George R.R. Martin has revealed a set of new covers for A Game of Thrones and the whole A Song of Ice and Fire guide sequence.
Revealed on his blog, the gorgeous new covers “seize the vastness of Westeros and the harmful journey readers will encounter.” The 5 books can be found in a boxed set and will likely be out there on-line and in shops in October 2024, although no value was revealed.
“There’s a uncooked and gritty high quality to linocut and woodcut artwork,” the put up continued. “A sure starkness that appeared to suit the tales, and a protracted historical past to the artwork kind that felt proper for this world.
“This cowl design course of paired linocut artist Mark Seekins and designer Tim Inexperienced, with artwork course from David G. Stevenson. They labored collectively to develop sketches and carve the designs into blocks of linoleum, the place the raised areas have been inked and pressed onto paper. The covers characteristic a number of colours, which required separate blocks for every coloration layer. The completed prints have been then photographed and integrated into the covers.”
This boxset would not embrace the whole A Song of Ice and Fire story, of course, as Martin famously, maybe infamously, has but to complete the ultimate two books.
The subsequent entry, The Winds of Winter, is up to now 10 years late and seemingly making sluggish progress. Martin mentioned in November 2023 that he’d written 1,100 pages of the extremely anticipated guide, the identical quantity he’d written a 12 months earlier.
No author is blessed with producing an ideal first draft, of course, and Martin’s “writing” of The Winds of Winter may even embody re-reading, re-writing, enhancing, planning, and so on, so there’s nonetheless lots of work to be performed with out truly growing the web page quantity complete.
Martin mentioned in October 2022 the guide was round three quarters of the best way performed, noting he is fully completed some characters’ tales however nonetheless has others to weave all through them. The general progress of The Winds of Winter has turn out to be considerably of an ongoing gag inside the fiction group although, with even Martin himself getting in on the joke.
An estimated launch window for The Winds of Winter was first given in 2011 when the earlier guide, A Dance With Dragons, was launched, and Martin mentioned it might take three years to complete at an excellent tempo. That set expectations for a 2014 launch date, however 12 months after 12 months, and delay after delay, Martin nonetheless is not able to launch the penultimate A Song of Ice and Fire entry.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll discuss The Witcher all day.