“Fire and Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin
I love history. And I love the Game of Thrones series, all 7 seasons of it. While it’s been years later, I’m still mending my utter disappointment for season 8, which I heard could’ve been stretched for 6 seasons until season 13.
So when the series House of Dragon came out, I hesitated. But then a certain self-proclaimed Game of Thrones walking dictionary (he has read every GoT books) suggested me to read this book instead.
And in a way it’s perfect, as I understand the world of GoT well enough having watched the series twice in a row. And reading this book is like reading a history book over a familiar current affairs issues, which is what I’m used to.
Not going to spoil anything from the book, but in a nutshell, let me just say it’s so astonishing that a book can have an unbelievable scale of imagination with all the richness of the backgrounds and legends about the Targaryen Dynasty, considering that this is a work of fiction. All of the human greed, emotions, injustice, political in-fightings, conspiracies, sibling rivalries, the barbarity of peasants, even plagues, are all felt so real, not unlike the real events occurring in world history.
I’ve never read fiction in this kind of porpotion before, and never read any of George RR Martin’s book before. Now I understands my friends’ obsession with the books. Very well done.
EDWIN SETIADI 