THERE was good news this week for Game Of Thrones fans, though for most of them it will have qualified as bad news too. Author George RR Martin announced the publication of a new book – but it isn’t The Winds Of Winter, the long-awaited sixth instalment of his epic fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire (ASOIAF) and the one fans have been waiting seven years to get their hands on.

Instead it’s called Fire And Blood and it acts as a sort of Who’s Who of the Targaryen kings, one of several dynasties battling for supremacy on the island of Westeros in the titular game of thrones. But as fans of the books and TV show well know, the Targaryens are the only ones who can call on dragons to help them out which makes them just a little bit special. They’re represented in the series by the indomitable Daenerys Targaryen aka the Khaleesi, one of ASOIAF’s two heroines and a fan favourite who’s played in the blockbuster TV series by British actress Emilia Clarke.

The 69-year-old fantasy author, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, announced the new book on his blog and gave a publication date of November. For Thronies or Westerosians or whatever other name ASOIAF fans care to use, it at least means there’s something to look forward to in 2018. But as even the TV series goes into hibernation for a year – season eight won’t air until 2019 – it means the wait for more Game Of Thrones adventures continues.

Fans have long known about Martin’s Fire And Blood project and his intention for it to act as both a companion piece to the Games Of Thrones books by detailing 300 years of Targaryen back story. But it was always assumed it would be released after The Winds Of Winter, not before it. That changed late last month when Martin announced that the fully-illustrated 989-page book will be published in hardback on November 20.

“This first volume covers all the Targaryen kings from Aegon I (the Conquerer) to the regency of Aegon III (the Dragonbane), along with their wives, wars, siblings, children, friends, rivals, laws, travels, and sundry other matters,” he wrote on his website. “Oh, and there are dragons too.”

He also announced a second volume, running from Aegon III up to the time of Daenerys. “But that one is a few years down the pike,” he added. “So don’t get impatient”.

That will be easier said than done for fans well used to Martin’s gnomic comments and to the rumours that swirl around him as a result, especially where his books’ notoriously long gestation periods are concerned. The best guess for why The Winds Of Winter is taking so long to complete is its sheer size and complexity but there are plenty of more far-fetched conspiracy theories ranging from extreme writer’s block to extreme ill health. Martin addressed some of these in a blogpost last July.

“I don’t know which story is more absurd, the one that says the book is finished and I’ve been sitting on it for some nefarious reason, or the one that says I have no pages,” he wrote. “Both ‘reports’ are equally false and equally moronic. I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that’s all I care to say.”

There are currently five books in the ASOIAF series. The first, A Game Of Thrones, was published in 1996. The last, A Dance With Dragons, in 2011. But with several chapters of The Winds Of Winter written even before A Dance With Dragons was published, there was hope that it would be completed fairly quickly. Then again fans will also have known that Martin ended up taking six years to finish its predecessor. We do know that the author had written 400 pages by 2012, though an announcement by his UK publisher in 2014 quashed any hope of publication that year. Martin himself said he would like it to be published in 2016, but later announced that he had missed that deadline. In January 2017 he said it would be published that year, but again the 12 months came and went with no sign of it. And so the long wait continues, and will do until at least 2019.

In the New York headquarters of television network HBO, they’ll be watching all this closely and with some frustration. The quest to turn ASOIAF into a TV series began in 2006 when writer David Benioff persuaded Martin that a book he had deemed “un-filmable” was anything but. Re-christened Game Of Thrones (the title of the first book in the sequence), season one aired in 2011 and was an instant hit for HBO. To date, the series has garnered 38 Emmy Awards, more than any other scripted TV show.

But the seasonal demands of television dramas – especially popular ones like Game Of Thrones – form an unforgiving rhythm and by 2015, when season five aired, the programme makers had caught up with the books. So for season six in 2016, HBO were forced to move into uncharted territory, drawing up plot lines based on what Martin was telling them might be in the next book or simply making up new story arcs. For season seven it was the same drill and ahead of the series finale last summer HBO announced that series eight had been commissioned – but that it wouldn’t premiere until 2019. Cue more rumours regarding The Winds Of Winter and when it may, or may not, hit the shelves.

So while Fire And Blood may scratch some kind of itch for fans of both the books and the TV series, the long wait to pick up the stories of favourites such Daenerys, Jon Snow, Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister continues – and it’s starting to feel as long as one of those fabled Westerosi winters.