Good news for George R.R. Martin fans—he has a new book on the way. Bad news for George R.R. Martin fans—it's not his long-awaited fifth sequel to A Game of Thrones.
Ballantine Bantam Dell will publish Martin's Fire and Blood in the U.S. and Canada on November 20 under his longtime U.S. imprint, Bantam Books. The HarperCollins U.K. imprint Voyager, Martin’s publisher across the pond, will publish Fire and Blood in the U.K. and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) on the same date. Foreign rights for simultaneous publication in translation have gone to other longtime publishers, including Penhaligon in Germany, Éditions Pygmalion in France, Arnoldo Mondadori in Italy, Penguin Random House in Mexico and South America, Luitingh-Sijthoff in the Netherlands, and Zysk i S-Ka in Poland.
The book, BBD said, is set 300 years before the events of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. The first of two planned volumes, the book is, the publisher continued, intended as "the definitive history of the Targaryens in Westeros and chronicles the conquest that united the Seven Kingdoms under Targaryen rule through the Dance of the Dragons: the Targaryen civil war that nearly ended their dynasty forever." Martin's writing will be accompanied by 75 all-new black and white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley.
“No, winter is not coming...not in 2018, at least. You're going to have to keep waiting for The Winds of Winter. You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year,” Martin said of the book in a statement. “I do want to stress...indeed, I want to shout...that Fire and Blood is not a novel. This is not a traditional narrative and was never intended to be…let's call this one ‘imaginary history’ instead. The essential point being the ‘history’ part. I love reading popular histories myself, and that's what I was aiming for here…. As for me, I'm returning once again to The Winds of Winter”
