Review | Fire & Blood, Game of Thrones prequel, sees George R.R. Martin stick to winning formula of incest, dragons and destruction

Fire & Blood
by George R.R. Martin
Bantam

There is a character in George R.R. Martin’s new novel named Alys Westhill. This is not her real name: she was born Lady Elissa Farman. Until roughly page 239, Lady Elissa’s claim to fame is as favourite of Rhaena Targaryen, one of roughly 28 million queens roaming Westeros thanks to their husbands’ unfortunate habit of being brutally and bloodily murdered.

Rhaena’s other half was Maegor “the Cruel”, who, as his nickname suggests, brutally and bloodily killed her first husband in dragon-to-dragon combat before being himself killed (also brutally and bloodily, as it happens).

Born on a remote and, until Queen Rhaena’s arrival, trivial island, Elissa possesses a powerful relationship to the sea, which eventually supersedes the former queen in her affections. Elissa leaves Rhaena and builds a ship to explore the oceans beyond Westeros. The voyage is financed by three Targaryen dragon eggs that Elissa stole from under Rhaena’s nose – something that later sets the cats among the pigeons.

While Elissa dreams of “other lands and other seas”, her flat-earth followers do not share her enthusiasm: “Then as now, ignorant smallfolk and superstitious sailors clung to the belief that the world was flat and ended somewhere far to the west.”