Westeros

Canadian bookseller Chapters is sitting down with George R.R. Martin for an exclusive interview prior to the release of A Dance with Dragons, and they’re soliciting questions from fans! Questions must be submitted before 9 AM on July 4th.

Questions can be submitted at Chapter’s post or their Facebook page. (And just to be clear, those question will only be taken there; posting them in comments here will not help!)

Thanks to HarperCollins Voyager, there’s now an A Dance with Dragons app for those with iOs devices! According to the description, the app contains an extract from the novel, a quiz to sort you into a noble house, a chance at a prize draw, and more.

The official release date is July 12th, with Kindle and Audiobook editions being released simultaneously. Some more information, and pre-order links, can be found here.

According to this very interesting article from The Bookseller, a U.K. publishing industry website, HarperCollins (of which GRRM’s UK publisher, Voyager, is an imprint) has hit a milestone with 1,000,000 copies of the A Song of Ice and Fire series available in the U.K. and 100,000 copies of A Dance with Dragons printed in ahead of the July 12 release date.

There’s some rather amazing statistics, including the fact that this last week has seen more copies of the novels sold than in all of 2010, and that that figure is 6,120% higher than in the same time period last year, and that sales this year to date are already up 1,660% over last year.

The Waterstone’sPiccadilly store will have a replica of the Iron Throne from HBO’s Game of Thrones  on display from the 9th to the 14th as promotion for the release of the fifth novel begins.

One of the internet awards for television that we think are among the best known and are the most representative of a certain sort of audience, Television Without Pity’s Tubey Awards are now up-and-running, and as you might expect, Game of Thrones is very well-represented indeed. The polls are open, and below we provide a handy guide to the categories in which the show has nominees, and who those nominees are.

It’s that time again—each summer we run a bit of a fundraiser to help pay back our wonderful host, Rachel (aka Sparks), for giving the community a place to hang out. It’s been especially challenging this past couple of months, with activity surging thanks to the TV series and now the imminent release of A Dance with Dragons. Sparks has worked like a trooper to keep everything running, and is in the early stages of moving things to a more powerful server.

I don’t even want to think about how many words have been written on the site, how many hours have been spent on it, how many people have made new friends—it’s the finest forum I’ve ever been part of, and that’s because of the community of fans who’ve helped to shape it.

So, if you can spare a few dollars, please contribute! You can pay directly via Paypal, or use any major credit card (sorry, we have no alternative payment options). And if you’re concerned about privacy, there’s an option to donate privately, we believe.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and to consider contributing. We appreciate it!

Anticipation for A Dance with Dragons is reaching a fevered pitch. An accidental, early release from Amazon.de has caused a flurry of activity, including on our forum (we broke our concurrency record because of it). But before you go seeking out spoilers, heed these words from U.K. publisher HarperCollins Voyager…

And let us add our own thoughts on this. Yes, Linda and I have had the privilege of reading the book awhile ago. Yes, we knew some of what the contents were, from early chapters George had read or which we had early access to. But a great bulk of it was entirely new to us… and the pleasure in the reading was greatly heightened for us by not knowing what was coming. There are some amazing, jaw-dropping moments in this book. If you can at all help it, don’t ruin the shocks and surprises, so you can get the maximum effect out of them. GRRM’s labored six years on this book, trying to get it “just so”; what’s holding out two more weeks, to make sure you can read and judge his efforts with fresh eyes and an open mind? And don’t worry, we’ve put extreme spoiler protections up on the forum, so it should remain a relatively safe place on the relatively-lawless internet (and we’ll note, word is there’s a number of major forums where spoilers—fake and real alike—are flying like mad, so keep your head down!)

Now, that Amazon.de error is fixed, and any new orders placed via Amazon.de will provide the appropriate shipping date. There are rumors of stores in Australia, Sweden, and elsewhere claiming early release dates, but Bantam/Random House is on the case, double-checking all the international distributors and major chains to make sure that the global July 12th embargo is respected.

So, if you haven’t pre-ordered the book yet, what are you waiting for? It’s now two weeks to go! Here’s a handy list of links:

• A Dance with Dragons, US editions: Hardcover, Kindle, Audiobook
• A Dance with Dragons, UK editions: Hardcover, Kindle, Audiobook

Just about two weeks away from A Dance with Dragons (US, UK) landing on bookshelves in the U.S., and Suvudu has the full details of George R.R. Martin‘s signing tour. So far, nine locations are planned, though we wouldn’t be surprised if a couple more get added.

Signing locations include Burlington (MA), New York City, Indianapolis, San Diego (right around San Diego Comic Con, where both Bantam and HBO will have a big presence, and which GRRM will be present for), Los Angeles, Redwood City, Seattle, Denver, and Lexington. Rules for each signing event are spelled out, which will be very important for those wanting to get their books signed. Read them carefully!

Extras NI has put out the call for extras for the second season of Game of Thrones. The salient details of how to register your interest are in the post, but we should stress that if you aren’t based in Northern Ireland, there’s simply no chance. As always, what they’re looking for is always fun. Last year, it was clear they were looking for Dothraki. This year? Lets see….

... sort of.

As you may well know, Subterranean Press is publishing the limited edition, illustrated editions of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, using some world-class artists to illustrate George R.R. Martin’s story. For A Dance with Dragons, GRRM selected award-winning artist Marc Fishman to provide the cover, painted illustrations, as well as drawings. We haven’t heard much of late about it, as A Dance with Dragons was long in the making.

But then a tweet from Christie Michelle Stewart caught our attention: she had visited Fishman, apparently for an interview series she’s posting on her site, and had a peek at some of the art he had been creating. Which then led us to the Facebook linked above… and then to this image of Daenerys Targaryen with Drogon.

How we missed this, when it seems it was posted around August 2009, we do not know. So far as we know, this is the one and only piece of A Dance with Dragons art Fishman has published. To get a taste of what else he might be creating, be sure to visit his gallery.

The cross-genre anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Warriors (US, UK) has won the 2011 Locus Award for Best Anthology!

Congratulations to GRRM, Gardner, and all the writers involved. “The Mystery Knight”, the third Dunk & Egg story that was published in the anthology, lost out the Best Novella to Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”. On the other hand, Neil Gaiman’s “The Thing About Cassandra” published in GRRM’s and Dozois’s themed anthology Songs of Love and Death (US, UK) won for Best Short Story (Gaiman also won for Best Novelette).

Finally, Tor Books—publisher of Warriors as well as the latest Wild Cards novels, including the recently-released For Freak—won for best publisher.Tor’s certainly earned it, and their on-line portal is among the best SF/F websites around. Not least because they’ve given Linda and I a place to expound on matters “A Song of Ice and Fire”, such as our latest essay on “the dream of dragons”.

The complete list of winners and nominees can be found here. The full results of the Locus Poll (the nominees are the top five vote getters, and the winners being the most voted in their category) will be published later in the year.

The final, episode-centric essay from Pearson Moore—an essayist best known for his writing about Lost, and maintainer of Winterfell Keep—is now live! This essay on the final episode concerns itself with courage and charisma in the novel, again with something of a cultural perspective. Fascinating and insightful as always, we should add that there is mild nudity in one of the images, so please bear that in mind when at the workplace or what have you.

Read the essay!

The Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Appelo has an article giving five reasons why Game of Thrones might win Emmys… although we note the last one is more about why it might win Emmys a year or two from now, as opposed to winning them this year.

All in all, it’s an interesting piece, and has some great quotes (including actress Mary Kay Place emphasizing how interesting the show is).

We’ve had the opportunity to interview Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor, one of the co-founders of BlueBolt, the visual effects company that served as lead VFX vendor for Game of Thrones, with Ainsworth-Taylor serving as the show’s VFX producer. BlueBolt is responsible for some of the amazing vistas seen in the course of the series, and BlueBolt provided us a number of images showing before and after depictions of how a real world location was turned into some part of the Seven Kingdoms.

And, of course, we talk

Read the interview!

Natalie Dormer, perhaps best known as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, has been cast as Margaery Tyrell—only daughter of Lord Mace Tyrell and sister to the Knight of Flowers, Ser Loras—according to EW’s James Hibberd. There’s minor spoilers in Hibberd’s post, if you don’t want to know where Margaery fits into the story, don’t look.

Admittedly, Dormer is rather older than we had expected for this role, but of course she will doubtless play younger. Dormer is 29, while Finn Jones is 23—Loras is about a year older than Margaery in the novels, on the other hand.

Perhaps most notable about the news is the fact that Hibberd states she’s joining the regular cast of the series. The show—famous for having quite the large regular cast—seems likely to be expanding Margaery’s presence in the TV show, as compared to the novel, where she appears in what’s essentially two scenes.

Update: It turns out that the initial report was a little garbled. In fact, what GRRM has indicated is that Dangerous Women is the working title of the next themed anthology project he’s working on, and that the next Dunk & Egg story would appear there. The actual title of the story remains unknown, but our speculation about the Wolf Women still seems accurate. Thanks to @Pizama for the tip.

———

According to a report we’ve placed in the So Spake Martin collection, George R.R. Martin revealed that the fourth “Dunk & Egg” novella—stories following the exploits of the young Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg aproximately 90 years prior to the novels—will have that title.

“Dangerous Women” does suggest that we may be seeing the Wolf Women of Winterfell, which should be interesting.

The Dunk & Egg novellas are great reads, but it’s a little difficult to find them at times. “The Hedge Knight” is most easily found in Dreamsongs, volume II, part of a fantastic, retrospective collection of some of GRRM’s earliest fiction as well as some of his very best (including multiple award-winning stories from the period of time where some have argued that he was the best short fiction writer in the genre); we recommend the first volume as well. The second story, “The Sworn Sword”, can be found in Legends II: Dragon, Sword, and King, part of an anthology series containing various masters of the fantasy genre. FInally, the latest, “The Mystery Knight”, can be found in the GRRM- and Gardner Dozois-edited Warriors, a cross-genre anthology.

We received the alert from Amazon US today: you can now officially preorder of the complete first season sets of Game of Thrones!

No release date noted, but the MSRP is plain: $59.99 for the DVD set (down to $45 at Amazon) and $79.98 for the Blu-ray set (down to $56 at Amazon).

Now, the top questions we’ve had:

• “When will it be released?” HBO’s standard practice is to release their DVD sets in the month or two prior to the new season. So, if Season 2 starts in April 2012, it’s highly likely that the DVD and Blu-ray sets won’t be on sale prior to March or February (at the earliest). There have been some commentators suggesting that this show might benefit from being released for sale during winter holiday season, but HBO has a pretty firm view of how these things are done, so we wouldn’t advise you to hold your breath.
• “When’s it coming to the UK?” Looking at True Blood Season 3, it was released in the U.K. on May 23rd (the show premieres June 26 in the U.S.)... and, interestingly, it looks like the set was released on May 31 in the U.S., so the U.K. got it a week earlier. This tells me that HBO UK will be releasing the Game of Thrones Blu-ray and DVD set more-or-less simultaneously. Whether that’s in February-March 2012, or November-December 2011, we’ll have to wait and see.
• “What extras and features will it have?” We don’t really know, but the word through the grapevine is that there’ll be a lot of neat stuff on the sets, but we don’t know specifics. Given HBO’s track record, though, commentaries on some episodes are a given—we’re really hoping GRRM’s invited to comment on “The Pointy End”—and there’s plenty of EPK material that’s both published and unpublished covering the behind-the-scenes development. We know a documntary team was on hand throughout the shooting, including during the pilot, so we wouldn’t be surprised at a 30 minute “making of” sort of thing among the other features. Material on the setting, its history, and its characters? Seems likely. Never-before-seen behind the scenes photos and stills? Yes, that’s pretty likely too. A Rome-like set of pop-ups filling in background details as an episode airs, much as HBO Go does when you turn on interactive features? I would almost say you should count on it. This is HBO, they don’t do things by half-measures.

With the end of the U.K. run of the first season, the fine folks at Thronecast have put together a last episode, with a lot of good things. Among them? An interview with Natalia Tena, who plays Osha, which reveals details about her audition (she brought her own shackles!) and the mighty Hodor (yes, that was a prosthetic; she got to handle it!) And, of course, Linda and I give our thoughts on the final episode and the series overall.

The Natalia Tena interview also appears to have an extended version on their site, as well as an extended version of their interview with Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark) who—as some have noted—is rather publicity shy, so that’s quite a coup! And besides that, the Thronecast team very kindly arranged for Natalia to speak exclusively with Linda and I for a few minutes, the results of which can be found in our Features section, which contains quite a few interviews with other members of the cast and crew.

It was a great experience to be part of it, and we’d like to thank Ruby Thomas at Sky, Dan Wright at Koink, and Geoff Lloyd (en väldig trevligt kille!) for his fine hosting and helping put us at ease—it was all quite a new experience, to say the least.

The latest entry in the Wild Cards series, co-created and edited by George R.R. Martin, is now available!

Containing contributions from old hands and members of the original Wild Cards Consortium—Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, and Victor Milán to name a few—as well as writers brand new to the Wild Cards universe such as Mary Anne Mohanraj, Campbell Award-winner David Anthony Durham, comic book and Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell, and more, it’s a look at life on the streets of Jokertown from the perspective of NYPD officers assigned to the eponymous “Fort Freak”, the headquarters for the police precinct responsible for the area. It really seems like a bit of a throwback to the early entries in the city, which focused on and were very much informed by life in New York City at the time.

Via James Hibberd at EW, some great news: viewership of the final episode of Game of Thrones hit 3 million viewers, with 3.9 million viewers overnight across recap and other sources. According to TV by the Numbers, the “key” 18-49 demographic was 1.4, which surpassed Boardwalk Empire‘s finale in that same metric. That figure probably matters rather more to advertising-supported broadcast television—18 or 99, a subscriber is a subscriber as far as HBO is concerned—but it does show that the core audience slants younger.

Via Digital Spy, it looks like “Fire and Blood”  was the 2ndmost-watched episode of the series in its initial airing (after the premiere), with an average of 667,000 (2.7%) viewers in total. The overall viewership of episode 8, “The Pointy End” was, unfortunately, down a bit according to BARB (via @WyverynWood—1.36 million viewers, down from 1.556m for the previous episode. That’s a rather baffling result, we admit, but as we’ve noted before, U.K. figures do seem to have a greater margin of error.

We expect the U.S. figures to come in within a few hours.

Two items that should be of interest to fans were posted over at Suvudu over the weekend or thereabouts, but with all the excitement over

First, the first glimpse of one of the first bound hardcovers of A Dance with Dragons (Preorder: US, UK, Audio US, Audio UK) in the hands of editor Anne Groell, who very cheerfully (...) points out that the book is under embargo; only a handful of reviewers have received copies, and they have all been required to sign non-disclosure agreements. So, don’t expect much in the way of spoilers or reviews until a few days prior to the release on July 12th at the earliest.

And secondly, in honor of the finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Suvudu’s launched a contest with a total of twenty prizes: ten copies of the first novel, and ten copies of the first novel in audio book form. The audio book, read by actor Roy Dotrice, is a real treat—and won Dotrice an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records!

An amazing finale for Game of Thrones! The collective gasps and cheers on Twitter were certainly something else. As with last week’s episode, we’ve rushed to put together our full recap and detailed, chapter-by-chapter break down comparing the episode to what author George R.R. Martin originally had on the page. Please forgive any typos or errors—the hour’s late!

Read the “Fire and Blood” recap!

(P.S. The recap has something very special at the end…)

Ahead of the finale, HBO wanted to show their appreciation for the fans at Westeros.org for their support of the show… and so they’ve let us know a day early that they’re bringing back to their 20% off sale at the HBO Store!

They’ve added quite a few new items in the last days, including the very cool Hodor shirt you see on the right, a Khal Drogo portrait shirt, and a “Daenerys, SPOILER of SPOILERS” shirt that maybe could have waited one day… but, hey, with the special sale and all, why not?

Get your shopping done before the finale,with a nice discount on top. To get the discount, just put GOT20 into the promotion code box at checkout. We’re told the sale will last through the 26th, so no rush… unless that Hodor shirt sells out before you can buy it. Why wait?

You can also visit our own Store page, which includes much of the same catalog of items, plus some Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk alternatives (without that 20% off applicable, of course) when available.

A few interviews trickling in before the finale that we thought we’d highlight:

• Emilia Clarke at TV Guide: Some remarks about riding horses, working with Jason Momoa, her wig, and what the toughest scenes where.
• Emilia Clarke at the Vulture: Besides similar information on horses, Clarke discusses the nude scenes as well as the prop horse’s heart she had to eat which turned out to be quite awful.
• Gethin Anthony with Shadowlocked: Discussing his role as Renly (see our own interview with the actor for more insights) as well as the Minister of Chance audio drama he’s involved in.
• Many Actors with TV Guide: Mark Addy, Jason Momoa, Emilia Clarke, Harry Lloyd, Kit Harrington, Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and George R.R. Martin are asked what their sigil would be, if they could choose, and what their first proclamation would be if they became rulers. Fun one.

Last but not least, as we mentioned the Vulture, here’s a funny video they’ve edited together, giving a buddy comedy spin to the relationship between Bronn and Tyrion Lannister:

It looks like Dynamite Entertainment has decided to run with A Game of Thrones as the title of their new, comic book adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s bestselling “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, according to Bleeding Cool, who also feature one of the covers for the first issue. According to Rich Johnston, covers for the issue will be provided by the very famed Alex Ross and fan-favorite Mike S. Miller (who drew the much-praised The Hedge Knight and The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword graphic novels.

We’ve previously reported on the adaptation, including an interview with Daniel Abraham, the SF/F author who’ll be handling the scripting chores. Look for an upcoming interview (and maybe some new art!) with artist Tommy Patterson (@TommyFPatterson) next week.

It looks like HBO has just sent out details of the official Game of Thrones panel at Comic Con. Here’s the scoop, via Jace Lacob (@televisionary) and Maureen Ryan (@moryan):

Day: Thursday, July 21st
Moderator: George R.R. Martin(!)
Participations: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Jason Momoa, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau… and more panelists to be announced, it seems.

That’ll be exciting, to say the least!

Pearson Moore of Winterfell Keep continues his thought-provoking series of essays on Game of Thrones. This time, his latest essay looks at all manner of swords—literal and figurative—in the narrative of episode 9, “Baelor”, and in the wider scope of Game of Thrones. And as to popular culture references? Pearson has a knack for them, and this time there’s a bit of The Matrix action going on.

You’ll also notice that at the bottom of the page (both this one and the feature page) is a new comment system, replacing our old one. Using Facebook Comments, anyone with an FB account (or, if you don’t want to use that, a Yahoo! or Hotmail account) will be able to comment directly and easily. We’re slowly getting comments into the rest of the site, but you’ll find them available on the Gallery as well as other sections of the site such as All Sorts of Weird Stuff.

A bit of a foregone conclusion: HBO has finally admitted that, yes, Belfast will again be the headquarters for the second season of Game of Thrones. No real surprise here, as various members of the cast and crew have indicated that they are or will be in Belfast for filming, but it’s good to know. Of note? A confirmation of Monday, July 25th as the planned start of shooting.

As Maureen Ryan notes, that happens to be the day after San Diego Comic Con—no surprise there, either, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau recently noting he’ll be there to promote the show,as have executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss. Series creator, co-executive producer, and writer of episode 8 George R.R. Martin will also be there, and we’re quite sure other members of the cast and crew will be in attendance.

The full press release can be found below.

There’s many neat fan sites out there for the books, but one of the new ones that absolutely knocked our socks off when we first came across them is the Inn at the Crossroads. The bloggers who run it have wowwed everyone (including GRRM) with their recipes, most of them drawn directly from the books and using medieval and Renaissance cooking techniques and recipes. With lovely photographs to go along with them, the Inn at the Crossroads—which already holds over 70 recipes, with more to come—is a great, engaging site for fans of the series.

And the hosts? They’re pretty engaging too! We’ve had the opportunity to interview them for Suvudu, with a bit of a focus on feasts and how to get a Seven Kingdoms-style to your meals. You can read the interview, “Like a Trencherman: Feasts and Feasting in the Seven Kingdoms”, at Suvudu!

Executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss sat down with Joy Press of the L.A. Times Showtracker to discuss the second season. Some interesting hints and details, including GRRM’s role in writing his script and figuring out its scope, women’s fashion in Essos, and more. Some highlights below (including some spoilers!):

Linda and I have cooked up our latest article for Tor.com, this one dealing with masterminds—characters that fans generally love to hate, or in some cases fawn over and admire! It’s definitely spoiler material, so avoid it if you’ve not read the books. There’s also a few notes comparing the “masterminds” to their representation in HBO’s Game of Thrones, because the show has taken a different tack with some of them, at least in regards to certain aspects of their scheming.

We’ve been invited by the Daily Beast to take part in a post-Finale roundtable! Jace Lacob, Maureen Ryan, Myles McNutt, Phil of Winter is Coming, and (I’m told) others will take part in the chat starting at 11AM PDT / 2 PM EDT on Monday June 20.

We’re embedding the chat below, and will be promoting this post on occasion so that you don’t forget—should be fun!

Our recorded discussion with Tom & Daniel of MTV Geek is now available! In it, we discuss episode 9’s scoring, the expansiveness of the show versus the novels (with some hints about the next season’s challenges in that area), the introduction of Shae and Tyrion’s revelation of his tragic marriage, and more.

Enjoy!

The sneak peeks continue, as artist John Picacio adds a new glimpse at the forthcoming 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, joining his earlier Bran and Sandor Clegane glimpses. This time, we get an awesome look at Arya Stark. As with all the previous calendar images, these are quite cropped, so it’ll be interesting to see the full-sized images.

John (and GRRM, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and probably a lot of other interesting people connected to the TV show and novels) will be present at San Diego Comic Con, so if you’re out there, keep an eye out.

The big delay in our episode 8 write-up was due to a lot of things, and those things made covering the post-episode coverage quite difficult. Then the massive flood of visitors post-episode 9 left us scrambling to keep the servers (yes, servers, plural) from melting down, with traffic spiking as high as 200% of normal—crazy! So, this list of links to what some of the top-flight critics have to say on the web is a bit belated… but better late than never, we say.

Originally, Ramin Djawadi’s soundtrack for Game of Thrones was scheduled to be released today, only to be pushed back to the 28th. We’re not sure of the whys or wherefors….

.... but HBO has gone ahead and given the soundtrack an early release on iTunes! Hear previews of all 29 tracks, which can be purchased at $0.99 apiece, or $9.99 for the whole collection. The iTunes digital album download appears to include a special “digital booklet” as an iTunes exclusive. Will be interesting to see if it includes never-before-seen stills.

Episode 9, Baelor, just had its ratings in for both the U.S. and U.K. In the U.S. the show held steady at 2.7 million viewers with only a small drop for the additional screening to a total of 3.4 million. This, despite the most-viewed NBA final in 16 years! That sounds good to us, and we’ll take it. It’ll be very interesting to what sort of draw next week’s season finale will have.

In the U.K., the picture is a little less rosy, but we’ve found that the U.K. viewership figures show remarkable amounts of variability: 507,000 viewers, down from 523,000 last week. The numbers for Episode 7’s total viewing are also a bit down on the previous episode, episode 6, with a total of 1.556 million viewers. Thanks to WyvernWood for those figures!

Grok! Studio, an entertainment company founded by Vince Gerardis, a co-producer on Game of Thrones and representative of various entertainment rights connected to a number of SF/F authors, is teasing that HBO and GRRM will be making an announcement connected to games at San Diego Comic Con. Gerardis was partner to the late Ralph Vicinanza of the Created By agency, and it looks like Grok! has inherited all or most of the client base from that company.

As we reported back in March 2010, HBO applied for a broad trademark category that did include games, though we speculated that these were for Flash-based games such as the ones HBO did eventually produce as part of the Maester’s Path and the Iron Throne marketing efforts. But… could HBO’s rights include video and/or PC games based on Game of Thrones (as distinct from those based on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, such as A Game of Thrones: Genesis and Cyanide‘s as-yet-untitled RPG)? We’ll have to wait and see what news comes down the pipe next month.

We should have the rest of our usual material on this week’s episode tomorrow, but Linda and I have—with a bit of help and more sharing of the work flow—stayed up way, way too long to squeeze out a full recap and book-to-screen breakdown comparing the “Baelor” to the corresponding chapters in the novel. Any spelling/grammar errors, we blame on the late hour and short timeline!

Our analysis/review part will have to wait, but until then, enjoy the guide!

On the heels of our “The Pointy End” episode guide being complete, we also have Pearson Moore’s essay on the episode, “Mighter Than the Sword: The Culture of Duty and Honour in Game of Thrones 1.08”. This is probably my favorite essay from Pearson yet, touching on a thematic topic of great interest to me ... and referencing one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite films, no less! A man of good and discerning taste, is Pearson.

You can read more of his articles at our Features page, where he is one of our contributors. At his own site, Winterfell Keep, you’ll find additional, thought-provoking essays and discussions related to the episodes and characters. He has also released the second volume of his Dragons & Direwolves series collecting his articles, including some exclusive content, which you can now purchase at Amazon.

HBO has released a few more items to the HBO Store, including some rather neat family tree shirts (for the Starks, Baratheons, and Targaryens—when’s the Lannister shirt coming, I wonder?), fine examples of good design work from the graphics team over there. And, of course, they’ve finally placed the original soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi (more details here), which is due to start shipping on June 28th. Not very long at all!

Our web storefront carries all the items, including the soundtrack (as well as a link to the pre-order page for it at Amazon.com, if one prefers). It’s going to be interesting to listen to Djawadi’s music out of the show, and perhaps see if the music he wrote was minimal or if the discreet usage of it was a choice by the producers.

Yes, very delayed, we know! Unfortunately, our brilliant plan to get our write-up out as quickly as possible proved… not so brilliant, and various delays that followed just kept pushing it back. But, after much effort, it’s all done: recap, analysis, book-to-screen breakdown, and even the audio discussion with our friends at MTV Geek (only Tom, Daniel, and I, as Linda wasn’t available at the time).

No worries, we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen with this next episode, “Baelor”... Speaking of which, below you’ll find the preview for the episode.

The Monte-Carlo Television Festival has been going on, and a number of actors from Game of Thrones were present: Sean Bean (Eddard Stark), Mark Addy (King Robert Baratheon), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen). There’s a great picture of the actors together here, posted by Roxanne Centola.

Naturally, there were interviews with the actors, and a couple of video interviews have surfaced on the web with Coster-Waldau and Clarke. Coster-Waldau (whom we’ve interviewed) has a very amusing remark regarding Hodor in “The Pointy End (see our interview with actor Kristian Nairn—where he hinted at that scene—here) and also appears to give first confirmation of the fact that he’s scheduled to appear at San Diego Comic Con as part of HBO’s promotion of the show. As to Clarke? She gets asked about the nude scenes and sex scenes, and has a surprising answer as to what was the most difficult of those scenes to film.

Via the forum, it’s been pointed out that there’s now an audio excerpt from A Dance with Dragons (Preorder: US, UK, Audio US, Audio UK) available at Random House’s site.

Due July 12th, we know from GRRM that the great Roy Dotrice—the popular reader of the first three books, the first of which he won a Guinness Record for the total number of distinct characters he voiced—is back for this book. In the excerpt (available after clicking the Audiobook button), Dotrice reads from a “new” POV, although it’s not all that it may seem… Spoilers below!

The latest Wild Cards title, Fort Freak, is due on June 21st from Tor and the Wild Cards Trust ... and it looks like Tor has decided to promote it by releasing a full story: “The Rook”, by Melinda Snodgrass, one of the original founders of the Wild Cards universe!

It’s a fun read, really reminding us of some of the early novels in the feel and the focus on New York City as the location. The eponymous “Fort Freak” is the nickname for the 5th Police Precinct which is responsible for Jokertown, and which is the central setting of the novel.

Go ahead and check it out!

The auction items are now up on EBay (the descriptions including the text ‘Charity Auction for Joplin Disaster Relief’). GRRM, Neil Gaiman, and others have generously contributed signed books, collectibles, and more to do their part to help with the recent devastation in Joplin, Missouri following a series of devastating tornadoes.

Check it out, and please bid generously! Among the books available are a signed copy of A Game of Thrones, signed copies of various Wild Cards books and RPG supplements, and more.

The Emmy nomination ballots have been published for the nominating voters to make use of. These ballots contain the submissions from various shows and networks for awards, and the nominating ballots will narrow that list down to the final nominees. Naturally, Game of Thrones shows up quite a bit! See our summary of the series’ submissions below.

Sky Atlantic snuck this one up on us, not having told us they were having Michelle Fairley’s interview just then! Very interesting hearing the actress (who doesn’t give many interviews at all) discuss her character and Robb. And, yes, they have Linda and I on towards the end to discuss the episode. Good times!

And “The Pointy End” (yes, recap and analysis of the episode still to come) has hit a new high for an original airing, with 2.715 million viewers according to TV By the Numbers. That’s up 13% from last week’s figure. Overnight, the show’s pulled in 3.6 million viewers, according to Deadline Hollywood.

In the U.K., Game of Thrones is holding steady on the overnights, 523,000 viewers (just 4,000 less than the previous week). More importantly, total viewership across the week is in concerning episode 6, and that’s reached 1.621 million viewers, according to BARB, the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board.

Thanks to WyvernWood for the U.K. information.

Just to bring everyone up to speed on this and past downtime issues:

In the last couple of months, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum has boomed, becoming the #1 spot on the web to discuss the series, and we thought that was the major part of the issues. We’ve worked hard to address many issues, and have succeeded to some degree. But ... we just discovered another part: the Wiki of Ice and Fire. We never realized just how used the wiki is (as an aside—hats off to our various wiki editors who’ve made it such a fantastic resource! Anyone who’s a member of the forum can join in editing it, BTW), until we put in Google Analytics a couple of days ago….

It turns out the wiki draws even more traffic than the forum does! No wonder the forum was suddenly unable to keep up with the crush: it was fighting for MySQL connection space with the wiki. This led us to experiment with a major increase in maximum MySQL connections allowed, but that was badly advised on my part—we should have waited for a quieter period to try it. It ended up completely choking the server, so much so that our wonderful host (Sparks) could only reboot it in hopes of getting in after it restarted to fix things…. but the crush of traffic to the wiki and forum meant that it was no go. Ultimately, the server had to be taken down and a tech at the data center shut off Apache before putting it back on the web for Sparks to settle it down. The reboots and extreme hard disk and memory usage led to corruption that also had to repaired.

End result? Boy, howdy, Westeros.org is an extremely popular site—thank you very much, to our visitors, the members of the forum, the wiki editors, Sparks, and everyone else who’s contributed to its existence!—but we need to do more tinkering. This may well include a move to a mightier server, and some other back-end changes to help alleviate the problems as far as possible. The serve move, if it happens, may happen as soon as next week.

More info when we have it .. and please, keep an eye out for our annual summer fundraiser, a way to pay back Sparks for the work she’s done and to make sure the forum and wiki can keep on going!

A little bird has pointed out that Game of Thrones has garnered its first nomination, in the Critics’ Choice Awards‘s Best Drama Series category. A big category with some big competition, including fellow HBO series Boardwalk Empire, AMC’s tremendous Mad Men, and AMC’s own page-to-screen adaptation The Walking Dead.

Congratulations to the cast and crew of the series! Although there’s no other nominations, we expect to see a few more of these coming along in the days and months to come.

George R.R. Martin has updated his official site with some an additional event date in “Appearances”, plus some new posts in “Not a Blog”. Of note is this post in which he gives a sneak peek at Valyrian Steel‘s warhammer for King Robert, designed to GRRM’s detailed specifications. That would certainly dent some steel and crack a few bones, we suspect…

Also, in this post, he shares a reminder that he will be signing at Hastings Books in Albuqerque, at 1:00PM, for the release of the Doorways graphic novel adapted by GRRM from his pilot script for a science fiction TV series he developed and which got as far as a pilot. The book, published by IDW, collects the six issue comic book series.

Publisher’s Weekly is first out of the gate with a very early review of A Dance with Dragons (Preorder: US, UK), which is due July 12th, probably off a galley proof with the ink still wet!

The review does contain some spoilers, so beware. Here’s a non-spoiler excerpt, however:

For the full, spoilerish review, go here.

George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman have contributed items to Meta-Games Unlimited, a gaming story in Missouri, for their charitable efforts following the devastating tornado that Joplin, Missouri on May 22nd. The items will be placed on E-bay beginning June 6th, and the auctions will last one week.

A number of autographed books and other items are there from GRRM, including a singed copy of A Game of Thrones, a signed pre-release A Feast for Crow chapbook that was released by the publisher back in 20034 or 2005 or thereabouts, a signed Tuf Voyaging (mistakingly titled The Voyaging), a number of gaming books for Wild Cards and the A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game from Green Ronin, and more.

The Evening Standard magazine has a “diary” piece by none other than Charles Dance, who plays the Lannister patriarch Lord Tywin in Game of Thrones. He mentions the series at a couple of points, but mostly it’s a fine look at his daily life as an actor from his own perspective.

Particularly love the anecdote about Sir John Gielgud at the end.

Patrick St. Denis of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has a special contest for fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. As Pat explains, he had a series of wagers with GRRM that he finally won (if I’m not mistaken, George won the first couple of bets). What did he win? The chance to have a character named after him that would die a gruesome death in a novel of the series. As it happens, Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain (a reference to Montreal) is now in A Dance with Dragons, and he does indeed die a gruesome death.

But just how does he die? That’s the question Anne Groell, the book’s editor, poses to fans who want a chance to win an autographed copy of A Dance with Dragons. Pat provides a list of manners of deaths that he suggests actually happen in the novel (and therefore could be considered spoilers—you’ve been warned), and asks those who want to enter the contest to take a guess as to how brave Ser Patrek meets his end.

Good luck to those taking a stab at it!

Usually, HBO releases two of these… but it looks like there’s just one, at least for now. It’s a nice peek, though, as it features a bit of Tyrion and Bronn interaction. And, you know, Bronn’s actual name for the first name! I do wonder, however, at the lack of horses…

David J. Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones, answered a few questions for Linda and I concerning his work on the project—including information on one of the languages he created for the show that not so many fans are aware about!

You can find the interview over at Suvudu, Random House’s portal for SF/F and more!

Our ongoing series of podcasts with MTV Geek‘s Tom and Daniel now has caught up to episode 7! You can find it over at our episode guide. Beware, some spoilers for the second season inherent to the discussion.

Award-winning artist John Picacio—recently nominated for three Chesley Awards—continues his sneak peeks for the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar after having previously given a look at Bran Stark.

Fans were asked to vote, and it looks the Hound trumped Arya Stark and Melisandre of Asshai as the subject of his next sneak peek.

The calendar is due to be released July 12, and Picacio and GRRM will be on hand for autographs when it’s sold at San Diego Comic Con.

Our latest A Song of Ice and Fire-related article is up at Tor.com: “The Brothers Baratheon”. It’s a consideration on the dynamics between the three Baratheon brothers, their separate histories, and their differing attitudes and capacities. For us, the three brothers are nearly as central to the story as the “big three” of Stark, Lannister, and Targaryen, with their roles in the narrative having long-range impact that affects everyone in the narrative.

For more of our articles, you can look here to find them all.

Our latest article from essayist Pearson Moore is online, with a focus on seven diffrent arguments regarding kingship and rule in the Seven Kingdoms. Thoughtful work as always!

After last weeks very small drop in the ratings—which was strange, coming off of episode 5—the ratings for this Memorial Day weekend looked unlikely to sustain growth. And that, we suppose, is true enough: as reported by James Hibberd for EW, the show held steady at 2.4 million viewers, with 3.2 million in total after the repeat that evening. However, as Hibberd notes, this particular Sundy evening was down 21% overall in viewership, so holding steady isn’t bad at all.

Hibberd predicts a rise this Sunday, but we’re not so sure: game 3 of the NBA Finals are taking place at the same time, and that’s bound to draw a few eyeballs, especially if the Mavericks and Heat (Go, Heat! BTW) are 1-1 going into that game.

As we’ve previously reported, Game of Thrones is due to have an official music compilation released on June 28th (not June 14th as previously planned), which can already be pre-ordered.

Film Music Reporter has now gotten a hold of more details, including the full track listing. A sampling of the track titles is below, but for the full details (beware: some of the titles are spoilerish!), visit their site,