Westeros

HarperCollins Voyager has launched a new A Song of Ice and Fire iOS app, with a very particular aim: easing viewers of Game of Thrones into reading the novels, by offering maps and samples of text which pair up with scenes they’ll have witnessed across the show’s first five seasons. It’s a very interesting move, and we’ve already seen some very positive feedback from those who’ve tried it.

Voyager has been able to make the app available in most of the world, with the exception of the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines. You can go here to the iTunes store to check it out, as it’s free of charge. For those in the U.S., there’s always the official A World of Ice and Fire app for iOS (named A Game of Thrones Guide for Android), although that is much more of a reference companion.

The latest episode of the Game of Thrones game from Telltale Games is just around the corner, with a release date of July 21st on PC, Mac, and Playstation 3-4, XBox versions on the 22nd, and iOS/Android on the 23rd.

Titled “A Nest of Vipers”, the episode looks to feature pit-fighting action with Asher, young Lady Mira visiting Tyrion Lannister in his cell, and a significant amount of Ramsay Bolton’s nastiness. And speaking of Asher, an image released by Telltale Games serves as a bit of a spoiler regarding where his story takes him…

The 2016 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order) is due out by the end of the month, but previews have been making their way onto the internet in conjunction with this past San Diego Comic Con where a limited number of the calendar was released early.

The first of the previews came from Random House itself, with an embedded look at the calendar that provided the first reveal of the scene from The Winds of Winter that would be among the artworks from French artist Magali Villeneuve, whose work graced our The World of Ice and Fire: a moment from one of the TWoW chapters GRRM released on his website last year.

Following that, io9 had an exclusive reveal of a number of the new pieces from Villeneuve—Tommen before the Iron Throne is particularly choice, not least because it captures the enormity of the throne as intended by Martin and as conceptualized by fellow French artist, Marc Simonetti. A little bird has told us that the artist for the 2017 calendar has already been selected, so it’s a matter of time before that’s revealed.

And for those who missed it, later in the year some more artwork will be coming by way of the official coloring book, which will feature a bevy of contributing artists (including the great John Howe).

With the latest stable release of the Invision forum software—to version 4.10—we have decided that we can now finally get the forum upgraded. The upgrade will bring many new features, not least of which is a responsive skin design which should allow users on mobile devices to easily use the forum with all the features they’re used to on desktops without having to download separate software (such as Tapatalk).

However, because this is a substantial upgrade, it will require changes to the database in the process. This means that it will very likely take, at minimum, 8 hours to complete the whole process… and given the size of our database, it could be easily twice as long (or, indeed, even longer).

So this Tuesday, at around 9AM GMT/ 5AM EST / 2AM PST, we will shut down the forum to begin the upgrade process. Updates on the process, if and when we can provide them, will be made available via our Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts.

We do not expect to need to take down the wiki or Westeros.org website while the forum is being upgraded, but it is possible that that, too, will be required, so please bear with us.

A little under a month ago, we reported that Random House was going to publish George R.R. Martin’s Official A Game of Thrones Coloring Book, a work containing 45 original black-and-white illustrations with the intention that fans and devotees of the novels can color them in themselves. We now have the pleasure of revealing the cover, courtesy of Random House:

There’s quite an impressive list of artists involved, all of them following the brief of drawing inspiration from the A Song of Ice and Fire series (rather than from HBO’s Game of Thrones, the TV adaptation of said series). With GRRM presumably somewhat involved in the process, this means at least some of the images and scenes depicted are likely to hew relatively closely to how he himself imagines it… though in black-and-white, of course, rather than in color! Among involved artists are Yvonne Gilbert, John Howe, Tomislav Tomić, Adam Stower and Levi Pinfold.

The book has been given a tentative release date of October 27th.

While we were away to Archipelacon, the 2015 Locus Award winners were announced in Seattle. Our many congratulations to George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois for Rogues taking Best Anthology, and to Joe Abercrombie whose story in that same anthology, “Tough Times All Over”, won Best Novellette. And of course a tip of the hat to the great John Picacio who won Best Artist—very well-deserved!

For those in Europe, here’s some news regarding George R.R. Martin’s appearances starting this weekend, as well as our own!

First up, George will be in Hamburg for the Harbourfront Literature Festival, where he’ll be reading a chapter from The Winds of Winter, and likely to be answering questions as well. Despite early reports that this event would be livestreamed, this event is apparently not being streamed at all. It’s not impossible there’ll be an after-the-fact video from the event (as there have been with a number of GRRM’s public speaking events), but we’ve no information as yet whether that will be the case.

From there, George is off to Stockholm—and so are we! On Tuesday, the SF Bokhandeln bookstore has invited George to speak at the Royal Armoury. Although this event is sold-out, it’s worth noting that SF Bokhandeln’s three branches—Stockholm, Malmö, and our own Göteborg—will all offer livestreams to customers who could not attend the event. So far as we know, there will be no internet-wide stream, but again, there may be post-event videos. And for those in Stockholm, prior to the event—at 5PM—Linda and I will be at the bookshop to sign copies of The World of Ice and Fire, for those who want us defacing their copies!

After that, we’re all off to Ã…land for Archipelacon, the SF/F convention (sold out, alas!) where George is Guest of Honor, and his partner Parris is the Fan Guest of Honor. The convention has posted its schedule, and there’s a deal of interest for fans—we’ll share the highlights below:

HBO UK teamed up to invite fans, media, and more to a special screening of the final episode of season 5, “”. Sounds like a deal of fun was had by those who attended. In the video below, you’ll see and hear some of the reactions as the episode rolled and its shocking turns came onto the screen:

The season is now available for download in Digital HD in the UK, which is part of the reason for the event. Fans can download individual episodes or the entire season through retailers such as iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, blinkbox, Wauki.tv, and XBox Video. BT TV and Talk Talk TV can also buy and watch through their set-top boxes.

With season 5 completed (see our episode guide on the final episode for some of our thoughts), there’s a lot of discussion about what the show did right or wrong this season, interviews with various members of cast and crew, and more. But Random House—publishers, through their subsidiary Bantam, of all things A Song of Ice and Fire—asked us to provide a list of 11 reasons why fans of the show might want to give the books a try if they haven’t already!

You can find the article here.

An initial update on the finale to season 5 can be found at our episode guide for “Mother’s Mercy”. As usual, we’ve run through the book-to-screen adaptation, and have included the post-episode extra videos that HBO usually releases. However, we haven’t watched them and can’t vouch for whether there may be spoilers in those videos, so view them at your own risk.

We’ll have a video review up some time tomorrow, and perhaps the written review as well.

Our friends over at Dark Horse have launched a special sweepstakes ahead of the finale of Game of Thrones, and you can read about all the details here!

A bevy of terrific Game of Thrones items - including figurines, busts, Bluray sets, and more—can be unlocked if enough fans retweet this tweet. With each unlocked level, there’s an additional chance for participants to win one of the prize packages! At present count, the contest already has 425 retweets, so well on its way to unlocking the last level.

The sweepstakes are open only to residents of the U.S., and certain other strictures apply, so bear that in mind! Full details, including all applicable rules and limitations, can be found here.

Apparently, coloring books aimed not at 5-year-olds but at adults are actually a thing. Who knew? While the idea may sound a little odd to some, the Los Angeles Times reports that Bantam (publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire, The World of Ice and Fire, and the forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars and other related works) has commissioned artists to create a book containing “45 original black and white illustrations, inspired by characters, scenes, locations and other iconic images” from A Song of Ice and Fire.

The book, which can be pre-ordered, will feature art from an impressive list of names: Yvonne Gilbert, John Howe, Tomislav Tomić, Adam Stower and Levi Pinfold. Though the book is named George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones Coloring Book, we clarified with Bantam and they indicated that the art will solely be based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

The book is tentatively scheduled for release on October 27th of this year.

We’ve posted our episode guide for the latest episode, “The Dance of Dragons”, as quickly as we could. Lots of controversy over the depiction of Stannis Baratheon in this episode, to say the least! Our episode guide currently only contains our book-to-screen breakdown, and video extras from HBO. Suffice it to say, we’re going to try and get a review video out ASAP.

HBO has also provided its usual preview, this time for the season finale, “Mother’s Mercy”. You can see it below:

Over the five seasons of the show, the title sequence has surely become one of the most recognizable on TV, and not just because of the theme music. The visuals, too, have taken on a life of their own and several homages have been created over the years. A key feature of the visuals is the astrolabe and this summer a replica of that will be available from Insight Collectibles as part of a collector’s edition package with the popular pop-up book Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros. The astrolabe is described as follows :

“The astrolabe stands over 13 inches high and is fully articulated, with moving rings that dynamically replicate the oscillating movement of the astrolabe seen in the Game of Thrones intro sequence. The astrolabe is supported by a stand that features the sigils associated with the four Great Houses of Westeros, Stark, Lannister, Targaryen and Baratheon. Each sigil is highly detailed, from the coat of the Stark direwolf to the talons of the Targaryen dragon.”

In addition to the astrolabe and the new edition of the pop-up book, Insight Collectibles is also releasing a set of Deluxe Stationery Sets for Houses Stark, Targaryen and Lannister and a set of Hardcover Journals for Houses Baratheon, Lannister, Stark and Targaryen.

Edited to add: We don’t yet have a specific release date for any of these products beyond “this summer”. The astrolabe (with the pop-up book included) will retail for $495.00 and the stationary sets for $34.95.

A pleasant surprise here, as podcast Starship Sofa proudly reveals that its 389th episode features “The Men of Greywater Station”, a science fiction novelette by George R.R. Martin and Howard Waldrop.  As host Tony C. Smith notes, the novelette has never appeared on-line before, so it’s quite the coup for the Hugo Award-winning podcast.

And yes, it’s no coincidence that “Greywater” appears in the title. GRRM is well-known for certain words, phrases, and names cropping up in a multitude in his works.