GRRM GRIND

I'll just post the pictures, they don't need any words to upset you as they did to me. Dear Lord.

While not short with the greens coming in with shiploads of book sales/royalties and other writing fees, among other moneymaking thingamajigs, George, rather his publishers, came and went to republish the literary egg that in time would hatch the biggest fantasy empire since Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. 

The Ice Dragon is dressed as a children's book (err juvenile fiction, as if it changes anything), while hiding inside the typical gritty desolation hand-in-hand with imaginative graphic present in ASOIAF. Already quite unlikely to its aspect genre, the book just got more edgier than that of the 2007 re-drawing. We have on our hand is a Salvatorean-Warcrafty mix that could easily have been bred by Peter Jackson and HBO.

It's awesome, really. Even the unused illustrations are breathtaking. But if you've read it before, then most probably you're having mixed feelings, and not for the better.

Amping up the grit and losing all the fairy tale flavor that it exudes. I don't know if I should feel sad or happy, but if history runs true, then I'd be both. You want to retain the original, yet you want that badass frexing dragon right there.

Well, it doesn't matter if they change the art or whatever, I'll still go back to the warm, homey comfort in Yvonne's drawings.

Let's go to Martin's procrastinating now. For sure we won't get the whole Westeros and the Know World's fill from ASIOAF, even with the Game of Thrones tv series and short stories combined. And Martin came up with a solution in the academic glory of The World of Ice and Fire.

It is a compendium of facts and entries on the previously only mentioned, better yet implied, historical and geographical mysteries in the canon. A sample entry can be seen on Martin's official website that downright destroyed the whole AC/BC dating system we have been using hitherto. Oh, the wiki's sure to rave.

These are just some for you to add to that growing GRRM altar you have at home. Well until you see these.

A seven times godsdamned pop-up book. It unfolds to a fucken' paper construct map-spread of Westeros and some of Essos, well minus the unseen parts in the tv series. So dumbed down to the people who thinks Dany's name is Khaleesi, sumptuous wife to the horsedude, it's called Game of Thrones: A Pop-up Guide to Westeros.

Speaking of maps. We also have The Lands of Ice and Fire, ten maps of the known world, even showing areas in Essos, Sothoryos and Ulthos that are still unmentioned in the books.

Also. George won't write a GoT episode on the upcoming Season 5. Sources say that he chose not to in order to focus on finishing the last books of this century's epic.