HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spin-off series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is kicking off next week. Alongside the new series, Penguin Random House has just released a new version of George R.R. Martin’s book that features an HBO tie-in. The updated cover features the lower half of Dunk and almost all of his squire, Egg. This edition of the book is only available as a paperback and you can pick it up at pretty much every major online bookstore before the show premieres on January 18.
If you’re not familiar with all of the Game of Thrones books already, it’s worth noting that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is not part of the main series. The story takes place roughly 100 years before the start of A Game of Thrones and follows the adventures of Duncan the Tall (Dunk) and his squire (Egg). The book itself is actually a collection for three novellas that were released in different years. Within this collection there’s The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mystery Knight.
If you want to read the book without the tie-in cover, you can also buy the original collection at Amazon. This version features a stylized shield rather than actors from the show.
The TV Series Is Based on the First novella
Although the book is made up of three novellas, the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is adapting the first novella: The Hedge Knight. George R.R. Martin has praised the series ahead of its release, calling it “as faithful an adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for (and you all know how incredibly reasonable I am on that particular subject).”
Here’s the official synopsis of the upcoming series that has been released by HBO:
“A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”
Upcoming Dunk and Egg Novellas
There have only been three total Dunk and Egg novellas published so far, but George R.R. Martin has expressed a desire to write an entire series. The caveat to that is that Martin has also stated he would need to finish the sixth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, The Winds of Winter, which is already quite late.
If Martin is able to finish his long-awaited final entry in the main Game of Thrones series, we have some idea of what to expect from more novellas. According to Martin the next Dunk and Egg novella is set in Winterfell and involves “a group of formidable Stark wives, widows, mothers, and grandmothers that I dubbed ‘the She-Wolves.’”
Additional Dunk and Egg novellas Martin has planned include a Riverlands-set story called The Village Hero, as well as stories with the tentative titles The Sellsword, The Champion, The Kingsguard, The Lord Commander, “and several more in between.”
