George R.R. Martin is teasing the Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight and is praising the HBO series.
Martin took to his personal blog to share that the series had “wrapped the first season months ago and moved right on to post-production.”
“I’ve seen all six episodes now (the last two in rough cuts, admittedly), and I loved them,” Martin wrote. “Dunk and Egg have always been favorites of mine, and the actors we found to portray them are just incredible.”
He continued, “The rest of the cast are terrific as well. Wait until you guys meet the Laughing Storm. and Tanselle Too-Tall.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of fantasy novellas by Martin, first published in 2005, and set about 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones.
“It’s as faithful as adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for (and you all know how incredible reasonable I am on that particular subject),” Martin wrote. “Viewers who are looking for action, and more action, and only action… well, this one may not satisfy you.”
He continued, “There’s a huge fight scene here, as exciting as anyone could ask for, but there are no dragons this time around, no huge battles, no white walkers… this is a character piece, and its focus is on duty and honor, on chivalry and all it means.”
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Martin praising the adaptation of The Hedge Knight is major as the author has previously said that most TV and film adaptations are never made better than the source material.
In a blog post in 2024, Martin cited authors like Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, and Jane Austen, as ones whose works have been adapted time and time again.
“No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it,” he continued. “‘The book is the book, the film is the film,’ they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.”
He continued, “They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Martin cited the adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 book that inspired the FX series Shōgun as an example of “a really good adaptation.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to premiere in 2025 on HBO with Martin adding, “I hope you will love the show as much as I do.”
