World of Ice and Fire
George R.R. Martin — famous as the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, more widely known as the inspiration for the Game of Thrones show — has a new book out.
No, it’s not The Winds of Winter, the next book in the series, but it is set in the same universe.
The World of Ice and Fire serves as a history book and encyclopedia of Martin’s imaginary world, offering detailed looks at the various royal houses, kings, landscapes and legends of Westeros and beyond. It appeals to a cross section of two demographics: people who love fantasy worlds and people who love lengthy histories of kings and houses.
Fall into both of those categories and The World of Ice and Fire will be a worthy addition to your bookshelf. But if the thought of learning the complex histories of fictional people doesn’t sound like a fun time, you might want to pass.
Martin’s newest book is filled with diagrams and illustrations, including long family trees and smaller, in-depth maps. For some strange reason, it doesn’t have a huge, detailed map of Westeros, but the smaller ones offer a lot of detail as to the locations of several previously vague narrative spots. Most of the artwork is beautiful and especially important in that it provides images for many of the historical figures whom readers have been hearing about for so long.
Martin is a well-read amateur historian who has adapted many real-world political events into his book series with remarkable skill. He’s very aware of how even history is fiction, as the winners warp the events to their side and subtle intricacies are lost to legend and exaggeration. The book series’s long and intricate plot is heavily influenced by events that happened before the books began. And while Martin alludes to and at least somewhat explains these events throughout the books, many characters have different opinions on what happened, leaving the truth still a mystery.
The book is intriguing, therefore, in that it doesn’t claim to offer a completely objective history, but rather is framed as an actual in-universe history text. It’s definitely the most objective view of this world’s history we’ve gotten so far, but it doesn’t answer many long-standing questions, as the fictional author confesses his lack of knowledge on the truth of some mysteries. This is frustrating to those who were looking for new information, something the book is actually rather light on.
In interviews, Martin and his two co-writers, superfans Elio M. Garcia and Linda Antonsson, have revealed that Martin wrote most of the book in a rare flurry of writing fervor. It seems reasonable to suggest that focusing on the past histories he’s already thought up in his head was easier to do than figuring out how to keep the now incredibly complex plot of the series going, and Martin can’t really be blamed for his slow progress.
However, The World of Ice and Fire seems more like it should have been released after the series was complete, a treat for hardcore fans to continue learning about the world they love instead of serving as an awkward prologue before the series is completed.
The broad strokes of A Song of Ice and Fire will likely be spoiled by the upcoming seasons of Game of Thrones, so long-suffering fans won’t have to wait too much longer for more story. The World of Ice and Fire probably shouldn’t have been written this early, but it’s still an interesting and enjoyable read for anyone who can’t get enough of Martin’s dense imagination.
