Westeros

Details of the A Song of Ice and Fire 2025 Calendar have been released via Edelweiss and Amazon, and now we see that what seems to be one of the images—the cover image for the calendar—has also been released. Illustrated by concept artist and illustrator Eddie Mendoza, who first entered the Ice and Fire-art world with work he did on our own The Rise of the Dragon, next year’s edition of the calendar will focus on landscapes and castles from throughout the vast World of Ice and Fire, as described in the following text:

And the cover appears to be one of these locations, one which has never really been depicted before in the “official” art (outside of a rendition or two in the Fantasy Flight Games Game of Thrones card game): Starfall, the ancient and storied seat of House Dayne. (Yes!)

Towards the end of November, a very interesting post on /r/asoiaf Reddit from a moderator and superfan known as zionius_, revealing three pages that appear to be hand-written notes from George R.R. Martin sketching out plans for A Feast for Crows circa 2003-2004. George’s handwriting is not, perhaps, the easiest, so go to the original post for the transcription from zionius_ and members of the subreddit’s mod team, which does a good job of distilling what they found.

Though some questioned whether these were legitimate, we can say with 100% certainty that they are—George’s hand is unmistakable, and in any case the notes came from be shared by way of Arnold Cha, a serious ASoIaF collector who indicated that he got them from an unimpeachable source in the Santa Fe writing/arts scene. With Arnold’s permission, we’re including the images here, but again, go to the subreddit thread for the transcript!

Back in January, the A Song of Ice and Fire 2024 Calendar was announced featuring artwork from award-winning artist Justin Sweet. Now, two new preview images have been added to listings of the calendar, one depicting a scene from the end of A Dance with Dragons, and one perhaps depicting something from The Winds of Winter... or perhaps something being referenced again in The Wind of Winters.

George R.R. Martin has posted to his “Not a Blog” to discuss the big news that HBO has ordered A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight (a working title, GRRM notes, that is not finalized) straight to series. George goes into some more detail about the project, pointing out that he first floated the Dunk & Egg stories for adaptation seven years ago, so things can move slowly… until they don’t. He also notes that despite reports (spurred by his own remarks that some things had been shelved, and some shifts of the Starling Inc. website that we reported on here), both the 10,000 Ships and Sea Snake shows remain in development. But more on that later.

On A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George has some particular new details to share:

Just two months away from the release of The Rise of the Dragon, a book we’ve co-authored that takes Fire and Blood, boils it down to the essentials, and fills the rest of the pages with over 180 pieces of glorious, all-new artwork from artists both familiar and brand new to fans of A Song of Ice and Fire. Random House has started the wheels rolling promoting the book by releasing this video with George R.R. Martin where he talks about the book and its connection to House of the Dragon:

We occasionally highlight really great, A Song of Ice and Fire-inspired fan works, and we’re happy to bring attention to the asoiafanimated instagram where a team of Italian animators led by professional animator Giovanni Ariutti. We have a very brief tease, but you should check the Instagram for a longer trailer, with music and all, and that in turn is leading to something even more substantial on August 23rd. See the teaser below, and the full details of the team working on the project:

We’ve been in the midst of a vacation over here a Westeros, but George R.R. Martin has been keeping busy! A recent Not a Blog post goes into some length about the state of the highly-anticipated The Winds of Winter, a post which seems to have been prompted after a recent round of interviews (including this excellent interview by the team at Game of Owns). It’s the lengthiest update he’s given on the book in some years, and is well worth reading closely. And while he’s at it, George reveals how the story has been slowly moving further and further away from what he envisioned years earlier, even as late as when he met with the showrunners of Game of Thrones to discuss his plans.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has provided fans a lengthy update on The Winds of Winter, HBO’s successor shows, and more… and in the process lets the cat out of the bag regarding one project we here at Westeros.org have been working on for the last couple of years.

We’ll provide a quick summary below:

The Three Chroniclers, by Chase Stone.

A brand new calendar has been announced for 2023: the World of Fire and Blood 2023 Calendar, a departure as it focuses on characters and events first described in The World of Ice and Fire and expanded on in Fire and Blood. Another departure: where previous calendars were single-artist affairs, this one will feature multiple artists, including prior calendar artists Marc Simonetti and Magali Villeneuve, as well as artists new to the calendars such as Chase Stone and René Aigner

Aegon the Conqueror and Balerion destroy Harrenhal, by Marc Simonetti. (This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.)

A happy occasion for bibliophiles, as the latest entry in the Folio Society’s A Song of Ice and Fire illustrated editions has now been released: A Feast for Crows in a beautiful, slipcased two-volume edition with beautiful artwork by Jonathan Burton. Below, you’ll find the Folio Society’s video for the launch, as well as a few images they’ve sent to us share!

For a long while now, we have occasionally shared tweets from the official Westeroscraft twitter account, sharing yet another screenshot of the work-in-progress Westeroscraft server.  There, Minecraft fans who love A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are recreating Westeros block by block, and the results are truly impressive as the images and videos linked at their official wiki show. We can’t imagine how many hours of work have gone into it!

Below you’ll find a selection of recent tweets from Westeroscraft, providing some great images and explanations of what is being shown:

The Locus Awards finalists have been announced, and down in the Illustrated and Art Book category there was a pleasant surprise in the form of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords: The Illustrated Edition, with illustrations by the award-winning Gary Gianni. Gianni has previously provided art for one of the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Subterranean Press’s limited edition of Fire and Blood.

The winners will be announced on June 26th, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend event.

We’ve reported previously on the news that theater producers and a live event production company are now working on bringing the tourney at Harrenhal, and the dramatic events that unfolded there, to Broadway and other theatrical venues. We noted at the time that Startling Inc.—Vince Gerardis’s company—had removed the reference to “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works”, the thing that clued us into the fact that something like this was happening. A sharp-eyed fan and member of our forum, zionius, checked it today and noticed that the project has reappeared with a new name that we assume is a working title:

HARRENHAL, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE STAGE PLAY

Well, more correctly, it sounds like something from A Song of Ice and Fire is coming to Broadway, as HBO is not formally involved in any way (but has the option to invest)...

You may remember this post from a month ago, where we stumbled across Vince Gerardis’s website for Startling Inc., which listed a project called “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works” as being in development. Interestingly, we checked a couple of days ago, and that reference was gone. But the project was not, in fact, dead. It is, in fact, very much alive. Producers Simon Painter and Tim Lawson (of, ahem, The Works Entertainment; although, notably, The Works is not named in the piece, while Kilburn Live is… so perhaps this is a project they’re doing separately from their company?) are working from a story provided by George R.R. Martin to write a spectacular stage play—targetting, New York’s Broadway, London’s West End, and Australia—concerning the events at the Tourney at Harrenhal.

Dark Sword Miniatures, one of the longest-running license-holders for works related to A Song of Ice and Fire, has surprised us by revealing that legendary miniature sculptor Tom Meier has added to the George R.R. Martin Masterworks series by sculpting Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys.

Aegon Targaryen, the Conqueror, as sculpted by Tom Meier and painted by Anne Foerster.