Dunk and Egg - A Knights of the Seven Kingdoms - GRR Martin - Book Review

 R M

Hello!

This time, instead of writing about yet another New York Times Best Seller personal development book, I decided to switch things up a bit. To be honest, I was getting a bit tired of them anyway. Before reading this novel, I had read Vedat Milor's interview book published by Kronik Kitap, and prior to that, if I remember correctly, I was reading the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Vedat Milor's Q&A formatted book was pleasant and easy to read, but I haven't written a review about it yet. Maybe my opinion will change; I'm not entirely sure. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is an incredible book, about 500-600 pages long, predominantly written in an academic tone. I managed to read halfway through and discovered some surprising insights and analyses about how the human brain works for the first time. However, as I continued reading, it became increasingly difficult for me to understand, and I felt that it wasn't aimed at the general reader. Because the book is largely related to the author's papers and experiments, it wasn't a book I could read to relax. When I started reading it, I had to devote my attention and time as if I were studying. At that point, I decided that I either needed to entertain myself or read something related to my work if I was going to spend that much effort, so I put that book aside for now. I wanted to give a brief update, but I've already prolonged it too much; let's get to the point.

Yes, as you know, House of the Dragons has been released, and I've reunited with the Westeros world that I'm a huge fan of. With the spark ignited, I realized how much I missed it, and after the season finale of House of the Dragons, I started rewatching Game of Thrones... From that point on, the spark turned into a wildfire. To immerse myself as much as possible into this incredible universe created by GRR Martin, I started researching and reading about the history and characters of Westeros. At this point, I realized that the real solution was to read the books directly. While looking through the books again, I found "The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," a prequel. I could have continued with the Game of Thrones book, which I had left halfway through the second book years ago, but that would have been a bit ambitious after such a long break.

I did some research on "The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and found that it is a novel about the stories of a knight and his squire set about 100 years before the time period of the Game of Thrones series. The more I researched, I found out that GRR Martin had written this as three short novels, and this book is a compilation of those three novels.

• The Hedge Knight (1998)
• The Sworn Sword (2003)
• The Mystery Knight (2010)
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2015) (collection of the first three novellas)

To talk a bit about our character and the book's content, our wandering knight "Sir Duncan the Tall" was actually the squire of another wandering knight, Sir Arlan of Pennytree. Duncan, born a bastard, was found by Sir Arlan chasing pigs in a flea pit. At that time, Sir Arlan needed a new squire because his previous one had died in battle. To help the poor child and to handle his own tasks, he decided to take Duncan under his wing. The book begins with Duncan burying his master. Although we don't read about Sir Arlan with Duncan in the book, Duncan frequently recounts memories he had with Sir Arlan. He doesn't have many other stories worth telling because noble lords don't care about tales from flea pits, and they barely listen to the stories of the not-so-famous Sir Arlan. What sets Sir Duncan apart from other insignificant wandering knights is the random encounter and the squire he takes under his wing, a Targaryen prince. Egg, at that time, is actually the son of Prince Maekar, Aegon Targaryen the Fifth. The person who will become king one day actually serves as a squire to an insignificant wandering knight in this book. Duncan, truly deserving the name, progresses page by page towards becoming a significant knight, even becoming a member of the Kingsguard one day. I assume he serves as a Kingsguard during Aegon's reign, but I don't want to research it to avoid spoilers about Duncan. Because, according to GRR Martin, there are still many parts left unfinished and awaiting to be written. Since I started rewatching Game of Thrones, in one scene, Joffrey and Jamie talk about the book that describes the Kingsguard members, mentioning that Jamie has only half a page written about him, while Sir Duncan has a full four pages, indicating how significant a knight he must have been. Coming across this scene while reading this book was a wonderful Easter egg for me. Additionally, Master Aemon of the Night's Watch is Egg's (Aegon) brother. If you watch Master Aemon's death scene, you'll notice him murmuring "Egg" with his last breath. Since he refused the throne, the succession passed to Aegon, allowing him to become king.

As you understand, the events take place during the period when the Targaryens ruled Westeros. It should be noted that there are no dragons during this period either. We only see dragon eggs mentioned in the last part of the book. I can't remember how many times I had to look at the Targaryen Family Tree to avoid mixing up the names. GRR Martin, while having such an incredible imagination, I wish you had made the names more distinct to make it easier for us to understand. Not to mention the important and insignificant knights and lords whose names are mentioned. Remembering their names was even more difficult. Every time I read the book, I couldn't help but think about how this scene would look in the series. I wanted to experience the descriptions and depictions by seeing them at some point. HBO, I hope you consider this too. In this 355-page book that combines three novels, I think there were three significant moments for Duncan. To avoid spoilers and since it's not my goal, I won't go into these moments too much, but if you want to find out, I can direct you to the amazing library at https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Main_Page . Of course, you can also read the book.

Although it gets heavy at times, it's a very pleasant novel to read and savor. Even if it wasn't related to the Westeros world, it would still be an enjoyable book. The fact that it's related to Westeros makes it much more attractive, of course. I'm mentioning this for those who haven't watched Game of Thrones or House of the Dragons, but I don't think someone who hasn't watched these would come across or read this book just because they love reading novels.

Reading Dunk and Egg's dialogues, their detailed descriptions of the food they dream of while wandering miserably on the roads, the action of the tournaments, the armor, the details of the castles and house sigils was truly delightful. Reading about the desires of people living in the Middle Ages due to their lack of resources made me realize how much we have. Our heroes often spend their days dreaming of a hot meal and a warm bed. If you read the book's content, it says our heroes embark on many adventures, but in my opinion, the book doesn't even cover a quarter of those stories. Not being able to read those stories saddened me, leaving me craving for more. Waiting for the next books to be written will be very difficult, but what saddens me is that marketing this book with the events of an unwritten book is a bit sneaky.

In conclusion, if you've watched the Game of Thrones series, are curious about that period and want to immerse yourself further, and of course, if you enjoy reading, you should definitely buy and read this book. I think I'll start reading from where I left off in the second book of Game of Thrones because I couldn't get enough of it. The series ended very badly anyway. I hope GRR Martin gives us a better ending, and maybe I can finish the previous books by the time those books are published. By the way, HBO, in my opinion, you can get at least two seasons of a series from this book. I don't expect you to shoot it now while House of the Dragons is ongoing, but keep it in mind (:

See you in the next post!