Fire & Blood

Summary (from the publisher): With all the fire and fury fans have come to expect from internationally bestselling author George R. R. Martin, this is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens in Westeros.

Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart.

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed.

With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fire and Blood is the ultimate game of thrones, giving readers a whole new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of Westeros.

 

Review: With all the richly imagined depth of all of Martin's other novels, this book goes back several centuries before the story told in A Game of Thrones to detail the history of House Targaryen. The history begins with Aegon the Conqueror, who created the Iron Throne and united the seven kingdoms, and continues through many generations. 

 

Just as with all of Martin's works, this is filled with hundreds of characters and just as many richly imagined details about each of them. Considering that the book was over seven hundred pages long, it became difficult at times to keep up with the tangled web of each generation and its many characters and intrigues. The other striking difference, as noted by most other reviewers, is that this reads like a history text, as written by a maester chronicling the kingdom's history. This frame story of a history text includes references to missing details or differing accounts in the historical record. I missed the fluctuating perspective that the Game of Thrones novels features, where each chapter follows a particular character. In contrast, this book, like most history books, is impersonal and relatively distant from the characters themselves, which likely contributed to my difficulty keeping them separate at times. 

 

That being said, I loved returning to the world of the Targaryens, Starks, and Baratheons. For diehard fans of the series, this book provides deeper insight into the world of the characters. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Aegon the Conqueror and his two sisters/wives as they built the kingdom and created the Iron Throne. Another tidbit I found interesting was fact that the first Baratheon mentioned, Orys One-Hand, was a bastard brother to Aegon the Conqueror, so it makes sense why the Baratheons would remain close to the Targaryens.

 

While ultimately not nearly so satisfying as his other novels, I have long admired Martin's ability to not only create another world, but to create one with hundreds of years of complex history. While I do wish this had not been written as an imagined history text, I did enjoy it and thought it added to what he has already written about this particular imagined world.

 

Stars: 4