Westeros

In his latest “Not a Blog” update concerning his signing tour, George R.R. Martin notes that a thousand people turned up to have their books defaced in Seattle… but that that wasn’t the only thing he did. He visited the Amazon.com headquarters, apparently… and he dropped by the studio of renowned game developer Bungie, creators of the Halo franchise. Well, suffice it to say, this has raised some eyebrows.

Bungie has moved to being an independent developer after a long stint under the auspices of Microsoft, and they caused a bit of a stir when they announced (on April 29, 2010) that they had signed a 10-year deal with Activision Blizzard to develop games based on a “new IP” for the company. Details have been thin on the ground, except that there has been some argument as to whether the first big project within the IP with be an MMO (sometimes dubbed an “action MMO”  by the press) or not; a spokesperson stated they were at a conference, only to have Bungie later state that it was actually a joke. So, MMO or not? Who knows.

Rumors have certainly suggested it’s an FPS MMO, and an anonymous source—claiming to have been one of thirty contractors let go by the company—indicated it was in a new, science fictional setting. So… maybe it really is just that Bungie are a bunch of geeks and sent out the invitation to George (who, for all we know, may well have played games of theirs like Myth: The Fallen Lords, in the days when he had time for such things).

Or, maybe it’s something else? This doesn’t even go to mention the possibility that Bungie’s new IP is actually licensed from works other than A Song of Ice and Fire, such as his ‘Thousand Worlds’ science fiction setting, or something like Wild Cards. However… there does seem to be one thing that may—may—suggest that it’s definitely not ASoIaF, and may indeed have nothing at all to do with GRRM’s work: the studio put forward the notion that the property could include spin-offs like comics or movies. It seems clearly impossible for ASoIaF to fall under that, and while Wild Cards is a shared-world series, it doesn’t seem to us like the Wild Cards Consortium would necessarily have a game studio take over such aspects of their intellectual property (than again, we could be wrong).

Wait a minute. A massive social game. Something on mobile platforms. And guess what Bungie announced in June? Yeah, that’s right, a social/mobile initiative called Aerospace in which Bungie partners with independent studios and provides them resources and support to get their games out there. Is this what’s going on? This seems to fit the sort of thing that may be going on, rather than the “new IP” which surely sounds like it’s something Bungie wants to own lock, stock, and barrel. Who’s ready for a Game of Thrones game where rather than farm, Farmville-style, you burn crops and raze buildings to the ground?  That’s what Grok! Studio—which represents some of the media rights for GRRM’s work, as well as that of many other notable authors—has been hinting at, suggesting that HBO may be looking into a massive, multiplayer social game based on the TV series.

Okay, enough speculation. Whatever the reason for Martin’s visit to Bungie, we won’t have to wait for Bungie for a PC game based on A Song of Ice and Fire: Cyanide Studio and Focus Home Interactive are aiming to release A Game of Thrones: Genesis—a unique strategy game—this summer, and they have an RPG in the works as well.

Thanks to Maureen Ryan of AOL TV, there’s a great article covering both the TCA and part of Ryan’s exclusive interview with George R.R. Martin Yesterday, HBO had its session at the Television Critics Association press tour, and while they discussed many of their current programs, questions did circle back to Game of Thrones, presently in production for its second season.

Surely we can call the World Fantasy Awards a tourney? Because the third “Dunk and Egg” novella, “The Mystery Knight”, is nominated for this year’s awards. Published in the Martin and Dozois-edited cross-genre anthology Warriors (US, UK), “The Mystery Knight” is the second of the “Dunk & Egg” novellas to be nominated for the award, with the first entry in the series, “The Hedge Knight”, also having been nominated.

Also of note, 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (US, UK) artist, John Picacio, has also been nominated in the Best Artist category.

Congratulations to them both, and to all the nominees!

Continuing our video series discussing plot elements and details of A Dance with Dragons (first video here), Linda and I discuss some important things concerning Jon Snow. Suffice it to say, there are spoilers! Comments will, naturally, have spoilers as well.

For more discussion about the novel and the series (as well as the TV show), be sure to visit our board, the A Song of Ice and Fire Forum, where we’ve a pretty amazing community with a lot of great discussions on just about everything under the sun.

An hour and a half left before the submission of questions, and voting on same, closes for tomorrow’s live-streamed Authors@Google chat with George R.R. Martin!

A lot of interesting questions in there. At this stage, unless you’ve a really amazing question, it’s unlikely that a new question will get enough up-votes to be in the top selection… but you can certainly influence which questions are likeliest to be asked, just by voting!

The event will be the first Authors@Google event to ever be streamed live from the Googleplex. It will start at 12PDT on the 28th, via this URL.

BlueBolt, the lead visual effects vendors for the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, have posted a video of VFX breakdowns to give a sense of the process. It’s a great display of movie magic. According to our interview with BlueBolt co-founder and first season VFX producer Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor, BlueBolt will not be the lead VFX vendor this season; check out our interview for some of the reasons why, which are actually pretty exciting!

Or, our second interview with Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau! Not much more to say here—why delay the read? It’s short but sweet… and Nikolaj dodged the one question we were most hoping he’d answer. Well-played, Kingslayer, well-played.

Read the interview!

San Diego Comic Con’s over, but more interviews are appearing done around then (keep your eye out for one of our own!), and here‘s a video interview from the CBC in which George R.R. Martin discusses the adaptation by HBO, its genesis, and the impact its had. Oh, and he mentions The World of Ice and Fire, which he’s co-authoring with Linda and I!

This was unexpected, and pleasant, news:  according to SF Awards Watch (as originally reported in Chinese Science Fiction Newsletter, George R.R. Martin has won “Most Popular Foreign Author” in the annual Galaxy Awards run by Science Fiction World magazine in China.

China actually has quite a burgeoning science fiction and fantasy readership, with SFW at one point claiming the largest circulation of any science fiction periodical in the world.

Congratulations, George!

As promised in our video review of A Dance with Dragons, Linda and I recorded a few videos discussing various topics we thought interesting and worth talking about from George R.R. Martin’s latest entry into the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Today we’re releasing the first set—I recalled only rather belatedly that I had 15 minutes, not 10 minutes, per video, so this first bunch is split in two—on the topic of… well, see for yourself. But note: there are definitely spoilers.

For further discussion of these and many other topics, we highly recommend the forum, and have begun work to expand the Citadel’s Frequently Asked Questions and Prophecies sections to cover the novel, with work soon about to go under way on the Concordance.

... paper of record, the New York Times, and several of its best seller lists! With a phenomenal opening week of sales making it the fastest-selling new fiction release of 2011 to date, A Dance with Dragons stormed atop the Hardcover Fiction, E-book fiction, and Combined Print and E-Book charts, making the second #1 debut for George R.R. Martin (after A Feast for Crows back in 2005). Besides that, after briefly dipping, A Game of Thrones has surged back into the #1 Mass-market Paperback Fiction list, giving GRRM no less than 4 #1’s this week. A tremendous, and well-deserved, accomplishment!

To add to the plaudits, we note that A Dance with Dragons also debuted at #1 on USA Today’s best seller list, the first time George has managed that feat (AFfC ended up at #2).

The Times has a graphic showing the climb through the charts of all five novels of the series. Beginning with the Game of Thrones hype, the novels have climbed upward, with A Game of Thronesnow having spent 14 weeks in the top ten of the combined print and e-book charts.

Following up on our previous report, Access Hollywood has posted two videos, the first featuring several minutes with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Ser Jaime Lannister), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), and Emilia Clarke Daenerys Targaryen), discussing season 2.

In the earlier article, the quote from Coster-Waldau made it seem as if characters not in the novels would be making an appearance, but from watching the video it seems much likelier that he’s simply referring to characters who have been introduced from A Clash of Kings, the second novel in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series.

See the videos below!

Access Hollywood has one of the most detailed Season 2 remarks from the actors and executive producers of HBO’s Game of Thrones. A lot of choice quotes here. But here’s a couple of highlights:

• Kit Harington confirms an old, old report (we first heard of it around the time S1 wrapped filming) that the production is headed to Iceland: “It was cold last season, but this season we’re going to Iceland,” he said. “It’s going to be freezing, so that’s going to be a bit of a task…it’s pretty grueling stuff for Jon Snow.””
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau apparently indicates some not-from-the-books new characters are part of his story: “I heard they were going to add new characters, but I didn’t know what that meant,” he explained. “I know now. And it’s very cool.”
• Executive producers Benioff and Weiss confirm some A Storm of Swords plot details will figure into the second season “They also revealed that some plot details from Martin’s third novel, “A Storm of Swords,” will be used in Season 2.”

The voting for this year’s Ennie Awards is now open to the public, and Green Ronin—publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying—are up for several awards!

Of note, the A Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide is up for three awards: Best Cover Art (this is by the amazing Michael Komarck), Best Setting, and the coveted Product of the Year. GR has a number of other products nominated, including their DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook which is also competing in the Product of the Year category.

Congratulations to Green Ronin, and please considering weighing in with your vote!

There have been many reports and tweets covering the panel (with reports stating as many as 7,000 people were waiting in line for a relatively few vacant seats), and we expect to have some fuller reports down the road, but in brief one of the main questions on the minds of many—whether the panel might unveil any cast-but-unannounced roles—was answered quite succinctly: no.

This was a celebration of the first season, the actors and the writers and the fans, and though the second season was discussed somewhat, it was not in any great detail.

Lots and lots of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones, and Wild Cards-related events at San Diego Comic Con. Below, we’ll try and pick out some of the most notable:

We previously posted our video with our thoughts on ADwD, but that was a bit scattershot.

Now we’ve added our written review of the book, which includes some context for its writing and what we believe its place is in the overall narrative. It’s a hefty book (over 3 lbs., we’re told), and there’s a lot to consider, so this review came out… uhm, rather lengthy!

And another casting has now been revealed by James Hibberd of EW (who scores a hat-trick, with three casting announcement scoops in one day)!

Joining Carice van Houten, Stephen Dillane, and Oliver Ford Davies is actor Liam Cunningham, late of Starz’s now-cancelled Camelot. This, paired with Dillane having been in the film King Arthur (in the role of Merlin), suggests Camelot actor Clive Standen was absolutely on the mark when he said a Camelot actor and another one who’d been in some other Arthurian production were being cast.

Cunningham, an Irish actor and veteran of stage and screen, has been involved in a number of genre productions besides Camelot; including Dog Soldiers, the remake of Clash of the Titans, and Centurion.

We pretty quickly figured out that George’s latest casting clue concerned the Laurence Oliver Award-winning actor Oliver Ford Davies would play the part of Maester Cressen, and now GRRM has confirmed!

Cressen is an aged maester in the service of Stannis Baratheon. Having served Stannis’s father, Lord Steffon, Cressen went on to serve Stannis after Robert—newly-crowned—appointed him as Lord of Dragonstone. Cressen has advised Stannis over the years, but is growing old and increasingly marginalized as Melisandre of Asshai, a red priestess of R’hllor from the far-distant land of Asshai, begins to hold sway at Stannis’s court. Melisandre and Stannis have both been cast, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the Cressen news has come out to compliment it.

Below, we have a video featuring an excellent scene from the 2009 Hamlet featuring David Tennant (perhaps best known for his Dr. Who stint) and Davies in the roles of Hamlet and Polonious, respectively. (As a side note, the clip is part of a video series comparing a number of productions of Hamlet—it’s quite an amazing idea!)

James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly has the scoop!

Melisandre of Asshai, also known as the Red Woman, will be played by Dutch actress Carice van Houten, perhaps best known internationally for her leading role in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book. She’s also recently co-starred with Sean Bean in the british medieval action-horror film Black Death (a nice still of her from that film can be found here).

As for Stannis Baratheon, King Robert’s brother (and Renly’s elder brother), an HBO veteran has ended in the role, British actor Stephen Dillane. Dillane received an Emmy nomination in his role of Thomas Jeffreson in the much-lauded HBO miniseries John Adams.

Below we have a couple of videos featuring both actors (Van Houten in an interview, Dillane in a scene as Jefferson). This looks like another great casting job by Emmy nominated casting directors Nina Gold and Robert Sterne!

Via Not a Blog, George has a brand new casting clue:

Have at it, Game of Thrones fans!

This is quite cool: George R.R. Martin will be visiting Google as part of the Authors@Google series. This means about an hour of Martin speaking about his work (and, doubtless, the TV series based on it), and for the first time ever, this Authors@Google appearance will be live-streamed on July 28th at 12PM PDT via the @Google Talks page.

Best of all, Google’s accepting questions from fans out on the internet, with a nifty use of their Google Moderator system to allow people to vote questions up or down. If you’d like to submit a question, or weigh in on questions that are already there (you’ll even find one from Linda and I, under the user name Balerion300) , you can find the submission and voting page here through the 27th at 12PM PDT.

And now for a musical interlude.

Of course, Ramin Djawadi’s soundtrack (US: CD, MP3; UK: CD) is out there (and it’s quite excellent, too!). His main title theme may have been overlooked at the Emmys, but it’s inspired many, many incredible covers.

But the show itself has inspired musical artists, and music fans in general, to take it all a step further. Below, we present two of the more recent efforts that caught our attention.

The 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (US, UK) is now shipping!

The award-winning artist John Picacio has unveiled all twelve images, with commentary, on his blog. Not only does he describe the basic process, but he provides explanations about his inspirations, his views on the characters, and more. The detail with which he’s able to render characters is quite amazing.

Some truly amazing work here! Linda and I are especially fond of are his depiction of the Others (or White Walkers, as they’re usually called on HBO’s TV adaptation) and his Melisandre. Ice and fire, indeed. I’m also quite fond of his terrific depiction of the Red Viper taking on the Mountain that Rides.

NPR’s weekend edition of All Things Considered recorded an interview with George R.R. Martin concerning his work which will be broadcast shortly, generally at 5 P.M. (check your local listings). The audio will be added to this article soon, but if you want to listen live, it looks like WAMU streams live and will be carrying the program shortly.

Pearson Moore, featured writer for Westeros.org, is putting together a companion book for the first season of Game of Thrones.

This “Direwolves and Dragons Season One Omnibus” will contain every episode essay from Season One, plus essays on some of the major characters—;Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and Arya Stark, to name a few.  What would you like to see in a companion book?  Vote on the essay you would like to read in “Direwolves and Dragons”.  The top two vote-getters will be included as 3500 to 6000 word essays in Pearson Moore’s Season One companion book, set for release in late August.  Here’s the poll:

At the Union Square signing, George R.R. Martin answered quite a few questions… and was presented with a gift basket of delicious, “A Song of Ice and Fire”-inspired food by a fan of the Inn at the Crossroads, the terrific food blog that’s been looking at the food of the setting. We did an interview with them for Suvudu last month, which you can find here.

Well, the gift gave George the perfect moment to reveal something quite cool: Random House will be publishing A Cookbook of Ice and Fire (possibly a tenative title), written by Inn at the Crossroads founders Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer! Well-deserved, and one we’ll be looking forward to. You can find editor Anne Groell confirming the news here, and GRRM’s statement in the video embedded below.

We’ve posted a signing report from last night’s Union Square signing, with reports of the crowd having hit about 1,800 fans showing up for the event (more than twice the crowd that showed up for A Feast for Crows).

There’s a number of other entries in the So Spake Martin collection, linking to various interviews and on-line chats that have been published over the last days. Make sure to check them out!

Via HBO, we’ve received statements from executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as well as Best Supporting Actor nominee Peter Dinklage, regarding their success and that of Game of Thrones in the 2011 Emmy Nominations:

The 2011 Emmy nominations are out, and Game of Thrones was well-represented with nominations in 13 categories, including getting a hold of the much-coveted Best Drama nomination, plus nominations for executive producers and lead writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, for director Timothy van Patten, and for actor Peter Dinklage. Congratulations to everyone nominated! You’ll find the full list below.

Another—and, I believe, our last for now—article for Tor.com regarding A Song of Ice and Fire has now gone live! The articles discusses the important, and often rather troubling, role that fathers play in the series. Some examples are discussed, and perhaps some questions raised. There are spoilers through the fourth novel in the series, but nothing from A Dance with Dragons.

Enjoy!

The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with our first signing report in awhile, courtesy of a member of our A Song of Ice and Fire forum. According to the estimate there, some 1,500 people have turned up—not quite as many as the 2,000 in Slovenia, but early days yet!

There’s some interesting details, both about Game of Thrones and the novels, and a hint about what may be in the next novel, The Winds of Winter, so read the report!

Chapters Books in Canada asked for reader-submitted questions for an exclusive interview with George R.R. Martin for the release of A Dance with Dragons, and they have posted the results. Right off the bat, they had some great answers. For example, here’s a new bit of news we’ve not had before, connected to the fourth Dunk & Egg novella Martin recently said would be published in his latest anthology with Gardner Dozois, Dangerous Women:

There’s a lot of good details in there, so give it a read.

There’s a great deal of new coverage for A Dance with Dragons, now that the book has been released world-wide in its English editions. Our own forum has been hopping with discussion, and there’s some great articles and interviews out there. Here’s a sampling:

• EW Interviews GRRM: An excellent interview, although it has some small spoilers for both A Dance with Dragons and the next book, The Winds of Winter.
• Westeros Interviews GRRM: Posted late last night, but here it is again! A fairly vague, mild spoiler in there.
• Review at TIME.com: TV critic and series fan James Poniewozik reviews the book and also discusses the problems it may generate for TV adaptation. All in all, very positive: “All this makes for a thousand-page book that feels half as long, that moves dextrously, answers key questions and gobsmacks you with convincing feints and change-ups.”
• USA Today Cover Feature: With quotes from our friend David MaCaman, founder of the Brotherhood without Banners fan group, and Linda and I. Regarding the TV show, it notes that the average viewership per episode of the series has climbed to 8.9 million according to HBO.
• Green Bay Press Gazette: Reveals that over 650,000 copies of A Dance with Dragons are in print. That’s over twice the initial print run of A Feast for Crows. It also adds that 4 million copies of the previous four novels have been printed to cover demand since January of this year. 4 million. Since January. Simply mind-boggling. This brings the series up to 8.5 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.
• Review at the LA Times: Fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer gives an amazing review of the novel, his erudite knowledge of the field allowing him to place Martin in the context of his influences, particularly Jack Vance. Quite a fan of this one
• Review at Salon.com: Another exceptional review from Andrew Leonard, a staff writer at Salon who also happens to be a genuine fan of the series, but one who was not a great fan of the previous volume.
• Globe and Mail profile: A look at Martin’s relationship both to the novels and the TV series that springs from them.
• Review at NPR: Lev Grossman provides a second review, and reads it on NPR’s All Things Considered program.
• On Point Interview: Great radio interview with the On Point program on WBUR in Boston, ahead of his signing in Burlington today.

As previously promised, our interview with GRRM ahead of the release of A Dance with Dragons is now online at the So Spake Martin collection. There is, I think, one extremely vague spoiler, one that probably isn’t anything but expected for those who know which POVs were in the book and remember where they were headed as of A Storm of Swords.

In any case, we had a good time discussing some of the points of the story with George, looking back at the genesis of the series, how he roughed out the overall story, and some details regarding the infamous Meereenese Knot.

Yesterday, we posted the first part of Linda and I discussing/reviewing A Dance with Dragons (Preorder at Amazon: Hardcover US, Hardcover UK, Kindle US, Kindle UK, Audio US, Audio UK). Today, we’ve got the rest available! It’s rambling, I’m having an allergy attack at the time that leaves me sniffling and watery eyed, audio cuts out in the last seconds of the first video (I switched to avidemux to split the rest, no problems now)—we know, and our apologies for those little problems. Hopefully the content is worth it! We’ve learned some lessons from this experience as we plan to take on into future videos. We’re planning a brief series, probably covering particular POVs, maybe touching on some of the key events, and so on.

Before pressing on, however, some public service announcements.

First, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum in relation to tomorrow’s release of A Dance with Dragons. On the 12th, we will open the ADwD forum. I think we shall also open an ADWD “Still Reading” forum a day or two after, for those who want to read more deliberately, and discuss what they’re reading chapter by chapter without having information from later chapters being brought in. These will be the only places where A Dance with Dragons will be discussed through August 12th. All topics must contain [ADwD Spoiler] in the title (to make it easier for people browsing the ‘Latest Posts’ feature to distinguish them and titles must not be in themselves spoiling anything. We will probably have topic creation as a moderator-approved activity. Those who spoil it for others can be expected to sit out discussion on the forum for a length of time proportional to how deliberate the spoiling appeared to be. We cannot guarantee that there’ll be no spoilers in the forum’s other sections, but past experience suggests it will not be a significant issue.

To prevent spoilers prior to the 12th, new members of the forum have had various things restricted, but those restrictions will largely lift on the 12th, going back to our standard set up.

There is, of course, also the Wiki of Ice and Fire. Our hope is that no ADwD-updates take place earlier than a week after its release, but we allow our editors to sort these things out for themselves, so we’ll see what they do. My suggestion is to tread carefully at the wiki for the time being. Make note if the index of an entry (as in a character entry) has an ADwD notation, and then be careful as you scroll down.

Finally, word is that Amazon.com has started shipping the novels in bulk throughout the country, with many people who had 1-2 days priority shipping set to get them tomorrow. Might be that if you live in the right area, an order placed today will get to you tomorrow (especially if you opt for overnight). Besides that, there will be locations across the country (and in other countries as well) which will stay open until midnight to allow shoppers to get the back at that time. In particular, the expectation is that the kindle edition will be released at 12:01 AM on the 12th, so if you’ve a Kindle-capable device (including Kindle for the PC), that may be a way to go.

Okay, and here, at last, our three part discussion/review:

Something new from Linda and I: a video discussion between us about George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, covering the experience of reading it early, where we place it in the hierarchy of the novels, and the beginnings of some more detailed discussion. Despite that, it is spoiler-free. It is, also, the first of three parts.

And, just to emphasize, this has been our first try and this, and there are various little problems—the video cuts off audio for the last few seconds (the result of a mistake in splitting it, I think), I need to tweak the microphone volume next time we record one of these, and I also had a bit of an allergy attack going on and so there’s some sniffling and nose-rubbing for which I very much apologize!

So, here’s part 1. The rest of the recording (split into two parts—it’s about 32 minutes long in total) will be ready tomorrow, we expect.

Not only is this a reminder to vote in the Tubey Awards over at Television Without Pity, but an encouragement to join the Game of Thrones fans who’ve supported the show through two rounds of Spoiler TV’s battle for best TV show. After a couple of relatively easy wins, Game of Thrones has come up against a venerable (yes, I went there!) favorite: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, Linda and I adore Buffy and Angel and the works of Joss Whedon in general, owning the DVD sets and the comics and all that jazz…

But judging season for season, Game of Thrones certainly tops Buffy’s first season in our book. So why not give it a vote? There’s quite a few other shows being paired up against one another as well, for those interested in playing the field.

Vote now!

George R.R. Martin and several Wild Cards authors—Melinda Snodgrass, Victor Milan, and John Jos. Miller.—will today be signing copies of Fort Freak and other Wild Cards books at Page 1 Books in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The signing will run from 2:30PM through to around 5PM. George notes on his “Not a Blog” that this is very much a Wild Cards event:

Part 2 of the Speakeasy interview with GRRM has been posted, and in it George discusses A Dance with Dragons a far bit, with some remarks on The Winds of Winter. Another good one. Thanks to the interview, Christopher J. Farley, for pointing out that it was up!

We wrapped an interview with George over today, most of which we’ll publish on Monday. There are some spoilery bits that we’ll hold off for later.

Over at Suvudu, there’s an informative and interesting interview with the U.S. editor of A Dance with Dragons, Anne Groell concerning the novel and the series. The fact that the editors do actively play a role in shaping the novel is something that some people may be unaware of, or may choose to doubt because they have notions that a “big author” doesn’t get edited, and Anne sets that straight. We do wonder what it is that she learned about The Winds of Winter that has her so excited…

On top of that, GRRM recently revealed that A Dance with Dragons has gone into its sixth hardcover printing, and that’s before it’s even released on July 12th—clearly, demand is outstripping supply, and Bantam’s playing catch-up!

Want to add to their problems? Pre-order the book at Amazon.com: US, UK, Audio US, Audio UK

Just as we speculated yesterday, George R.R. Martin has confirmed that actress Gwendoline Christie (lovegwendoline on Twitter) is now Brienne of Tarth! As he says in his confirmation post:

Below is a sampling of Youtube videos featuring Christie.

Well, things are finally heating up on the casting front. After Natalie Dormer was announced as Margaery Tyrell, we had all expected roles to be noted one after another… but it was strangely silent. Word from HBO was that they weren’t really going to try to hide casting information as deals were made, but it seems that isn’t wholly right, since it seems two roles have been cast: Spotlight.com indicates that a Kerr Logan has been cast as a character named “Mathos”. This led to speculation that he’s playing Mathos Mallarwan, one of the Pureborn of Qarth, but word that that role hadn’t been cast and the fact that a Matthos Seaworth is one of Davos Seaworth’s sons makes us think that’s the role.

More notably since then, Spotlight has yielded up Gemma Whelan as “Yara Greyjoy”, which as Winter is Coming notes was the name of the role given to Theon’s sister in a casing call sheet that was shared at our A Song of Ice and Fire forum. It seems the aversion to having characters with similar names—hence Jhogo being renamed to Rakharo to avoid confusion with Drogo, and Robert Arryn to Robin Arryn—strikes again, given the similarity of Asha to Osha. Hrm…

And, last but not least, what seems to be a brand new clue from George, titled “I’m Blue”, which suggests we’re looking at Brienne of Tarth:

For what it’s worth, Isabella of France—wife of Edward II, mother of Edward III—was called the She-wolf of France. And the Barbican happens to be a noted theatre in the U.K., so we suspect we’re looking for an Isabella/Isabelle who’s performed at the Barbican, at present….

UPDATE:

Okay, we’re pretty sure we’ve figured this one out: Gwendoline Christie, a 6’3” actress and performer. In her association with musician Patrick Wolf, she shot the video for “Damaris”... which had a B-side titled “Queen Isabella”. She’s performed at the Barbican in the role of the Queen in Cymbeline, and she was photographed as Playboy Bunny by an Australian artist.

If this is so, we’re very happy indeed. She first came to our attention in November of last year when she tweeted that she really wanted the role, something we noted back then. From the talk on Twitter, it sounds like she was made aware of the role by fan Paul Gude, so good on him!. She’s remained our favorite choice for the role all this while, so if this is true, we’re pleased as punch.

The review embargo for A Dance with Dragons is lifted, and the reviews are now appearing. First out of the gate was James Hibberd with his not-quite-review for EW, which we linked here and gave our own, brief take to. Now there’s a number more, and we expect to say yet more in the coming days. Here’s a list:

• Tor.com: Author Jo Walton takes a look at the book in a spoiler-free way. She’s One Of Us in a way most professional book critics aren’t, so fantasy fans may find this the most interesting of the reviews.
• The Daily Beast: TV Critic Jace Lacob, a fan of the novels and the TV show alike, gives his views. It’s a very positive review, in which he closes by stating it, “might also be Martin’s finest work yet, a taut and relentless masterpiece…” For those who have avoided learning who new POVs in the book are, though, you’ll want to avoid this one as he names one of them.
• Time.com: Reviewer (and fantasy author) Lev Grossman writes a long and very positive review, although there’s a minor POV spoiler embedded in it (and, yes, Lev mixes up the number of novels in the series, though I expect that will be corrected in short order). He says, “Martin has produced—is producing, since the series isn’t over—the great fantasy epic of our era.”

We’re told the Daily Mail has also published a positive review of the book, but it doesn’t seem to be available on-line as of yet.

Not quite a review, but James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly shares a few thoughts on the book in the course of answering 10 questions about the book. The spoilers are mild, but they’re there, so don’t click through if you don’t want to see it!

The Hastings store chain —with more than 100 locations—appear to be the first large chain bookseller to announce a chain-wide midnight release of A Dance with Dragons. According to their press release:

The praise for Game of Thrones over at Salon.com continues, with the series being placed on their “2011 - Best So Far” list. Critic Matt Zoller Seitz—who has thoroughly lauded the series —writes a brief comparison to AMC’s The Killing, how differently the two shows were received by critics to begin with, and how superior the show was to its time-slot competitor on AMC. Here’s the closing sentences:

We recently noted on Twitter that the New York Times weekly column on their bestseller list, “Inside the List”, mentioned George R.R. Martin and A Song of Ice and Fire, as the novels held four of the top ten positions on their Mass Market Paperback list.

Well, the New York Times bestseller list has been updated, and fully fifteen years after it was first published A Game of Thrones is now the #1 best seller, while the rest of the novels still hold positions on the top ten. It’s quite an amazing achievement, probably last matched by Charlaine Harris and the boom in sales that her Sookie Stackhouse have enjoyed after True Blood became a phenomena. A Game of Thrones is also #1 on the Publishers Weekly list for the first time, to our understanding, with two other books in the series in the top six.

Congratulations to George and to Bantam (as well as to Voyager in the UK, who’ve seen similar rises in sales), and a big thank you to HBO and the cast and crew of Game of Thrones, who helped kick the doors wide-open for hundreds of thousands new fans!

Thanks to olafkeith for the tip!

These are handy for the summer, to say the least: the HBO store now has Game of Thrones caps (at present featuring the logo, plus three of the major houses). You can get over to them here, or check out the Westeros.org store!

And, by the by, look at the top of the HBO Store: a 20% sale on all items, not just Game of Thrones, with the use of the SAVE20 code.

What are you waiting for?

John Picacio speaks with Tor.com about the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar which he’s illustrating. There’s some insights into his process, and sneak peeks at a number of images (including the latest one he’s teased, his painting of Melisandre of Asshai), so check it out!