A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Great - now I've become a fan of a second GRRM series that may never be completed. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a compilation of three novellas set in Westeros a good ninety years prior to the events of A Game of Thrones. They follow the adventures and exploits of a baseborn hedge knight called Ser Duncan the Tall and his cunning little squire, Egg. Before being compiled under this title, the stories were simply referred to as "The Tales of Dunk and Egg."

I really liked these. I was skeptical at first - why should I care about what was happening in Westeros a hundred years ago in the midst of the Targaryen reign? But sure enough, Martin roped me right in. These are happier and more lighthearted than the five books that comprise A Song of Ice and Fire - though really, is that a hard bar to clear? - and they largely focus on smaller conflicts among lesser lords and common folk. My favorite tale of the three was probably the second, in which Dunk and Egg find themselves in the middle of a quarrel between two houses after one has damned and redirected a stream that the other desperately needs.

Several people have described these stories as Martin's attempt at writing some kid-friendly Westeros stuff, but that absolutely isn't the case. Sure, there aren't any graphic rape scenes, but there's still coarse language and nudity and violence.

I love A Song of Ice and Fire, but there's no denying that the last two books in that series were sagging pretty heavily under their own weight and misery. It was nice to read this set of stories, then, and be reminded that Martin still has a talent for writing about jousting tournaments and puppet shows and drunken revelry. I'd definitely strongly recommend these stories to GRRM fans who haven't found them yet. There will allegedly be between three and nine more of them one day, which, ha, wow, oh man, no fucking way, this man is sixty-seven and three hundred pounds and only slowing down... but even if Dunk and Egg are never revisited again, hey, at least we'll always have these three stories.