A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

thousand years ago.”

A GAME OF THRONES:
THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
    George R. R. Martin—dubbed “the American Tolkien” by
Time
Magazine—has created a masterwork of modern fantasy with his landmark series,
A Song of Ice and Fire
. His much-beloved characters and settings have not only made the books bestsellers in multiple countries, but have spun off a host of affiliated products, from calendars, card games, and board games to swords, figurines, and coins.
Game of Thrones
, HBO’s stunning adaptation of George’s world to the small screen, premiered to rampant fan excitement.
    And now comes the next exciting chapter in
A Game of Thrones
adaptations: the graphic novel! From a joint partnership between Dynamic Forces and Random House comes a stunning visual representation of George’s seminal world, adapted by acclaimed novelist Daniel J. Abraham, and illustrated by Tommy Patterson. As you can see from this handful of character sketches and rough sample pages, this will be an absolutely stunning-looking series—and one that we hope will give George’s long-time fans a new way to appreciate his world, as well as providing a new entry-point for more recent converts.
    We hope that you will share our enthusiasm for watching how this amazing world unfolds, visually, over the course of the planned twenty-four issues … because we are all enormously excited!





To John and Gail
for all the meat and mead we’ve shared



PROLOGUE
    T he comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the
crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.
    The maester stood on the windswept balcony outside his chambers. It was here
the ravens came, after long flight. Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that
rose twelve feet tall on either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of
the thousand that brooded over the walls of the ancient fortress. When first he
came to Dragonstone, the army of stone grotesques had made him uneasy, but as
the years passed he had grown used to them. Now he thought of them as old
friends. The three of them watched the sky together with foreboding.
    The maester did not believe in omens. And yet . . . old
as he was, Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color,
that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets. He wondered if
his gargoyles had ever seen its like. They had been here so much longer than he
had, and would still be here long after he was gone. If stone tongues could
speak . . .
    Such folly.
He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing
beneath him, the black stone rough beneath his fingers.
Talking gargoyles
and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child
again.
Had a lifetime’s hard-won

wisdom fled him along with his health and strength? He was a maester, trained
and chained in the great Citadel of Oldtown. What had he come to, when
superstition filled his head as if he were an ignorant fieldhand?
    And yet . . . and yet . . . the comet burned
even by day now, while pale grey steam rose from the hot vents of Dragonmont
behind the castle, and yestermorn a white raven had brought word from the
Citadel itself, word long-expected but no less fearful for all that, word of
summer’s end. Omens, all. Too many to deny.
What does it all mean?
he
wanted to cry.
    â€œMaester Cressen, we have visitors.” Pylos spoke softly, as if loath to
disturb Cressen’s solemn meditations. Had he known what drivel filled his head,
he would have shouted. “The princess would see the white raven.” Ever
correct, Pylos called her
princess
now, as her lord father was a
king. King of a smoking rock in the great salt sea, yet a king nonetheless.
“Her fool is with her.”
    The old man turned away from the dawn, keeping a hand on his wyvern to steady
himself. “Help me to my chair and show them in.”
    Taking his arm, Pylos led him inside. In his youth, Cressen had walked briskly,
but he was not far from his eightieth name day now, and his legs were frail and
unsteady. Two years past, he had fallen and shattered a hip, and it had never
mended properly. Last year when he took ill, the Citadel had sent Pylos out
from Oldtown, mere days before Lord Stannis had closed the
isle . . . to help him in his labors, it was said, but Cressen
knew the truth.

Pylos had come to replace him when