I first read the A Song of Ice and Fire series a few years before Game of Thrones was adapted for the screen. It was an exciting time, nothing gets me more pumped up than when I hear that a book I love is going to be turned into a movie or a show. And for the first five seasons, Game of Thrones more than delivered everything a reader would have wanted. The show stuck to the plot of the books very well, the chosen actors suited their roles and played the characters admirably, and the special effects were excellent. But once the show started to go further than what we readers currently had available to us I started to experience feelings of trepidation and happy thrills. It gave me joyful shivers as I watched the show with my friends that did not read the books, knowing what was going to happen and waiting to see their shocked faces when things went bad or took unexpected turns in the plot. It was equally amusing to turn towards my one friend who did read and give them a knowing smirk. When the screen went further than the page, I became one of the non readers, doomed to be surprised with every minute. I was looking forward to being surprised, but also disappointed that Mr. Martin was lagging behind with getting his story on the page. I won’t go into what we all know happened towards the end, that being one of the greatest disappointments in show history. I will only say that I wished for better for certain characters, namely Jon Snow.
I miss those days. I don’t know if there will ever be a cinematic event like that again in my lifetime. I keep looking for the next best thing. The closest I have come to that is having recently picked up Fire and Blood, which dictates the Targaryen rule in Westeros. It begins with a short history of the first Targaryens who lived on Dragonstone, of whom were there a few centuries before the conquest, and it starts to get detailed after the birth of Aegon the conqueror and his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys. The three dragons were born to their parents Aerion and Valeria Velaryon on Dragonstone, and due to Valyrian customs, Aegon married his older sister Visenya, but even stranger, he also married his younger sister Rhaenys. Due to endless squabbles between the seven kings of Westeros, and an offensive offer made by one king to Aegon, he decided that the best course of action would be to eliminate the seven kings and have a single king to rule over the seven territories. The kings would become lords, still ruling over their individual territories, but answering to a single king. Aegon also decided that the king would be himself. And that is how Targaryen rule began.
That is all I am going to give you here. The end of this book ends with the individual that came out as victor at the end of the Dance of Dragons, the Targaryen civil war. I won’t say who wins and who ends up as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, you will either need to read this hefty volume or watch Fire and Blood on HBO. I don’t think the end of the Dance will happen this season, I think there will be a third season and possibly a fourth if they drag it out. So if you really want to know what happens you can either be incredibly patient or read this very detailed history. I will say, I am not satisfied with the end, only because I wanted more. I wanted to know everything that occurred from the end of the Dance all the way to the Mad King. There are about one hundred thirty years between the end of the history as detailed in Fire and Blood and the end of the reign of the Mad King. The only thing you get is a family tree and a chronological succession at the very end of the book. There are two more books that I think may give me what I am looking for, those being The World of Ice and Fire and The Rise of the Dragon. Let me see how long I can hold out until I need to get both of those.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 