Fire & Blood

In “A Conversation Between George R. R. Martin and Dan Jones,” Martin describes Fire and Blood as the “GRRMarillion, as a play on Tolkien[‘s Silmarillion]” (732). Like The Silmarillion, Fire and Blood is a key piece of worldbuilding that provides the fictional historical context for the books and shows in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. According to the Dan Jones interview, the book includes some material from other Martin works, with large portions first published in The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (2014). Fire and Blood is a fictional history; it lacks many of the storytelling elements that make the five novels in the series popular and beloved. Although there is a main plot line, there are frequent digressions that add to the length of the book.

The marketing for Fire and Blood promises readers that the book will answer many of the questions that remain from the work and television shows. These questions include, “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?” (“About the Book”).