Digitally enhanced edition of ‘A Game of Thrones’ out today
By Ani Bundel
Image: Entertainment Weekly
Awesome news, everyone! For those of you who struggle to keep track of characters as you’re plowing your way through A Song of Ice and Fire, technology has finally decided to help. Random House and iBooks are teaming up to release an enhanced edition of the first book, A Game of Thrones, for iPhones and iPads. (The other books will receive similar treatments.) But this is no ordinary edition. Each chapter has been digitally enhanced with maps of where the character in question is at the moment, footnotes (approved by George R.R. Martin), and a helpful set of reminders about where the character was and what they did the last time you saw them. Think of them as each chapter’s personalized “Last Time on Game of Thrones…” message.
Image: RandomHouse
Some other enhancements: as you can see from the promotional image above, each chapter comes with a large fancy heading so you know exactly whose POV you’re entering. Said names are also “clickable” and take one to a short bio, if they need to be reminded exactly who this character is. This may not seem so helpful in the earlier books, where all the POV characters are Starks, Snows, and Tyrion Lannister, but as the books progress, it will be helpful to be reminded who these new narrators are and why they matter.
There are also audio clips from Roy Dotrice, the guy who narrates the Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks, plus illustrations, and an appendix that features “92 illustrated house sigils, nine house lineages, a detailed map of “The Known World” and marked trails of several main characters’ journeys throughout the first novel.” This is a full service edition.
Entertainment Weekly has looks at the covers of all the new digital editions.
George R.R. Martin himself weighed in on the new release:
"Anything that confuses you, anything you want to know more about, it’s right there at your fingertips. It’s an amazing next step in the world of books."
This first “digitally enhanced” installment is available for download as of this morning. The others will follow in the coming months.
And of course, as always, no we have no word on when The Winds of Winter will arrive. However, this does have a chapter from the novel included, although it’s apparently one that’s already been “briefly published on Martin’s website.”
h/t Time, The Guardian