Westeros

You likely already know that we have a Facebook page, but you may have found that notifications of new items there have become rarer… or, worse still, that when you investigate the page directly, you find a lot more content being posted than you’ve seen in your news feed.

The reason for this are certain changes Facebook has made to how updates are sent along to those who like your page. Where before 100% of all updates were shared, now only 10 to 20% of followers see any particular update at any particular time. There is, however, a way around this that Facebook has made available: interests.

To add Westeros to your Interests, and get all updates in your stream, you can either create and populate an interest list as per the linked instructions. A more direct and immediate way to do it, however, is to go to the page in question,  , or alternatively you can visit the page, hover over the liked buttons, and select “Interests..” Name your interest list, add the site, and you’re done—you’ll get all of our updates, at least for as long as Facebook allows interested followers to see them all via this method.

A couple of updates from GRRM at “Not a Blog” point out that Subterranean Press—one of the best genre small presses—has issued a couple of his books in limited editions recently. One of these, of course, is A Dance with Dragons, with art by Marc Fishman. At the time of Martin’s posting, it seems a handful of the numbered books remained ... but that seems to no longer be the case. Linda and I received our copies recently, and they’re as handsome as you can expect; the book has been split in two volumes, which share slipcase, and Fishman’s art is very fine (you can see much of it at Fishman’s Facebook gallery).

Besides that, a few copies remain of the limited edition of Martin’s first novel, Dying of the Light, with art by award-winning artist Tom Kidd. Dying of the Light is an interesting novel in that it’s set in Martin’s first detailed setting, the “Thousand Worlds” science fiction setting, and it contains clear signs of the influence of Jack Vance as well as themes and ideas that would remain central to Martin’s work right through the A Song of Ice and Fire series. There’s even one character who combines elements that would later be seen in the Hound and the Knight of Flowers. It’s a melancholy, romantic work of science fiction, and very much recommened.

First it was Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody making an appearance, and now via EW we have word that Coldplay’s drummer, Will Champion, has a cameo spot as well.

What would that cameo be? Well, James can’t say anything more than he’s a drummer…

Makes me think of a little quote… “The drums were pounding again, pounding and pounding and pounding.”

Had meant to post this one last week, but this, that, and the other (including behind-the-scenes work involving upgrading our CMS to a shiny new edition which is taking a lot of time) delayed it. But, now, here it is, a video that’s something of an addendum of addendum to our last video as I give a rundown of the military strength of the various regions of the Seven Kingdoms, according both to what is explicitly said in the books and what can plausibly be deduced:

Making Game of Thrones has a fun update with a lot of data about things both mundane and bizzare related to the production of Game of Thrones. It’s primarily focused on this season, but some numbers from past seasons do slip in…

Some of the ones we found more interesting were the amount of fur and leather used by the production (over 30,000 square feet!) and the number of frames shot to date (from October 5th, minus whatever was being shot in Croatia at the time ... which amounts to roughly 260 hours of footage, which would have to be sifted through, cut, and edited down to create not quite 10 hours of footage. And that’s with seven weeks of filming left, so one images there’d be even more footage by the time all is said and done.

The technical feat of organizing and doing all that is certainly a good reason why the show has won so many plaudits on the technical side. Can’t quite even imagine the logistics of it all…

For those of you who’d like to more easily browse the A Song of Ice and Fire forum on your mobile iOs device, some good news: Invision has now made their Invision Power Board app entirely free of cost.

It works both for the ASoIaF forum and any other Invision Power Board-based forum (at least those that are upgraded to IPB 3—possibly it’ll work with IPB 2 forums as well), and is quite easy to use.

And if you want something a bit more fully featured, or your mobile device runs Android or Blackberry, there’s Tapatalk. It supports a wide variety of forums, so long as they have the Tapatalk plugin installed (as we do). The app itself costs a small fee, but we have a number of forum members who enjoy it, so it’s worth a try if the IPB app isn’t to your taste or not available for your device.

A smaller role, maybe, but the name always had a ring. Thanks to a fan on Twitter, we’re now aware of the fact that actor Jamie Michie is apparently listed as playing the role of “Steelshanks”—it’s Steelshanks Walton in the books, but likely has been reduced to Steelshanks for the show—in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones. Steelshanks Walton is a no-nonsense man-at-arms in the service of Roose Bolton. Will his role on the show be similar to that in the books? We’ll have to wait and see. One does note that IMDB seems to have had some user putting him into the final four episodes of the season, but that’s another wait-and-see thing, I expect.

Scottish-born, Michie has been in a number of film and television productions in the UK, including Ken Loach’s 2010 film Route Irish.

News has slowed down as Game of Thrones hits the last stretch of production—filming in Northern Ireland is done, filming in Morocco (at Ouarzazarte, which Game of Thrones followers may recall as the location of some filming for the pilot which never saw the light of day) is wrapping, and a brief leg in Iceland will pretty much be the end of it—and we’ve not had very much to report… on the website, in any case.

Over the last week we have been sharing bits and bobs over our Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ pages, and we thought we might as well give a quick round-up of some of the more interesting items for people to discuss and consider. These include a number of interviews, from executive producer David Benioff to writer/editor Bryan Cogman to actor Kit Harington, some miscellaneous photos from Morocco, and more. You’ll find them below:

Delayed by this and that, just wanted to announce the winners of a contest in which artists were asked to present an image inspired by Barristan Selmy, a character who fans will be seeing more of in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones.

After a long absence, a new video from Westeros.org on one of the many topics that occupy the minds of fans at the forum! This time, I discuss a particularly geeky topic, but it seems pretty topical with the forthcoming release of the Lands of Ice and Fire: just what is the population of the Seven Kingdoms?

We’ll have a related video up next week, and after that… who knows. Depends on how busy The World of Ice and Fire and related things are keeping us!

For our third and final preview image from the Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), we’ve placed over on our official Google+ page a glimpse of a slice of Essos never before seen, nor ever even hinted at in the novels:

I know enough about the new lands that Martin created in the course of making these expanded maps to say that the choice of this area for this image was very deliberate on my part. There’s a couple of neat things hinted at herein that expand the world-building for Essos quite a bit. But as to what that is… well, maybe The World of Ice and Fire will reveal more, or perhaps GRRM will in some interview or Q&A down the road. We shall see!

The Lands of Ice and Fire is due out at the end of the month in the US, and soon after in the UK.

UPDATE: Io9 also has a preview with a number of small slices. A bit more of Braavos, a glimpse at Asshai and the Shadow, and a snippet of the journey map that Linda and I helped with are among the items. And Tor.com has a few more.

Awhile back, George R.R. Martin reported that his publishers were preparing brand new audiobooks of some of his earlier novels, and of special interest to Game of Thrones fans would be the fact that actors from the hit HBO series—Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont), Ron Donachie (Ser Rodrik Cassel), and Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark)—would provide the reading.

Those books are now out… but somewhere along the way, it seems Michelle Fairley didn’t actually read (guessing a scheduling conflict came up), and so Windhaven (a science fiction novel co-written with Lisa Tuttle) has been read by British actress Harriet Walter instead.

Links to the books at Audible.com and samples can be found below:

• Dying of the Light (read by Iain Glen)
  
  
  
• Fevre Dream (read by Ron Donachie)
  
  
  
• Windhaven (read by Harriet Walter)

We’ve already noted that NY Mag’s Vulture entertainment site placed fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones at the pinnacle of their mosted devoted fans list.

But a pleasant surprise was when Linda and I were contacted to be included in part of a series of posts on devoted fans. This past Friday, a short profile of us went up, touching on several subjects connected to our involvement in the fandom, from its earliest days to the present.

For those who might want to know a little more about the people behind the website, this is not a bad place to start.

(And for those who wonder, the statues in the background of our photo, those are from Valyrian Resin. They’re officially licensed, and I’m told a limited quantity remains. I should also add that though they can ship internationally, the web shop does not necessarily give an accurate estimate for shipping overseas, so consider contacting them for a quote.)

Since our last report, more images have been pouring in from Essaouira, Morocco where some more filming has taken place. No real spoilers, but there’s some excellent photos of actors and extras alike at Mohamed Amine Lakaab’s photo set and a few new images courtesty of the Spanish-language Juego de Tronos fan site. Here’s a very brief video from the latter, showing Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont) escorting Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) through the streets of Morocco.

Some comments below on some of the images.

Following up from last week’s first preview of The Lands of Ice and Fire, the collection of a dozen poster maps featuring all-new maps of Westeros and Essos (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), here is our second preview: a key slice of the Free City of Braavos!

I call this a “key” section because, if you look at it, it features a number of locations mentioned in the course of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, all of them based both on Martin’s own map of Braavos checked against the published texts for any changes or inconsistencies that Bantam, the artist Jonathan Roberts (FantasticMaps on Twitter, and yours truly could find. Looks nice, right?