Fire & Blood (book)

Fire & Blood
First edition cover
Author George R. R. Martin
Illustrator Doug Wheatley
Country United States
Language English
Series A Song of Ice and Fire
Genre Fantasy
Publisher Bantam Books
Publication date
 November 20, 2018[1]
Pages 736
ISBN 978-1-524-79628-0

Fire & Blood is a planned complete history of House Targaryen by George R. R. Martin.[2] Although originally (in 2013) planned for publication after the completion of A Song of Ice and Fire,[3] Martin has revealed his intent to publish the history in two volumes as the material had grown too large. The first volume is set to be released on November 20, 2018.[1] Before being titled Fire and Blood, the history was jokingly named the GRRMarillion[4][5] after J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.

Publication history

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.[6]

In February 2017, Elio Garcia, Martin's co-author of 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 Garcia, 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 some on just fleshing out a bit" the long reign of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, which was previously only glossed over in "Heirs of the Dragon".[7]

On July 22, 2017, Martin revealed on his blog that the material for Fire and 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, is set to cover 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 largely written already, the second volume remains largely unwritten.[5]

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]

Contents

Fire and Blood will be illustrated in a similar fashion as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. According to Martin, the book is set to contain more than seventy-five black & white illustrations by Doug Wheatley.[9][1] The first volume of Fire and Blood is known to contain the following texts:

  • "The Targaryen Conquest": Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.[10] Published in more or less same version in The World of Ice & Fire.[8]
  • "The Peace of the Dragon": Aegon I's reign after his Conquest.[11] While Aegon I's reign is briefly glossed over in The World of Ice & Fire, no parts of the text have yet been published.
  • "The Sons of the Dragon":[12] Focuses on the lives of Aegon I's sons, King Aenys I Targaryen and King Maegor I Targaryen, ending with Maegor's death and the ascension of Aenys's son Jaehaerys I Targaryen to the throne. An abridged version of The Sons of the Dragon was released in October 2017 titled The Sons of the Dragon in the anthology The Book of Swords.[12]
  • "Heirs of the Dragon": Being about 17,000 words long, it focuses on the reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen and the succession crisis following the deaths of his sons. An abridged version, The Rogue Prince, previously published in the anthology Rogues in 2014, uses the majority of this text.[13]
  • "The Dying of the Dragons": Being about 60,000 words in length,[13][N 1] it focuses on the great civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. An abridged version of 30,000 words was included in The Princess and the Queen,[4] which was published in the anthology Dangerous Women in 2013.
  • "Aftermath — The Boy King and His Regents": Covering the first few years of the reign of Rhaenyra's young son Aegon III, when the realm was ruled by Aegon's regents. According to Elio Garcia, it is "almost as long" as The Dying of the Dragons in total word count.[13][10]

Notes

  1. ↑ Previously reported to have a word count of 80,000 (Not A Blog: The Princess and the Queen (August 31, 2013)). Garcia stated he believes Martin reached 80,000 in prior interviews by accidentally considering the combined word count of both The Dance of the Dragons and The Heirs of the Dragon as one big story.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Not a Blog: Fire & Blood: On The Way (April 25th, 2018)
  2. ↑ Not A Blog: The Rogues Are Coming...
  3. ↑ Not A Blog: The Dangerous Women Are Coming
  4. 1 2 Not A Blog: The Princess and the Queen (August 31, 2013)
  5. 1 2 Not a Blog: The Swords are Drawn (July 22, 2017)
  6. ↑ Not a Blog comment: Ten Thousand Ships (May 20, 2014)
  7. ↑ Westeros (22 February 2018). "Westeros.org Discusses... Worldcon" – via YouTube.
  8. 1 2 "A FIRE & BLOOD Excerpt just for YOU! - Not a Blog". georgerrmartin.com.
  9. ↑ Not a Blog: Hugo Nominations Open (Feb 7th, 2018) – comment (Feb 14th, 2018)
  10. 1 2 Youtube: Westeros.org Discusses... Fire and Blood, (Retrieved on July 27)
  11. ↑ Vassals of Kingsgrave podcast, Elio Garcia.
  12. 1 2 Not a Blog: A Bit More (Fake) History (January 31, 2017)
  13. 1 2 3 r/asoiaf.com: (Spoilers Extended) The Possibilities for GRRM's New Novella in the Book of Swords Anthology
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