First of all, I very much regret my decision not to buy a copy of this book. I waited FOREVER on my library’s wait-list for it, and then when I did finally get it and saw all the beautimous illustrations, I spent about thirty minutes just gazing at them all, and then I put the book down and cried piteously for a while. The illustrations are a huge draw, but also, the book is just fun. It is most definitely not for casual fans of […]
History is Written By the Literate: The World of Ice & Fire
Like many people today, I’m a big fan of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice & Fire” series. The books are both a delight and a terror as Martin builds a tremendously brutal, violent and uncaring landscape upon which he populates his characters. Like the best of the fantasy genre, a great deal of the work goes into building that landscape – the cities and nations of Westeros and Essos, the history that colors the various points of views and pressures that each of […]
Like sands in the hourglass, these are the Games of our Thrones …
Both book and television spoilers lurk within … A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in George R. R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire series, was published in 2011, after a five-year gap between it and the previous entry, A Feast for Crows. The series started with A Game of Thrones in 1996. The series has had an interesting evolution. Originally intended to be a trilogy, Martin soon realized that his fictional world of Westeros and beyond was expanding and would require first, four, than six, now […]
Poppin’ Up in Westeros
While there has been a lot of internet speculation (and outrage) over the latest Game of Thrones episode, “Breaker of Chains,” I have been preoccupied with a new acquisition, the Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros. Designed by renowned paper engineer Matthew Reinhart and illustrator Michael Komarck, the book is a blast, with not just the cool buildings that populate the fantasy series, but lots of fun pop-up surprises and pull-out guides to all of the warring houses from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and […]