show, but in brief, Bryan is the right-hand man of the executive producers of Game of Thrones, beginning as an assistant in the early stages of first season’s preparations and moving on to work as a script editor (sort of) and eventually a writer (episode 4) for the first season.

Perhaps his most important capacity, however, has been the “keeper of the mythos”, or as he puts it, “the reference guy,” for the show. That makes him near and dear to fans, and we suspect all the more so when you learn that his fandom predated his involvement with the show…

Read the interview, and let us know what you think!