Game of Thrones Has Ended

…but A Song of Fire & Ice has not. I’m actu­al­ly sev­er­al sea­sons behind on the show so I did­n’t even watch the finale last night. While I’m some­what avoid­ing spoil­ers, I’m not too con­cerned about it. Because it became very clear to fans of the books series from about sea­son 2 or 3 that HBO would fin­ish the show long before George R.R. Mar­tin ever fin­ished his nov­els. So how­ev­er the show end­ed; if it is any­thing like the books ulti­mate­ly end it will be more of a coin­ci­dence than any­thing. Frankly, I doubt they’ll be sim­i­lar at all but time will (hope­ful­ly) tell.

My then girl­friend (now wife), Angela, bought me a paper­back copy of A Game of Thrones from the uni­ver­si­ty book­store in Blacks­burg, VA for a birth­day present after I’d fin­ished the orig­i­nal Dune nov­els. I was start­ing to read for fun again (five years of work­ing towards an engi­neer­ing degree means you don’t read for “fun” much). That book was rec­om­mend­ed to her when she told the book­store clerk I liked Dune. Basi­cal­ly, it was all about pol­i­tics and fam­i­ly intrigue, but only in medieval times. And I real­ly did enjoy it. The third book in the series, A Storm of Swords, had just been released and these books were start­ing to gain pop­u­lar­i­ty. Also, that time, GRRM was crank­ing out these nov­els about every oth­er year!

I did­n’t read the sub­se­quent nov­els for a while as I stopped read­ing much genre fic­tion for a few years (out­side of Dune pre­quels). When I did get back to them, I had dis­cov­ered the joy of audio books. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, get­ting to lis­ten to audio­books to pass the time rock­ing our baby daugh­ter to sleep. That’s when I also dis­cov­ered Roy Dotrice. As much as I enjoyed the first book, hear­ing his nar­ra­tion brought the series to life in a way that’s still hard to describe. I’ve been a fan of Peter Din­klage since “The Sta­tion Agent” but I will always hear the phrase “A Lan­nis­ter always pays his debts.” in a Welsh accent thanks to Dotrice. Don’t get me wrong, the HBO series is fan­tas­tic and the act­ing is won­der­ful. But there’s a rea­son that GRRM want­ed no one by Dotrice to nar­rate the audio­books and it’s clear why. 

“Roy gave his all in the studio,” said Dan Mus­sel­man, a pro­duc­er who worked with Dotrice on the series, by email. “George R.R. Mar­tin want­ed Roy to nar­rate his books, and he was absolute­ly right. Roy was the per­fect nar­ra­tor for the series and no one else could pos­si­bly have done what Roy did with the nar­ra­tive, the sto­ry lines, and espe­cial­ly the char­ac­ters. It was an enor­mous under­tak­ing and worth every minute.”

And he was metic­u­lous in his work and research. The night before record­ing, he would go over pages of notes on the next day’s char­ac­ters. By the end of record­ing all five books, he had every char­ac­ter name list­ed in alpha­bet­i­cal order on more than a dozen pieces of paper. 

The Man Who Spoke ‘Game of Thrones’ Into Existence

And it’s not just that they’re the books and books are always bet­ter than the movie (nay, tele­vi­sion series). When Dotrice was­n’t avail­able to nar­rate the fourth book the pro­duc­ers got John Lee, one of the finest nar­ra­tors alive today. I have lis­tened to a dozen books he’s read (most­ly Alis­tair Reynolds or Peter F. Hamil­ton), but it just was­n’t the same for A Feast for Crows.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Dotrice passed away in 2017 and he won’t get to fin­ish the series. No one knows when those books will be done and who’ll nar­rate the audio­books. I’m sure to read and lis­ten to them once they come out, regard­less of who nar­rates them — or who the HBO show run­ners put on the iron throne. But I’ll still have Roy Dotrice’s voic­es in my head as I read the words.

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Categorized as General

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

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