Fire & Blood (2018) (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin

I so badly wanted to hate this book.

I was so angry when GRRM announced its publishing. Like many other ASOIAF fans, I viewed it as the reason that the eagerly anticipated The Winds of Winter had been pushed so far back from its expected publishing date of 2015-2016. I vowed not to purchase Fire & Blood, instead wishing to wait for Winds in order to 'punish' Martin for his insolence in choosing to finish the first leg of this offshoot in lieu of completing the next chapter of his magnum opus. So I didn't purchase this on its release date—the first time I've done this with an ASOIAF book since I began reading the series nearly a decade ago.

The moment of truth came in Budapest's Franz List International Airport just last month. I had been sick for nearly two weeks with that pervasive, annoying traveler's cold that seems to make you just sick enough that you can't enjoy anything, but not so sick that you're confined to your bed. So you stay ill for weeks at a time, never resting enough to get better, and feeling like garbage the entire time. I still had a number of hours until my flight left, but I had finished the book I brought on the trip with me and had no other means of killing time aside from browsing social media on my phone like some sort of a plebeian. So I wandered over to one of the stores near my gate and perused their selection of books, which—luckily enough for me, being the monoglot American that I am—were all in English. And, staring me right in the face, right in front of the stack, was an English language version of Martin's Fire & Blood, Volume 1. At the time my head felt as if it might detach and float away, and my faculties were dulled by a persistent sore throat. So my steadfast commitment to boycotting this Targaryen tome weakened, and I purchased it and decided to see if it was worth the time.

As I read my opinion of it went from, "this is all just shit from The World of Ice and Fire, what the hell?", to "okay, this is a pretty inspired portrait of a (fictional) enlightened despot", to being brought nearly to tears by the so-called Death of the Dragons.

God damn it, George. You got me again. I wish you'd just go away. And by that, I mean, please defy all the odds and keep writing these books for another 30+ years.

Perhaps it's best to first discuss what the book is not. Gone is the limited third person narrative that Martin uses to such great effect in the mainline ASOIAF series. Fire & Blood feels like George had all of these ideas for storytelling in his head, continuously building over the years. He'd sprinkle them here and there throughout the mainline ASOIAF series, of course—but eventually, his mind reached critical mass, and he just had to unload them. First to Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson (the authors of the previous world book, The World of Ice and Fire), and then onto the page himself with this book.

So these are very much summarized versions of various events Martin has dreamt up, though he does allow for a flourish of style or dialogue here and there. And that might put some folks off. But it also allows Martin to forget about some of the shackles the limited third person perspective places upon him; he can now jump from cherry-to-cherry, neglecting the rest of the sundae, and give us the best bits. While the book loses the atmospheric quality of the mainline series, it gains the punch of a quickly paced, impactful narrative and loses the weakness that is the glacial pacing of both A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons.

Fire & Blood starts off with its weakest portion—the conquest of Aegon and his sisters—but grows more and more enticing from there. The characters and reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, and, perhaps most affecting, the civil war in the dance of the dragons, are superbly affecting and quite entertaining to read. Martin proves his storytelling is as strong as ever, despite the criticisms he has received for his most recent entries in A Song of Ice and Fire and the flak he's caught by publishing this book prior to The Winds of Winter.

The dance of the dragons, in particular, is one of the most singularly affecting events of the entire series. Martin spends little time focused on the great dragons of the Targaryen dynasty, preferring to tell us mostly of the Targaryens themselves. Despite this, the dragons come to occupy a place as treasured pets, or beasts of war, rather than the unreal, magical monsters that they are. They are viewed more as 'parts of the family' rather than simply tools of war; children are raised alongside them, occupying the same cradle as the eggs, and love them as they would a family dog that has been assigned to be their companion for most of their lives.

I'm an animal lover, and viewing the dragons in this light created an attachment I hadn't realized had developed until I read through the dance of the dragons—or, as Martin tells us in the text, what some historians prefer to refer to as "the dying of the dragons". The dance of the dragons wasn't just a massive blow to Targaryen power within Westeros, but a massive blow to Westerosi civilization itself, the catastrophic loss of such total war is put into terms that we thus feel personally and emotionally with passages such as this one:

Silverwing had taken to the sky as the carnage began, circling the battlefield for hours, soaring on the hot winds rising from the fires below. Only after dark did she descend, to land beside her slain cousins. Later, singers would tell of how she thrice lifted Vermithor's wing with her nose, as if to make him fly again.

Martin's strong anti-war and anti-feudalist themes from the main series continue to occupy the backbone of his storytelling. If you're looking for something smart, rather than just something fantastical, you can find that here, too. It's convenient that the chapters involving the reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne—the quintessential enlightened monarchs, who rule (mostly) successfully, and justly—are followed by those whose incompetence eventually led to the devastating civil war that destroyed most of the dynasty's power. As we're reminded of, time and time again, near-absolute power is a fickle thing, as capable of creating boom as it is bust. And the war which follows is, like nearly all wars fought within Martin's fiction, a net negative. Little is gained from the conflict, but much prosperity is lost, as is often the case with war in the real world.

So I suppose the real question is whether or not you'll view this change in storytelling style as a real hurdle. It's far less easy to lose yourself in this book when compared to the reading experience of the main series. It's basically a summarized version of an entire book series that Martin rightly realized he'd never be able to write. To me, it's no less worthwhile even considering the change of format—But I'm a massive fan of this world, this series, and Martin's storytelling and themes. So if you feel similarly about A Song of Ice and Fire, and you don't feel too put off by the fact that Fire & Blood reads like a summarized series, then you should definitely give it a shot. I cracked into it expecting another dry tome involving some excellent worldbuilding, but found it packed full of intriguing characters and storytelling, despite its format falling a bit short of that of the main series.

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