'Inside HBO's Game of Thrones' | Bryan Cogman [Review]

 

I hadn't really intended to buy this, but I saw it in Sainsbury's earlier and decided, hey, why not?

The book is beautiful. It contains many pages of colour photographs from the series, set alongside passages of text about the world of the A Song Of Ice And Fire (ASOIAF) series as shown in the books by GRRM, but more specifically the world depicted in the hugely successful HBO TV series.

It begins with a foreword by ASOIAF series creator George R. R. Martin on writing his series and his thoughts on previous considerations of adapting the books for film or TV. Then there's a short interview with the TV series creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss about how they came to adapting it. Then the book launches into a series of chapters and sections, describing all the major locations, characters and important/interesting scenes in the TV series, both in terms of what happens in the story, and then from a creative point of view, describing how they came to find each location, casting actors, costumes etc.

It was a really interesting read that swallowed me up this afternoon quite unintentionally, but I did not regret it at all. It was interesting to see the different ideas and concerns when it came to creating the series, as well as seeing pieces of concept art and just how much thought goes into every location and costume etc. This evening I've been watching a few episodes of the series now and it's kind of opened my eyes up even further.

My only hesitation about the book, is that it only covers the first two seasons of the TV show (obviously, since they are the only two to have currently aired), and it makes me wonder if they'll expand it each time there's a new season or two or if they'll release further volumes or just not do any more books. On the one hand, it'll be interesting to see the same kind of creative thoughts when it comes to future episodes, characters and so on, but I don't really want to be buying another book every year, especially if it just spouts out the same stuff that in this book as well. I know it doesn't really affect this book, but still it was something on my mind as I read it.

Overall, a really interesting companion book for the TV series, and would be appreciated by any fan of the TV series, whether they have read the book series or not.