Westeros

This lithograph by comic book artist Mike S. Miller (responsible for the art in The Hedge Knight and Hedge Knight II: The Sworn Sword graphic novels), officially licensed by George R.R. Martin, depicts Miller’s interpretation of the decisive moment of the Battle of the Trident.

Copies of the high-quality lithograph remain for sale… and Miller’s taking suggestions via poll as to what his next lithograph should be, if interest is high. If you’d like to follow along, and offer suggestions, make sure to visit Miller’s official Facebook page, “Art of Ice and Fire”.

Despite earlier reporting that France was looking at a September air date for HBO’s Game of Thrones—fuelled by an executive at Orange, the broadcaster holding the rights in France—it looks like the wait won’t be quite so painful for fans of Le Trône de Fer (as the series is dubbed in France). Via Evrach at Le Garde de Nuit, we’ve learned that the show will be airing on Orange Cínema Séries beginning June 5—little more than a month away.

Today, the show will be premiering in Nordic countries served by Canal+ (including our native Sweden), on the 8th it’ll premiere in more than a dozen countries served by HBO in Latin America and the Caribbean, plus Spain is due to see the show premiere on Canal Plus on the 9th. Good times! For those still waiting on information for their country, we’re keeping our international air dates guide up to date. If you have any information about a country not listed or as yet noted as having unconfirmed details, feel free to drop us a note!

Haven’t had a chance to share this as of yet, so here is HBO’s post-episode look at what was going on in episode 3, with remarks from executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss.

Despite the breaking news that likely impacted the viewership of HBO’s Game of Thrones in other time zones (the East Coast managed to be finished just before word started to get out that an announcement was pending), James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly has broken the news that the third episode scored 2.4 million viewers—up about 10% from last week—and added an additional 700,000 at its 11PM encore to reach the 3.1 million mark in total, again, 200,000 better than last week’s 2.9 million mark.

Hibberd also adds that the premiere has risen to 8.7 million views in total, via all HBO platforms such as On Demand and HBO GO.

At the same time, good news in the U.K., as Game of Thrones holds steady, dropping only a very small amount to 510,000 viewers, which is on the top end for Sky Atlantic.

Over on Twitter, Del Rey Spectra‘s official account revealed that a certain author was at work reviewing edits of a certain book by the name of A Dance with Dragons. And they had a photo to prove it, which seems to reveal that they’ve already printed off some examples of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar.

ADwD is due on store shelves both in the U.S. and U.K..

Tommorow, Stockholmers will get the opportunity to watch the first two episode of Game of Thrones in a theatre, courtesy of Canal+ Sweden and Cinemateket. Entry is free, but places are limited—first come, first served! The two episodes will be shown at Bio Filmhuset Victor, starting from 6 PM. This sneak preview—which Linda and I will unfortunately have to miss—leads in to Wednesday’s premiere of the first episode of Game of Thrones on Canal+, Sweden’s leading premium channel.

We’re going to be very interested in hearing from Swedish fans after it airs!

“Lord Snow” aired last night in the U.S. and Canada (it’ll be on this evening in the U.K. and in much of Central Europe), and as always, we have an extensive episode guide with recaps, analysis, images, and more. Check it out at our site.

Right after that aired, HBO posted the preview for episode 4, titled “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”. See below for the clip!

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.