Westeros

Week after week, Game of Thrones‘s third season has been beating ratings expectations. It hurdled over the 5 million initial airing viewership mark with last week’s excellent episode, “Kissed by Fire”, hitting 5.3 million viewers… and this week? According to TV by the Number, it looks like “The Climb” wins the night with an unprecedented 5.5 million viewers. At this rate, I think it quite likely that the season finale could well clear 6 million viewers.

The second showing also added 1.27 million viewers, bringing the total who watched it on TV to 6.77 million.

We’ve worked feverishly through the night to get fans some of our usual content for the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and are pleased to share our detailed episode recap as well as our views on the episode at the episode guide for “The Climb”. Our book-to-screen breakdown—one of our favorite and most frequently cited parts of our guides— is now also available!

Unfortunately, despite this being a propitious day—my birthday—I have fallen ill, so our video review will be delayed a couple of days, in all likelihood. Apologies!

Also of note, HBO released the preview for episode 7, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself; we’ve embedded the video in the guide page.

Some rather unclear news came out of a HarperCollins show case, in which it was revealed that George R.R. Martin has licensed to them the publication of a small gift book collecting some of Tyrion Lannister’s more insightful and amusing quotes from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. As some might note, HarperCollins is not the publisher of the series in the US… but as it happens, they are in the UK, and it appears that the idea may have originated there. Now Thanks to HarperCollins UK, we now have the official press release:

It’s always a pleasure to interview writer and story editor Bryan Cogman, who has so far written an episode of each season, including what are amounting to two of our personal favorites of the series: “What is Dead May Never Die” and his season three episode, “Kissed by Fire”.

Below, I talk with Bryan about the episode, the introduction of new characters, his proudest moments, and much more. It’s a lengthy one but, we hope, a good one. Enjoy!

Interview

All right, thanks so much for taking the time, first off!

Now, often episodes seem to have their titles decided at the last minute—George’s episode went through a couple of different names before it was settled. Was “Kissed by Fire” always the title you preferred for your episode?

To read the rest, go to the full interview.

UPDATE: We’ve now posted the recap and analysis of “Kissed by Fire”.

As HBO only provided us the first four episodes of the new season, from here on out our Game of Thrones episode guides will get update only after the initial airing. We hope to be able to get at least the analysis and book-to-screen up by the time the west coast airing is completed, but the extensive recap tends to take rather longer than that, and will probably not appear until later on Monday.

Until then, however, we’ve now posted our book to screen information on the episode guide for “Kissed by Fire”.

Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Avatar Press executive Jim Kuhoric spoke at a panel at C2E2 about various Avatar Press projects, and in the course of it he discussed some of what’s coming from George R.R. Martin. First and foremost, of course, is the comic book adaptation of GRRM’s World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Skin Trade, to go along with their earlier adaptation of Fevre Dream. Thanks to that, Kuhoric revealed that GRRM will be at San Diego’s Comic-Con (which GRRM has previously announced), where he’ll make an appearance at Avatar’s booth and sign books.

The most intersting item, however, was Kuhoric revealing that there’s a “George R.R. Martin original” in the works, which “may” be superhero related. Kuhoric suggests this is a departure, as previously the works they’ve published have simply been adaptations. They’ll reveal more later, but what I suspect this is is a brand new Wild Cards original comic book story, which will almost certainly be scripted by someone other than GRRM (possibly Daniel Abraham, responsible for the adaptation of Fevre Dream and the Dynamic Entertainment comic Wild Cards: Hard Call?).

To see Kuhoric’s sremarks, watch below beginning at the 2:50 mark:

Last week, we announced a contest—courtesy of the HBO Store—to win a Game of Thrones beanie. That one’s done, and we even threw in an additional prize of a matching scarf to the winner…

... but in their generosity, HBO has also given us another contest item: a House Stark blanket, to keep you extra-warm when winter is coming. To enter, all you have to do is follow Westeros.org and tweet #GoTBlanket!

Alas, yes, contest is US only. But we’ll have some international contests quite soon!

Kansas City’s annual, venerable ConQuest convention is about to have its 44th(!) con from May 24th through the 26th, and as it happens, George R.R. Martin will be a guest there. He and Parris have long been supporters of this convention, which we’ve been told is one of the best fandom-organized conventions around. Many other guests will be on hand, including guests of honor Patrick Rothfuss and John Picacio (award-winning illustrator of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar.

Here’s the press release from the convention itself:

“Dracarys!”

A great and long-awaited ending to an excellent episode. For our full recap, review, and book-to-screen breakdown, just go ahead to our episode guide for “And Now His Watch is Ended”.

HBO and the HBO Store have teamed up to offer up a special sweepstakes (US Only). in which you can win some pretty amazing props from the set:

More details, and how to enter, at the HBO Store!

Australian comedy band The Axis of Awesome have decided to share their views on Game of Thrones, and we suspect it gives voice to feelings some fans of the novels have occasionally had well up in some deep, dark corner of their soul:

“Hollywood cannot live up to the power of imagination!”—so full of rage, and yet so very true!

It was only a matter of time before comedy icon Alfred E. Neuman sat on the Iron Throne on the cover of MAD Magazine. And that time has now come.

The humor magazine is at last tackling Game of Thrones, with a cover that homages the season one image of Eddard Stark on the throne. Neuman has a rather different throne, indeed…

The issue goes on sails on April 30th. For those interested in a subscription, you can try here.

We’ve now updated our episode guide for “Walk of Punishment” with HBO’s “Inside the Episode” regular feature, as well as their own recap video… plus our own Youtube video discussing the episode in terms of some historical details of interest, as well as a quick commentary on our personal highs and lows of the episode. We’re finally starting to catch up with getting the videos done in good time, and hopefully from here on out they’ll be available soon after the end of the US airing!

You can find the video below:

Courtesy of the HBO store, we’ve a couple of brief contests for interested fans. Before we go any further, though: this is US only; sorry folks, but keep an eye out, we’ve some international contests coming up soon!

So, first contest: you can win this most excellent Targaryen beanie! Good way to show your Fire and Blood pride, isn’t it? Especially as things heat up for Daenerys in Slaver’s Bay…

How to enter? Just follow us on Twitter and tweet #GoTBeanie! Only one entry per person will be counted, so no need to keep RTing… well, unless you really want to!

This long video from HBO provides a good overview of the many new characters introduced this season, along with interview excerpts with the actors, the producers, and George R.R. Martin:

Poor Edmure gets such a hiding in this video! Can’t catch a break, it seems…