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FIRE AND BLOOD Volume 1


Lord Varys

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12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

My cancer back in 2011 wasn't serious enough for me to write George a touching letter...

 

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

In 2011 I had to go through chemotherapy because the thing returned, but it is all over now and in fact the best cancer you can hope for due to the high rates of complete recovery (I caught it so early that they decided I didn't have to go through chemotherapy the first time, but it did return after 5+ years).

Oh my! :(

I'm so happy that you're better now. :) I really hope that the worst days are behind you, and that there's another whole century stretching before you, in time to see aDoS published. :) 

Lots of thoughts and prayers your way, but not in the stupid, "I'm saying this because I don't want to talk about serious stuff," way but in the actual, "I really care and hope that everything is okay, and I was quite moved by that, and I think I'll donate to the RCH, which is in my city and helps children who have life-threatening diseases," way.

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On 4/25/2018 at 9:45 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

600 pages in hardcover....how is this possible?  That's twice as long as the World book.

"70% never-published material"

By my calculations:

  • Aegon's Conquest - 10,000 words
  • The Peace of the Dragon - unpublished
  • The Sons of the Dragon - 17,000 words
  • The Heirs of the Dragon - 17,000 words (edited as The Rogue Prince with 13,000 words)
  • The Dying of the Dragons - 60,000 words (edited as The Princess and the Queen with 30,000 words)
  • Aftermath - the Regency of Aegon III - "nearly as long" as the Dance material, only a 3,000 word gloss in World book.

So....10 + 17 + 13 = 40, 40+30= 70....

If they consider those 70,000 already-published selections to be "30%" of the full version...70 divided by 3 multiply by 10 equals...

233,000 words

....but Martin wrote about 160,000 words on Aegon I to Aegon III for the World book.  

Did...did he write essentially 50% more material for this version?  

Just a thought, but the actual page number could be inflated here. The pre-order pages on Barnes and Noble and georgerrmartin.com call it Fire and Blood, not Fire and Blood Volume one. So maybe both volume's page numbers have been combined accidentally. Considering that GRRM accidentally combined Rogue Prince and Princess and the Queen for word count, it's not impossible to think that the early pre-order descriptions got the wrong number.

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7 minutes ago, Hiigara129 said:

Just a thought, but the actual page number could be inflated here. The pre-order pages on Barnes and Noble and georgerrmartin.com call it Fire and Blood, not Fire and Blood Volume one. So maybe both volume's page numbers have been combined accidentally. Considering that GRRM accidentally combined Rogue Prince and Princess and the Queen for word count, it's not impossible to think that the early pre-order descriptions got the wrong number.

how could they combine the page count for both volumes when volume 2 has not been completed yet?

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Yeah, well... this was a cruel blow to me.. I've been bummed out for two days. I'm interested enough in the histories, but it's not the same as being able to immerse yourself in a novel or even a short story. This, I wouldn't have minded waiting another 7 years for.

The one bit of salve I now hope for is copious excerpts from "The Testimony of Mushroom" :rolleyes:

@Lord Varys :cheers: good health and long life.

I'm another who (now) has real worries that I may not live to read to the end of ADoS. I'm slightly older than George. I had two elder sisters. One died when she was 2 yrs younger than I am now; the other died when she was four years older than I am now. I hope my chances are better than that, but all the gods are silent on the matter...:D

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6 hours ago, bemused said:

Yeah, well... this was a cruel blow to me.. I've been bummed out for two days. I'm interested enough in the histories, but it's not the same as being able to immerse yourself in a novel or even a short story. This, I wouldn't have minded waiting another 7 years for.

The one bit of salve I now hope for is copious excerpts from "The Testimony of Mushroom" :rolleyes:

@Lord Varys :cheers: good health and long life.

I'm another who (now) has real worries that I may not live to read to the end of ADoS. I'm slightly older than George. I had two elder sisters. One died when she was 2 yrs younger than I am now; the other died when she was four years older than I am now. I hope my chances are better than that, but all the gods are silent on the matter...:D

Hang in there, bud. When my niece was but five, she asked my grandfather how old he was. When he told her that he was 90, she replied, "Wow, you're almost done," to which he smiled sweetly and said, "Why yes, I suppose I am." 

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I'm a little torn on this book. On one hand it's good that there is more Westorosi history to read. On the other hand I don't want to encourage George to spend any more time writing any more books other than Winds.

I think I'll hold off buying this until after Winds. I'll watch History of Westeros youtube video on it maybe.

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4 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Hang in there, bud. When my niece was but five, she asked my grandfather how old he was. When he told her that he was 90, she replied, "Wow, you're almost done," to which he smiled sweetly and said, "Why yes, I suppose I am." 

:D:D I just choked on my coffee.( Let's not rush the inevitable.)

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19 hours ago, Yukle said:

Oh my! :(

I'm so happy that you're better now. :) I really hope that the worst days are behind you, and that there's another whole century stretching before you, in time to see aDoS published. :) 

Lots of thoughts and prayers your way, but not in the stupid, "I'm saying this because I don't want to talk about serious stuff," way but in the actual, "I really care and hope that everything is okay, and I was quite moved by that, and I think I'll donate to the RCH, which is in my city and helps children who have life-threatening diseases," way.

Thank you, but I've been really well for a long time now. Still, it is nice to see that people in the internet do care. I recall I made a thread on this thing back in the General Chatter thing back in 2011.

14 hours ago, Hiigara129 said:

Just a thought, but the actual page number could be inflated here. The pre-order pages on Barnes and Noble and georgerrmartin.com call it Fire and Blood, not Fire and Blood Volume one. So maybe both volume's page numbers have been combined accidentally. Considering that GRRM accidentally combined Rogue Prince and Princess and the Queen for word count, it's not impossible to think that the early pre-order descriptions got the wrong number.

On the page count:

Guys, keep in mind that TWoIaF was a pretty big book whereas FaB is likely not going to be that big. The larger the page the more words fit on a page. There was a lot of art in TWoIaF, true, but you there still fit a lot of text on each page, especially those were there was only some sword or a skull, etc.

In any case, we should not compare or confuse book pages of a novel-sized book - like the main series and, presumably, also FaB - with a coffee table book the size of TWoIaF.

11 hours ago, bemused said:

I'm another who (now) has real worries that I may not live to read to the end of ADoS. I'm slightly older than George. I had two elder sisters. One died when she was 2 yrs younger than I am now; the other died when she was four years older than I am now. I hope my chances are better than that, but all the gods are silent on the matter...:D

I can really empathize with that. Death is hopefully still very far away from me, but the idea that it is knocking on the door when there are still things you really want to read, see, do, etc. isn't something I look forward to.

Still, one can make peace with the fact that one is not going to read an unfinished or unwritten novel. But it is harder to swallow - and that was the point why I made that reference to my previous condition above - that there are texts in some drawer or on some computer that you really, really would like to read and they are simply not published. That is unpleasant.

For the lion's share of FaB we do indeed wait for a very long time.

4 hours ago, RedShirt47 said:

I'm a little torn on this book. On one hand it's good that there is more Westorosi history to read. On the other hand I don't want to encourage George to spend any more time writing any more books other than Winds.

I think I'll hold off buying this until after Winds. I'll watch History of Westeros youtube video on it maybe.

The whole thing likely is actually nothing but a treat for the people who actually care about this stuff. It wouldn't have cost him much work. There was editing, corrections, approval of art being done, and the writing of the piece on the reign of Jaehaerys I. That was it. The other stuff was already finished.

Now, I'd not complain if he sat down and produced the second volume of 'Fire and Blood' this year to publish it next year (and covering only the reign of Aegon III up to the death of Daeron II to not spoil the Dunk & Egg stories) because I would actually like to read stuff like - and it could actually be highly entertaining if he included vast excerpts and quotations of Aegon IV's own autobiography, commenting on the reign of his royal uncle and cousins as well as his own (sexual) exploits. After all, he did once entertain the notion to write a novel about the life of Aegon the Unworthy from his own POV. It would be great fun if Gyldayn had actually stumbled on pages from such on autobiography in some privy in the Red Keep, or at some other obscure location.

But it is not likely he is going to do that. TWoW is his main focus. It has been since he finished ADwD. He doesn't even take time to write a Dunk & Egg story anymore.

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5 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Well, while they are often inaccurate, fans of it say the Testimony of Mushroom is more "dramatically satisfying".  

Yup ... so I've heard uh.. somewhere.

M-m-m.. loves me some dramatic satisfaction

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17 hours ago, Hiigara129 said:

Just a thought, but the actual page number could be inflated here. The pre-order pages on Barnes and Noble and georgerrmartin.com call it Fire and Blood, not Fire and Blood Volume one. So maybe both volume's page numbers have been combined accidentally. Considering that GRRM accidentally combined Rogue Prince and Princess and the Queen for word count, it's not impossible to think that the early pre-order descriptions got the wrong number.

Fire and Blood Volume II has not, to our knowledge, been started at all. I'm a bit puzzled as to the confusion over the word count here. The 60-70% new material thing is likely a simplification and we don't know how they're counting it.

The World Book as it stands has about 150,000 words, made up of material GRRM wrote verbatim and the majority that Linda and Elio wrote (although a lot of that material is a summary of GRRM's notes and information). The World Book is 324 pages long, but pull out the artwork, the family trees, the maps and the index and the book would be a lot shorter. Blow up the font size to normal and put it in a hardcover book, and it'd be around 325 pages in hardcover and 400 pages in paperback (fun fact, you can see this with the Wheel of Time world book which is about the same size as WoIaF and they did publish it as a normal-sized book with no illustrations and it worked out like that).

Fire and Blood has about 275,000 words which includes all of GRRM's material he wrote for the Targaryen history section of TWoIaF. GRRM said he wrote 300,000 words total for the World Book, so it sounds like 25,000 words was not included in Fire and Blood, presumably because it falls outside the scope of that book (apparently including a lot of the new material about the world outside of Westeros; those 25,000 words sound like they were summarised for the world book, not published verbatim).

A Game of Thrones - the shortest ASoIaF novel - is 298,000 words which came out at around 650 pages in hardcover and 800 pages in paperback. Fire and Blood's page count of around 600 pages in hardcover sounds consistent with that.

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Bill from the Subterranean Press wrote in early April:

Just a quick note to let everyone know I received the email go ahead (and the 261k word manuscript) for another project by my favorite writer. Landing this project alone makes 2019 an amazing year to look forward to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if this ms has landed on my Kindle.

I wonder if this was Fire & Blood. Martin said in his announcement post that "a few weeks ago I was able to ship it [Fire & Blood] off to my editors on both sides of the Atlantic, and to my foreign representatives for all my publishers around the world."

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Fire and Blood Volume II has not, to our knowledge, been started at all. I'm a bit puzzled as to the confusion over the word count here. The 60-70% new material thing is likely a simplification and we don't know how they're counting it.

The World Book as it stands has about 150,000 words, made up of material GRRM wrote verbatim and the majority that Linda and Elio wrote (although a lot of that material is a summary of GRRM's notes and information). The World Book is 324 pages long, but pull out the artwork, the family trees, the maps and the index and the book would be a lot shorter. Blow up the font size to normal and put it in a hardcover book, and it'd be around 325 pages in hardcover and 400 pages in paperback (fun fact, you can see this with the Wheel of Time world book which is about the same size as WoIaF and they did publish it as a normal-sized book with no illustrations and it worked out like that).

Fire and Blood has about 275,000 words which includes all of GRRM's material he wrote for the Targaryen history section of TWoIaF. GRRM said he wrote 300,000 words total for the World Book, so it sounds like 25,000 words was not included in Fire and Blood, presumably because it falls outside the scope of that book (apparently including a lot of the new material about the world outside of Westeros; those 25,000 words sound like they were summarised for the world book, not published verbatim).

A Game of Thrones - the shortest ASoIaF novel - is 298,000 words which came out at around 650 pages in hardcover and 800 pages in paperback. Fire and Blood's page count of around 600 pages in hardcover sounds consistent with that.

I suspect there's a reason Vol. 2 won't be released before Winds. If we accept that The Blackfyre will be at the center of the second main conflict, the George might want to reveal things in Winds, and maybe even Dream. 

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Just now, Lost Melnibonean said:

I suspect there's a reason Vol. 2 won't be released before Winds. If we accept that The Blackfyre will be at the center of the second main conflict, the George might want to reveal things in Winds, and maybe even Dream. 

GRRM acknowledged in his post that the history wouldn't appeal to everyone hence he's not likely writing TWOW and ADOS assuming anyone has read it. Any Blackfyre role in the main books would have to be laid out in TWOW for casual readers as so far it's only been mentioned in passing.

It's Robert's Rebellion which looms large over the main series.

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11 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

I suspect there's a reason Vol. 2 won't be released before Winds. If we accept that The Blackfyre will be at the center of the second main conflict, the George might want to reveal things in Winds, and maybe even Dream. 

That's entirely possible.

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6 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

GRRM acknowledged in his post that the history wouldn't appeal to everyone hence he's not likely writing TWOW and ADOS assuming anyone has read it. Any Blackfyre role in the main books would have to be laid out in TWOW for casual readers as so far it's only been mentioned in passing.

I strongly disagree. We have enough in Feast and Dance to question the Golden Company's motives, and especially after reading Arianne II, Winds, I think. 

9 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

It's Robert's Rebellion which looms large over the main series.

Absolutely, but I suspect that has more to do with the third main conflict. I am, however, just an observer. 

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

That's entirely possible.

Like I always say, mods are not mocked, girl. 

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6 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

I suspect there's a reason Vol. 2 won't be released before Winds. If we accept that The Blackfyre will be at the center of the second main conflict, the George might want to reveal things in Winds, and maybe even Dream. 

Whatever there is to be revealed would not have to be revealed - especially if Gyldayn's history would not cover the reigns of Jaehaerys II and Aerys II. House Blackfyre wouldn't be a huge priority in a history of House Targaryen, anyway, and by the time of Aegon V's death House Blackfyre still existed in the male line.

But we know that neither Yandel nor Gyldayn care all that much about royal descendants through the female line - and why should they, in light of the status women have in this society? There are Targaryen-Hightowers, Targaryen-Penroses, Targaryen-Plumms, and we have no idea what happened to them.

Aegon's connection to House Blackfyre could remain as obscure as it is now even if we got a detailed history of House Blackfyre - it focus on the many male scions of House Blackfyres not the women who married obscure foreigners.

What would be ruined and spoiled by another volume of FaB covering the reigns of Aerys I to Aegon V (or Aerys II) would be Dunk & Egg stories. George could just as well not write them if he wrote a history about many events that are going to be covered in them.

Hence the idea that a second volume of FaB could not cover all the missing kings but cover events up the Great Spring Sickness, keeping Dunk & Egg stuff untouched. If done right then the reigns of Aegon III to Daeron II could easily enough fill another book as large as FaB I. Especially if George spent as much time on the Conquest of Dorne and the First Blackfyre Rebellion as he did spend on the Dance - and considering the scale of those wars that would be easily doable.

And the reigns of Baelor the Blessed and Aegon IV wouldn't be boring, either. Nor the reign of the grown-up Dragonbane. In fact, this could become a very interesting history considering that people like Viserys II, Aegon the Unworthy, Daeron II, Princess Elaena, Alyn Velaryon, and Cregan Stark really stick around for a long time. One could really watch people grow up and age while they influence the world around them, etc.

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Just now, Lost Melnibonean said:

I strongly disagree. We have enough in Feast and Dance to question the Golden Company's motives, and especially after reading Arianne II, Winds, I think. 

Absolutely, but I suspect that has more to do with the third main conflict. I am, however, just an observer. 

 

The Golden Company having motives now doesn't mean that there will be a deep dive into the history of the Blackfyre in the main books, at least not in any way a casual reader can't follow. I can see a lot of finds being peppered about, but nothing that would lose anyone because they don't know the histories.

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