FEATURE STORY

The Dunk and Egg Show
HBO is reportedly developing a new prequel show based on the Dunk and Egg tales.

Our days are too long,
our lives are too short.
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Sansa, First and Last of Her Name
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Bran, First and Last of His Name
Good Fortune in the Decade to Come
In the beginning. Almost twenty years ago, I was flipping through The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Tenth Annual Collection, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, looking for something to read on an upcoming plane trip. The anthology included a list of the top fantasy novels of 1996, in which I saw this blurb about a book I hadn't yet heard of:
The Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra). This acclaimed writer's new novel is a saga written on an epic scale and entirely delicious. It's a fat book, the first in a series, and filled with all the classic fantasy tropes: kings and courtiers, soldiers and sages, magical creatures and a cruel dragon prince—yet Martin manages to give familiar themes and characters vivid new life. I recommend this one even to readers who have sworn off multi-book series fantasy.
Thus I checked out A Game of Thrones from the library and figured this "fat book" would at the very least help me sleep while in mid-flight. I read the first chapter when I got home. Then I read another chapter and another. I was a third of the way into the book when I realized I might actually finish it before I even got to the airport. I made a quick return visit to the library to pick up A Clash of Kings, the second book, which was at the time the only other book in the series. I felt a little silly having these two massive hardcovers making up the bulk of my luggage, but it was so worth it. I carried one of the books everywhere I went during that spring break: on the plane, on the beach, at a spring training game, on a sailboat even.
Those were my very first memories of reading A Song of Ice and Fire. What made you read the books? If you started by watching Game of Thrones first, what drew you to the show?
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Tower of the Hand is an unofficial companion to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and HBO's Game of Thrones, featuring chapter and episode guides, character profiles, family trees, and much more.
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