Book Bearings
Fire & Blood
- 840 pages · about 14 hours
- First published 2014
- 37 editions
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1 About this book
Fire & Blood is a history of House Targaryen, the dragon-riding dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and it begins some three hundred years before the events of A Game of Thrones. It is written as a chronicle by a scholar of that world, Archmaester Gyldayn, who weighs sources that often contradict one another. This first volume runs from Aegon the Conqueror's unification of the kingdoms, through the reigns of his heirs, to the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons and the boyhood reign of Aegon III. The book is illustrated by Doug Wheatley, and its second half is the basis of the television series House of the Dragon.
- Fantasy, epic
- Magic
- Dragons
- Seven kingdoms
- Kings and rulers
- Monarchy
- Imaginary places
- Imaginary wars and battles
2 What to expect
Not a novel but an invented history: the first half of the Targaryen kings' three centuries in Westeros, written as if by a scholar comparing unreliable sources. Conquests, successions, marriages and a civil war fought with dragons fill it, with little dialogue and no single hero to follow. It is long and can be dry, and it assumes some knowledge of A Song of Ice and Fire or its television versions.
Good for readers who want: fantasy told as history, dragons and dynasties, and the backstory of Game of Thrones.
3 About George R. R. Martin
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by George R. R. Martin
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