Fire & Blood now out in paperback

HBO is working on a Game of Thrones prequel series about the Dance of the Dragons. The source material for that show, Fire & Blood, is now out in paperback!

Long before Daenerys Targaryen or Jon Snow or Tyrion Lannister first drew breath, Aegon Targaryen and his sisters conquered Westeros and set up a dynasty that would last for hundreds of years. They battled foes, battled each other, and took and kept their kingdom with fire and blood.

Their stories, and the stories of their ancestor, are set down in Fire & Blood, a “fake history book” by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. The book has been out in hardcover since 2018, but if you were unsure about picking it up at first, now might be a good time to reconsider, because it’s just come out in paperback.

As Martin reminds us on his Not a Blog, “this is not a novel. It is an imaginary history.” Apparently this is a point he’s had to make a few (hundred) times before. “If you like reading history, real or fantastic, you will probably enjoy it.   If you go in expecting a conventional novel, you won’t.”

The conceit for the book is interesting. Obviously, it’s written by Martin. But it’s Martin writing as a guy named Archmaester Gyldayn, a scholar who’s piecing together the history of the Targaryen dynasty from his own sources.

And there’s more from Gyldayn on the way. The first volume of Fire & Blood covers roughly the events of Aegon’s conquest of Westeros up to the Dance of the Dragons, a Targaryen civil war that tore the realm apart. The second volume, which is forthcoming, will pick up after the Dance and tell us everything that happened up until Aerys Targaryen was killed and his daughter Daenerys fled across the Narrow Sea.

Fire & Blood is the main source material for House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel series all about the Dance of the Dragons. So that’s yet another reason to pick it up.

Fire & Blood is available wherever books are sold, including at Amazon. I’d say visit your local bookstore but with the coronavirus still on maybe online shopping is the way to go for now. If you’d like a signed copy, Martin has some available at his Beastly Books bookstore.

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