…I don’t care because I will take whatever A Song of Ice and Fire I can get. Even if it’s the side adventures of Dunk and Egg. Maybe especially if. No. I still want WoW more. But these help hold me over.
I’m in the home stretch of my ASoIaF re-read and somehow had only ever read one of the side novels so I was absolutely delighted to get A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in from the library (the wait for Fire & Blood is quite a bit longer). This one tells the story of two characters I am tangentially familiar with: Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk) and Aegon Targaryen (Egg).
If you know your Game of Thrones, the name Aegon Targaryen might look familiar but this is a different Aegon. This is Aegon the Unlikely – a younger son of a younger son, and elder brother to our beloved Maester Aemon of the Nights Watch. That Aegon. Who, as a child, was squire to a humble hedge knight and lived among the smallfolk. That hedge knight, Ser Duncan, was the kind of knight Brienne of Tarth was inspired by, one who did keep to their vows to protect all people, big and small, no matter the personal cost.
This book takes place fifteen years after the Blackfyre rebellion and though much of that history is recounted – especially in the third of the stories here – it is very helpful to have a decent knowledge of how that went down. Other than that, these stories stand alone quite well in the ASoIaF lore and really help flesh out the whole world that Martin has created. I can’t wait for Fire & Blood and I definitely can’t wait for Winds of Winter.
Yes, I have a lot of reviews to catch up on how could you tell.