Is Daenerys completely fireproof, and does that contradict the books?

In “Book of the Stranger,” Daenerys staged a repeat of the final scene of Season 1, when she emerged from her husband’s funeral pyre unharmed, unless you count her clothes, which were burned away (In the books, her hair is burned away as well). Fire, as she said back when her brother was killed, cannot kill a dragon.

So far as the Game of Thrones producers are concerned, Daenerys is a superhero, and her superpower is that she can’t be burned. That’s consistent with what we’ve seen before on the show. Beyond the scene at Drogo’s funeral pyre, there’s a moment in the pilot episode where she takes a scalding hot bath without batting an eye, and a later moment where she picks up a dragon’s egg that has been baking over hot coals, and finds that her hands are not burned. And then this latest scene happened. This clinches it: on the show, Daenerys is fireproof all of the time.

“I feel a list of titles coming on.”

That may not be the case in the books. Author George R.R. Martin was a little more coy when talking about A Game of Thrones, the first book in his Song of Ice and Fire series, back in 1998:

"Lastly, some fans are reading too much into the scene in GAME OF THRONES where the dragons are born — which is to say, it was never the case that all Targaryens are immune to all fire at all times."

And then, there’s this chat with George R.R. Martin, recorded back in 1999:

"TARGARYENS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO FIRE! The birth of Dany’s dragons was unique, magical, wonderous, a miracle. She is called The Unburnt because she walked into the flames and lived. But her brother sure as hell wasn’t immune to that molten gold."

There are a few theories out there that explain why Dany’s first close encounter with an inferno was unique—some think that the death of Mirri Maz Duur served as a blood sacrifice that somehow granted Dany temporary immunity to fire. But in any case, this supports the idea that, in the books, Dany does not have blanket immunity to fire.

But on the other hand, that chat keeps going:

"Revanshe: “So she won’t be able to do it again?”George R.R. Martin: “Probably not.”"

Probably not? I’m not sure if Martin was thinking about a certain chapter from A Dance with Dragons when he gave that interview, but there’s a scene in that book that muddies the waters a bit. When Drogon descends on Daznak’s Pit and starts eating people, Dany jumps in and tries to tame him. In the process, she gets close enough to his flames for her hair to get burned off. It’s unclear if Drogon engulfs her in flames, but you’d figure that if she was close enough for her hair to get singed away, she was close enough to sustain burns on other parts of her body.

Only she doesn’t. When we catch up with Daenerys later, on the Dothraki Sea, she’s fine, except that her hair is gone. While it’s open to interpretation, it seems like, in the books, Daenerys’ immunity to fire also kicked in during her reunion with Drogon.

In short, there’s no guarantee, at least based on the text, that Daenerys’ fire resistance was limited completely to the events at Drogo’s funeral pyre. And who knows? Maybe the recent scene at Vaes Dothrak was something that Martin told the producers about—the show may be beyond the books, but Martin and the showrunners are still in contact.

At the least, the show did not contradict itself in the final scene of “Book of the Stranger.” It might not have contradicted the books, either, although we need more information to be certain.

h/t The Citidel, Time