There’s a new book by George R.R. Martin coming out this year. No, it’s not The Winds of Winter, but it is set in Westeros. Fire & Blood, Volume 1 is a (fake) history book about the Targaryen dynasty, and will give an account of everything from Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros through the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war that nearly tore the continent apart. A description from Martin’s website:
What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley.
Wheatley is doing the illustrations for the standard edition of Fire & Blood, which looks like this:
But there are some variant versions in the works. Subterranean Press is putting out a special edition that will feature additional illustrations by Gary Gianni, who provided the artwork for Martin’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Subterranean debuted a peek at the cover of that edition on its Twitter:
As an aside, does anyone know the identity of the woman standing on the pile of dead knights? I thought it might be Rhaenyra Targaryen, one of the major players in the Dance of the Dragons, but her hair is the wrong color.
Moving on, Martin himself gave us a look at the Brazilian cover, with art by Jean-Michel Trauscht:
In the past, Brazilians haven’t gotten their own covers of Song of Ice and Fire books, so this is a cool surprise.
There’s also a European cover on the way, revealed by way of a fairly intense Facebook video:
Covers for everyone! Fire & Blood, Volume 1 will be on store shelves November 20.
Also, as long as we’re talking about Martin, he appeared in a brief PSA from HBO about registering to vote:
The silence has spoken.
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