Loading AI tools
2018 book by George R. R. Martin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fire & Blood is a fantasy book by American writer George R. R. Martin and illustrated by Doug Wheatley. It tells the history of House Targaryen, the dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros in the backstory of his series A Song of Ice and Fire.[2] Although originally planned for publication after the completion of the series,[3] Martin revealed his intent to publish the history in two volumes as the material had grown too large. The first volume was released on November 20, 2018.[1]
_hardcover.jpg) First edition cover | |
| Author | George R. R. Martin |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Doug Wheatley |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Song of Ice and Fire |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | November 20, 2018[1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 736 |
| ISBN | 978-1-524-79628-0 |
| Preceded by | |
The second half of this first volume (an expanded version of The Princess and the Queen) has been adapted into the HBO series House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones.[4]
In 2014, more than 200,000 words were removed from the manuscript of Martin's companion book The World of Ice & Fire and were incorporated into Fire & Blood.[5]
In February 2017, Elio M. García Jr., Martin's co-author for The World of Ice & Fire, reported that he had spoken with Martin at WorldCon 75, held in 2017 in Helsinki, about the first volume of Fire & Blood. According to García, in addition to the never-published material developed for The World of Ice & Fire, Martin also created entirely new material for the book, having "worked on just fleshing out a bit" the long reign of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, which was previously only mentioned in "Heirs of the Dragon", an unpublished text that Martin abridged to form the novelette The Rogue Prince.[6]
On July 22, 2017, Martin revealed on his blog that the material for Fire & Blood had grown so large that the decision had been made to publish the histories of the Targaryen kings in two volumes. The first volume, simply called Fire & Blood, covers the history of Westeros from Aegon's Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king, Aegon III Targaryen. While the first volume of Fire & Blood has been published, the second volume was largely unwritten as of July 2017.[7]
In April 2018, when announcing the publication date, Martin revealed the manuscript to be 989 pages long.[1] An excerpt was revealed in October 2018.[8]
Rather than a novel, Fire & Blood takes the form of a scholarly treatise about the Targaryen dynasty written by a historian within the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, Archmaester Gyldayn.[9][10][11] Gyldayn cites a variety of fictional primary sources for the historical events he describes, whose accounts sometimes conflict with each other, reflecting medieval methods of historiography and thus making Gyldayn an unreliable narrator from the reader's perspective.[12][13]
Fire & Blood is illustrated in a similar fashion to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The book contains more than seventy-five black and white illustrations by Doug Wheatley.[18][1]
Fire & Blood received mixed reviews from critics. According to Book Marks, the book received "mixed" reviews based on eight critic reviews with three being "rave" and two being "mixed" and three being "pan".[19] In Books in the Media, a site that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a 
(2.81 out of 5) from the site which was based on eight critic reviews.[20]
Hugo Rifkind of The Times described it as "interminable, self-indulgent crap."[10] Roisin O'Connor of The Independent faulted the book for its dry tone and stated that reading it feels like "you've been assigned a mildly interesting, but often tedious, piece of homework".[9] Publishers Weekly stated that "Martin's evocative storytelling style and gift for gripping narrative are mostly absent from this dry history".[21]
Conversely, Dan Jones of The Sunday Times praised the book, calling it "a masterpiece of popular historical fiction".[22] Similarly, Chris Lough of Tor.com described the book as "... the best Song of Ice and Fire book in 18 years",[23] a comparison to A Storm of Swords.
The HBO series House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones, is based on material from Fire & Blood, which covers the Dance of Dragons civil war. The show is produced by Martin, Vince Gerardis, Ryan Condal, and Miguel Sapochnik (also showrunner).[24]
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
