Everything we know about Blood & Fire, the sequel to George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood

When most readers hear the name George R.R. Martin, the book that probably comes to mind is The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. Martin has been working on Winds for 13 years and counting; at this point, it's pretty much legendary among fans of the genre.

But The Winds of Winter isn't the only book Martin is currently working on. While he's made it clear time and again that Winds remains his primary focus in terms of books, he's also working on a sequel to Fire & Blood, his Targaryen history book which came out in 2018, part of which forms the basis for the HBO show House of the Dragon.

Martin mentioned Blood & Fire in a recent blog post where he reflected on how writing has gone for him over the past year. "Writing came hard, and though I did produce some new pages on both THE WINDS OF WINTER (yes) and BLOOD & FIRE (the sequel to FIRE & BLOOD, the second part of my Targaryen history), I would have liked to turn out a lot more," he wrote.

Whether this was the first time you heard about Blood & Fire or you forgot Martin was working on it, you're in the right place. Let's go over everything we know about the book.

What parts of Westeros' history will Blood & Fire cover?

We first learned that Martin had plans to break his Targaryen history book, which he jokingly refers to as the "GRRMarillion" after J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Silmarillion, into two separate volumes back in 2017. At the time, Martin wrote about his plans for the duology on his Not A Blog, revealing that Fire & Blood was mostly already written and would "cover the history of Westeros from Aegon’s Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king Aegon III (the Dragonbane)." At the same time, he said that "[t]he second volume, which will carry the history from Aegon III up to Robert’s Rebellion, is largely unwritten," and would be "a few more years in coming."

That means that Blood & Fire will span around 150 years, roughly the amount of time as Fire & Blood. There were 10 Targaryen kings who ruled during that period, including such notable figures as Baelor the Blessed, Aegon the Unworthy, Daeron II (who first brought Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms), Aegon the Unlikely, and of course, Aerys Targaryen the Mad King. Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas, which are currently being adapted into the HBO show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, take place during this time period. So do both Blackfyre Rebellions, the Great Spring Sickness, the Burning of Summerhall, the beginnings of Robert's Rebellion, and a bunch of other important events in the history of the realm. Suffice to say, there is a lot of good stuff that would be covered in Blood & Fire.

One of the only other ironclad details we have about Blood & Fire came during another of Martin's blog posts early this year. In it, Martin decried the number of legs on the Targaryen sigil in HBO's television show House of the Dragon, while teasing that readers will learn more about the bond between dragons and their riders in the Fire & Blood sequel. "They bond with men… some men… and the why and how of that, and how it came to be, will eventually be revealed in more detail in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING and some in BLOOD & FIRE," he wrote, adding that, "Septon Barth got much of it right." Barth was a historical figure who appeared in Fire & Blood, a loyal friend of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator whose studies on dragons and the occult made him famous across the realm. (And eventually, infamous, when a later king deemed them blasphemous.)

As of right now, the main way to learn about much of this history is in The World of Ice and Fire, a deluxe world book that Martin published in 2014 which was co-authored by Westeros.org founders Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson. But The World of Ice and Fire gives only a bird's eye view of things. If the trajectory of Fire & Blood is any indicator, Blood & Fire will blow up all those important events and flesh them out in ways that reveal a ton of new information about the many historical figures who molded the Seven Kingdoms into the shape it took by the time of A Song of Ice and Fire.

What is the release date for Blood & Fire?

Now that we've talked about Blood & Fire, you may be wondering when you'll get to read it. Alas, if you've been a fan of Martin's works for any length of time, this answer shouldn't surprise you: as of right now, there's no release date for Blood & Fire. Martin is still working on the book, as he said in his August 2024 blog post above.

Martin has also said he doesn't plan to release Blood & Fire until after The Winds of Winter, as confirmed in a 2022 blog post unveiling the HBO tie-in edition of Fire & Blood. "This is the first of two volumes. The second will follow… [though] not till the WINDS have blown," he wrote.

So as of right now, I'd say it's best not to hold your breath for Blood & Fire. After The Winds of Winter, whenever that hits shelves, maybe we'll get to find out all the secrets of the later years of House Targaryen's reign. Until then, our watch continues.

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