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George RR Martin drops tidbits about upcoming Targaryen book

It's not Winds of Winter, but for Game of Thrones fans, Fire & Blood is going to have to do for now.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper
daenerysgot

Daenerys Targaryen's family is getting a published history all its own.

HBO

No, it's not Winds of Winter, but fans of HBO's Game of Thrones can look forward to a new book from author George R.R. Martin coming this fall.

And the author says the book, Fire & Blood, should be "very entertaining," even for those who haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire book series that inspired the show.

"The important thing, as I keep stressing, is that (Fire & Blood is) not a novel," Martin told Publisher's Weekly. "A lot of people will like it, I hope, but I don't want them to buy it thinking that they're getting the latest Ice and Fire novel, which is an entirely different literary form than what's essentially a popular history."

Not a novel, indeed: Fire & Blood is a 989-page history of the Targaryen family, and according to Martin, may be only the first volume in his history series.

It won't be a stiff and boring history, Martin said, as it will be voiced by a character with opinions of his own about the history he's relaying.

"There's an authorial voice there that I had fun trying to create, the Archmaester Gyldayn, who is an opinionated guy and has his views of these people that definitely leak into it," Martin said. 

Fire & Blood will be published Nov. 20. Maybe it will tide readers over until the show's final six episodes air in 2019.