Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before a Game of Thrones (The Targaryen Dynasty: The House of the Dragon)

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The Targaryens are kind of a big deal. Martin fills us in on their history from when the WINTERY Aegon the Conqueror first took charge of WINDY Westeros with his two sisters. You know I have two sisters. I’m not saying we were like those WINTERY and WINDY siblings, but let’s just say my girls enjoyed the gun show every chance they got.

Martin, George R. R.. Fire & Blood (A Song of Ice and Fire) (Kindle Locations 1270-1300). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. In other words – and despite the difficulty – I feel I must judge this on its own merits, rather than bemoan the fact that this is not The Winds of Winter, the long-gestating, long-promised sixth book of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire cycle. Tiene partes mejores que otras pero bien en general. Con ganas de ver que sale de la nueva serie. "La Casa del Dragón" han escogido un período ideal para una serie. La Danza de Dragones es lo mejor del libro. Dos mujeres en una lucha por el trono de hierro, dos colores y bandos. "Verdes" o "Negros". Y muchos dragones.

After taking leave of White Harbor, the queen’s retinue sailed up the White Knife to its rapids, then proceeded overland to Winterfell, whilst Alysanne herself flew ahead on Silverwing. The warmth of her reception at White Harbor was not to be duplicated at the ancient seat of the Kings in the North, where Alaric Stark and his sons alone emerged to greet her when her dragon landed before his castle gates. Lord Alaric had a flinty reputation; a hard man, people said, stern and unforgiving, tight-fisted almost to the point of being niggardly, humorless, joyless, cold. Even Theomore Manderly, who was his bannerman, had not disagreed; Stark was well respected in the North, he said, but not loved. Lord Manderly’s fool had put it elsewise. “Methinks Lord Alaric has not moved his bowels since he was twelve.” I assume that most people who read Fire and Blood are fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, which makes it strange that there are so few connecting threads between the two works. With some exceptions that I will not spoil (since A Song of Ice and Fire is ground-zero of the Spoiler Wars), Fire and Blood does nothing to enrich A Song of Ice and Fire and refuses to be enriched in turn. Fire and Blood is an amazing piece of work that does for the World of Ice and Fire what The Silmarillion did for Tolkien's Arda. It is an incredibly rich and detailed account of the lore of the world, the wars that were fought and the kings that ascended the throne, whether they were worthy of it, cruel or mad. Fire and Blood details, as the title suggests, the history of the Targaryen Kings; this first volume spans the time from the reign of Aegon the Conqueror to his sixth successor Aegon III, who sat the Iron Throne 130 years after Aegon the Dragon and his sisters first set foot on Westerosi soil. With all the fire and fury fans have come to expect from internationally best-selling author George R.R. Martin, this is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens in Westeros.

As a conscientious objector, Martin did alternative service 1972-1974 with VISTA, attached to Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation. He also directed chess tournaments for the Continental Chess Association from 1973-1976, and was a Journalism instructor at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, from 1976-1978. He wrote part-time throughout the 1970s while working as a VISTA Volunteer, chess director, and teacher.First, Martin did not start as a prolific world-builder ala J.R.R. Tolkien. To the contrary, to quote Laura Miller’s 2011 New Yorker profile, “[he] sometimes fleshes out only as much of his imaginary world as he needs to make a workable setting for the story.” Indeed, he even copped to the fact that he only “invented seven words of High Valyrian.” (It is the HBO show, not the books, that created the languages you’ll find uttered in line at a comic con). The takeaway is that something in Martin changed since 2011, and the laser-focus on tight story lines and evolving characters has morphed into a self-indulgent wallow in minutiae. I assume this is related to the unrelentingly high expectations created by the global phenomenon of Game of Thrones, which is slowly crushing poor George in a golden vise. Indonesian/Malay Dragon (Naga or Nogo)-Derived from the Indian Nāga, belief in the Indo-Malay dragon spread throughout Maritime Southeast Asia with Hinduism. The word Naga is still the common Malay/Indonesian term for a dragon. Like its Indian counterpart, the Naga is considered divine in nature, benevolent, and often associated with sacred mountains, forests, or certain parts of the sea. The aesthetic of this book is gorgeous; easily one of the most beautiful books I own. I mean it, the cover art of both editions is stunning, the typography inside the book is beautiful, the font used (Centaur) was easy to read, and most of all, Doug Wheatley’s artworks were simply spectacular to look at. As for the enjoyment factor, I really wouldn’t call this an enjoyable read, it was more like a homework reading that I gladly imposed upon myself of my own will. This book took me almost three weeks to read; that’s an extremely long time for me to spend reading a single book. For a bit of comparison, I finished reading The Crippled God (385k words) in four days and Oathbringer (450k words) in six days. Coincido con muchos, enganchó y sin querer parar, que fascinante linaje. Vaya manera de escribir y de crear una pedazo historia como cualquiera de nuestro mundo y pasado.