We all know who the White Walkers/Others are, right? Those big white snow skeletons that make Samwell Tarly piss his pants in at least every other scene during the show?
Good stuff! But what exactly is their endgame? Obviously they’re trying to get past the Wall, but then what? Do they wreak havoc? Kill people? Pull a Frosty the Snowman and bring joy and happiness to everyone around? Frankly, we don’t know. All we know is that if they get past the Wall, shit’s gonna down…but if you’re a nosy little motherfucker like me, George R.R. Martin’s new book, The World of Ice & Fire, will tell you exactly what “shit going down” entails.
Spoilers ahead!
…the book outright explains or states a lot of things that fans of Martin’s books have only guessed or wondered at — including exactly what happens if the Others, the snowbound monsters north of the Wall, get into Westeros and overrun everything.
The answer comes in an early chapter of the book, where Martin talks about the Long Night — there’s a revolting image of the Others riding on Ice Spiders. And we find out just what the world would be like if the Others took over. (Hint: Very dark, and very cold. Forever.) That’s kind of what we’d suspected all along, but I think this might be the first actual details about the Others’ endgame.
In other words, this book actually seems to raise the stakes considerably for Martin’s saga, or at least clarify them somewhat.
Not only that, but The World of Ice & Fire basically breaks down all the shit that happened before A Game of Thrones started, like what happened to Valyria, details about Melisandre’s Red God, a full account of Robert’s Rebellion and a bit of information about what happened between Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here to get a pretty solid theory on who Jon Snow’s parents actually are).
To be honest, I wasn’t planning on reading The World of Ice & Fire because I had decided that if it didn’t continue the plot of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, I didn’t care. But now…yeah, I’m all about this thing. Bring it up with me in about a month and I won’t be able to shut the fuck up about it, most likely.
The World of Ice & Fire comes out today, October 28th, and if you’re cheap as hell and can’t handle shelling out the ~$30 for the book, here’s George R.R. Martin in an io9 exclusive talking about the history behind the Rains of Castamere to tide you over until Season 5 of Game of Thrones picks back up:
[Via io9]