Boars, Gore, and Swords

Bring in the new year with a new show about 13th century Asia, Netflix’s “Marco Polo”. There’s a blind swordsman fighting a cobra, what else do you need?!

If you’re itching for new stories within the world of Game of Thrones, look no further than Telltale’s “Game of Thrones”, a series of 6 planned episodes that take you into Westeros through the eyes of House Forrester, loyal Bannerman to House Stark. The series is in the tv show continuity, and starts at the end of Season 3 and will end just before the start of Season 5. We review the first episode here, listen along to compare your choices to the terrible decisions made by Ivan and Red, join them in their newly found respect for Cersei, and the one decision Red really wishes he could take back.

What’s Christmas without Jon Hamm in a British tv show about a dystopian future? Hardly Christmas at all, which is why OJ Patterson joins Ivan and Red to discuss Black Mirror’s “White Christmas”, the series which Ramsay Bolton would have created if he’d been born in the 1980s.

The Book Club closes it’s final chapter of “A Song of Ice and Fire” covered by HBO’s “Game of Thrones” up through Season 4 with our coverage of Bran II (Hardback page 169/Paperback page 185) and Reek II (Hardback page 253/Paperback page 277) in “A Dance with Dragons”. Ivan and Red discuss tears of their enemies, ignorant protagonists, eating that Elk twice, an explosion of pale rotten meat, the best comedy on television, Benedict Cumberbatch doing the motion capture for Smaug, forehead mushrooms, The Drunken Tower vs Leaning Tower of Pisa, and a lengthy discussion of poisonous arrow shafts.

The Book Club continues with its coverage of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” chapters covered by HBO’s “Game of Thrones”. Having covered all of the relevant chapters in “A Storm of Swords” and “A Feast for Crows” (Full spoiler-free reading guide here), we enter George R.R. Martin’s “A Dance with Dragons", covering Bran I (Page 60) and Reek I (Page 161). Ivan and Red discuss warg sex, reading documentaries, Big Walder and Little Walder, The Bastard’s Boys, Fake Arya, the Kim and Kanye of Westeros, the Great Elks, the effect of weather on Hodor, and the importance of verifying the aliveness of your party guide. This episode is brought to you by Chronicle Books release of Inside HBO's Game of Thrones: Season 3 & 4.

We may be on a short hiatus, but that doesn't mean we're not scheming up new and ever more grandiose ways to bring content to our loyal Bannermen. This week we feature Ivan Hernandez's "Give Me Fiction": a selection of original short stories performed before a live audience. You can visit the GMF Site, follow GMF on Twitter, check out the podcast on iTunes, RSS, Soundcloud, and Stitcher, and buy tickets for the live show which takes place the first Sunday of every month at Lost Weekend Video.

This week we jump back into A Feast for Crows, finishing our last non-spoilery chapter, Sansa I (Hardback page 145/Paperback 226). Ivan and Red discuss the Marvel universe, free will, the SF Giants vs Kansas City Royals Game 7, the bastard Rivers Cuomo, the bastard Strom Thurmond, Sansa learning to lie, Ser Tinder, Marillionaire, and the return of the Game of King Chairs.

This week Ivan and Red called an audible and discussed the Epilogue of “A Storm of Swords”. If you *only* watch the tv show and haven’t read the books, we discuss an event that has not happened in the TV show. Up front they answer some listener emails and then get to the main event. Let us know your thoughts on twitter at @boarsgoreswords!

After completely whiffing on the last chapter in A Storm of Swords, Ivan and Red finish up the Brienne chapter they began last episode before looping back around to the last chapter in A Storm of Swords, Sansa VII. They discuss The Patriarchy, raw eggs, Rivers Cuomo, Fish Wife vs Salt Wife, Ivan’s preferred food preparation technique, and Petyr Baelish’s favorite cat.

With no more unspoiled territory in A Storm of Swords, we jump into A Feast for Crows to cover one and a half of the three chapters we’re reading in A Feast for Crows, specifically we touch upon Brienne I (Hardback page 56/Paperback page 80) and Brienne II (Hardback page 130/Paperback page 184). Ivan and Red discuss Westeros’s most famous male model, matching carpet and japes, the incredible crassness of peasants, the sincerity of Jaime Lannister, the Guild of Cookery’s “Game of Thrones” themed dinners in San Francisco, the new crypto-currency Quailcoin, and the most fearsome of fantasy creatures, the Dire Quail.