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]
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a bit" the long reign of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, which was previously only mentioned in "Heirs of the Dragon", an unpublished text that Martin abridged to form the novelette The Rogue Prince.[6]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]
Contents
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]
"Aegon's Conquest" describes Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.[14] More or less the same version was published in The World of Ice & Fire.[8]
"Reign of the Dragon – The Wars of King Aegon I" and "Three Heads Had the Dragon – Governance Under King Aegon I" follow Aegon I's reign after his Conquest. While his reign is briefly glossed over in The World of Ice & Fire, no parts of the chapters have been published before.
"The Sons of the Dragon" 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 novella of the same name was previously released in October 2017 in the anthology The Book of Swords.[15]
The long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen is described over seven chapters.
"Heirs of the Dragon – A Question of Succession" focuses on the succession crisis following the deaths of Jaehaerys' sons and the eventual reign of his grandson Viserys I. The novella The Rogue Prince, previously published in the anthology Rogues in 2014, uses the majority of this text,[16] which was adapted in the first season of HBO's House of the Dragon.
"The Dying of the Dragons" is split into six chapters and focuses on the Dance of the Dragons, the succession war between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her younger half-brother Aegon II. An abridged version was included in The Princess and the Queen,[17] which was published in the anthology Dangerous Women in 2013. These chapters form the primary basis of House of the Dragon.
"Aftermath – The Hour of the Wolf" describes the aftermath of the Dance and the ascension of Rhaenyra's young son Aegon III to the throne, while the book's four final chapters cover the early period of Aegon III's reign, when the realm was ruled by his regents.
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.
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