NEW YORK – The books that gave us the fantasy epic TV series “Game of Thrones” will be getting an enhancement for the digital age.
Random House says special editions of the five novels George R.R. Martin has completed for the “Song of Ice and Fire” will be released over the next few months. However this news will be devastating to any GoT fan without an Apple device as the enhanced edition of Book One, “A Game of Thrones,” comes out Thursday exclusively through Apple’s iBooks, originally published 20 years ago.
All volumes made in collaboration with Apple will include interactive character maps, glossaries, annotations and other features. Martin says readers will have “rich secondary material” not possible on paper. Each book also will include an excerpt from Martin’s ever-awaited Book Six, “The Winds of Winter,” for which a release date is not set.
“The digital book gives readers to experience all the rich secondary material that had not been possible before.” said writer George R. R. Martin in a press release from Apple.
This will come to great relief to fantasy nerds as fans of the fantasy genre know all too well of the difficulty in trying to keep up with names, languages, characters, geography and locations in fantasy worlds. “None of these features interfere with the reader experience. Instead, they make it a lot more fun.” writes Melissa Ragsdale of Bustle.com.
All five books will be made available in coming months and are available for pre-order, whilst the wait continues for Martin’s sixth book “The Winds of Winter”.
– AP
