The Rise of the Dragon

The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of The Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One - By George R. R. Martin, Elio M. Garcia, Jr., and Linda Antonsson

★★★★☆

Rise of the Dragon book cover

I used to be an ASOIAF fan. I’ve read the main series three, maybe four times. I’ve read Dunk and Egg, Fire & Blood, The World of Ice & Fire, and the first three volumes of the A Game of Thrones graphic novel. I’ve read copious amounts of theory posts, fanfiction, nearly every wiki page, even the Preston Jacobs TWOW project.

And no, I haven’t watched the shows, and yes, maybe I am too smug about that.

Idk. It sits wrong with me that the guy who got his fame and fortune writing the books abandoned them in favor of orthogonal projects. Then I realized, who even cares about TWoW? Either way, ADoS is never coming out.

Five stages of grief. Maybe I’m not at Acceptance yet.

So this review is ONLY going to be about the images, not the text. The text gets a 2/5 because it contained very little new information. Just a rehashing of TWOIAF and Fire & Blood, with a few new insignificant details sprinkled in for flavor. Or maybe no new details, I just forgot them earlier.

But. The images were great!

Colorful. Fun to look at. Pretty dragons. Sufficiently purple eyes. Ugly person representation. I like Magali Villeneuve’s art in TWOIAF, she draws beautiful people, but some people are just mid, yknow?

There was a shocking amount of graphic in the illustrations. Compared to TWOIAF, which had none. Examples:

  • Man leaps to his death
  • Man gets tossed out of a window
  • Man about to get stoned to death
  • Man sprawled on the ground front and center after being murdered by his lover
  • Man clad in all white, dead in a puddle of blood
  • Girl falls off her horse, about to break her neck
  • Woman with a noose around her neck, about to jump
  • A beheaded corpse in the background as someone gets crowned
  • Naked man stumbling out of his tent after having his throat slit
  • Man stabbed through the ribs
  • Man bleeding out after a crossbow bolt through the throat
  • A decaying man in his bed
  • Dead kid and his dead dragon floating in the sea
  • Two people being incinerated by dragons
  • One person being incinerated by a regular old guy

As a challenge, how many of these people can you name without further context? I can name maybe two.

Favorite pieces

  • Dragonstone, with the massive snakey chiseled stone dragons on Page 20
  • Colorful Rhaena riding away from Arryn land on a white horse, with Morning on her shoulder on Page 278
  • A side view of the Red Keep on page 88
  • Aliandra Martell trying to seduce Alyn Velaryon on Page [I forgot and returned the book], which is on the wiki: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Category:Images_of_Aliandra_Martell

And my favorite Lord Beesbury on Page 202, at the beginning of the Dance of Dragons. What happened to him? Wellll, the fictional historians aren’t sure. Maybe he was confined to the black cells where he eventually died. Or maybe he had his throat slashed and died. Or maybe he was flung “bodily out a window” and still died.

What did they do? THREE SEPARATE IMAGES. One gripping the bars of his cell, looking quite morose. One getting his throat slashed. And one being flung bodily out a window, of course.

That had me dying.

There were lots of different artists/artstyles and I don’t think they were equally good. How much of that is subjective? I dunno, I’m not cut out to be an art critic.

At the time of writing, June 2026, Volume Two isn’t out yet. I’ll read if it it also ends up at my library, but it’s not a high priority.