If you’re a user of Apple’s iBooks and a fan George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels (and if you’re on this site, you probably are), then we’ve got news for you. According to The Mac Observer, the enhanced edition of A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in the series, was added to the iTunes store over the weekend.
The enhanced digital edition of the first book in Martin’s series — A Game of Thrones — was released on iTunes in September of 2016. It’s not like an ordinary ebook. It comes with some bells and whistles, including maps that help you keep track of where characters are chapter to chapter, footnotes penned by Martin himself, select bits of text read by Roy Dotrice (Hallyne the pyromancer), illustrations, and an appendix packed with house sigils and family trees.
Since then, the other novels in the series have been given the enhanced treatment and release. Now it’s Dance’s turn. The enhanced edition of A Dance with Dragons will be out on March 30, but is available to preorder now.
For now, only Apple users who have access to iOS devices with iBooks 1.3.1 or later and iOS 4.3.3 or later (or a Mac with iBooks 1.0 or later and OS X 10.9 0r later) will be able to enjoy these enhanced digital editions. All of them cost $11.99 on the iTunes store, which makes them roughly $3 more than the regular digital versions, but with all the added content, they seem worth the price hike.