A Game of Thrones (20th Anniversary Illustrated Edition) by George R.R. Martin Review: A Landmark Fantasy Reborn in Illustration

A Game of Thrones is the opening volume of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, a high fantasy saga set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. At its center are three interwoven conflicts: a dynastic war among noble houses fighting for control of Westeros, the ambitions of the exiled Targaryen survivors seeking to reclaim the Iron Throne, and the growing supernatural menace posed by the Others beyond the frozen northern Wall. The story sweeps, as the publisher describes it, "from a region of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty," gathering lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards in a time of grim omens. The fate of the Stark family and everyone aligned with or against them hangs in perpetual, unresolved peril — the novel makes clear from early on that no character's survival is guaranteed. The narrative unfolds through nine point-of-view characters in this first volume, each chapter told in limited third person, a structural choice that puts readers inside competing loyalties and moral frameworks simultaneously.

Martin began writing A Game of Thrones in 1991 and first published it in 1996. In the three decades since, it has become a cornerstone of modern epic fantasy. As Wikipedia's reception summary notes, the series as a whole has sold more than 100 million copies across 47 languages as of 2026, and later volumes in the series reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller lists upon publication. The series has received widespread critical acclaim for its world-building, its characters, and its narrative construction. The 2011 HBO television adaptation — which began airing just fifteen years after the novel's debut — amplified the book's cultural reach to an audience far beyond traditional fantasy readership. This illustrated edition, released in 2016, arrived at the height of that cultural moment, framing the original novel as both a literary milestone and a living phenomenon.

The defining feature of this edition is its illustrations. John Picacio, named on the title page as the artist, contributes full-page illustrations to every chapter — a substantial visual undertaking given the novel's scope. The publisher describes this as a "lavishly illustrated special edition" designed to "revitalize the fantasy masterpiece." For readers who encountered the original text in a standard edition, Picacio's chapter-by-chapter artwork offers a new layer of visual engagement with characters and settings that have become iconic. The edition is published in hardcover by HarperCollins and is presented explicitly as a celebratory artifact of the series' twentieth anniversary, making it a meaningful collectible as well as a reading edition.

What has made A Game of Thrones endure is well documented: the series is consistently praised for its moral ambiguity, its refusal of easy heroism, and its willingness to engage seriously with questions of loyalty, power, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence. Supernatural elements exist at the margins of the world Martin builds — the emphasis falls squarely on political realism and human conflict. The revolving point-of-view structure, which grows from nine perspectives in this first volume to 31 by the fifth, is central to how the series generates its moral complexity, placing readers inside the reasoning of characters who are simultaneously protagonists and antagonists depending on whose chapter is being read. These qualities make the novel a significant work of craft regardless of the edition in which it is encountered.

This illustrated hardcover edition is designed for readers who want more than a functional reading copy — it is structured as a celebration and a collector's object. Devoted fans of the series, gift-givers, and readers coming to the saga for the first time who want a definitive-feeling introduction will find the format well suited to the novel's ambitions. However, readers primarily focused on the narrative who are also waiting for the series' conclusion should note that as of the time of this edition's publication, A Game of Thrones remained the first of a planned seven-volume series, with the sixth novel, The Winds of Winter, still unfinished. The illustrated edition does nothing to resolve that ongoing wait — it is a commemoration of what exists, not a signal of what is coming. Additionally, at the scale this edition is produced, it is a substantial physical object, which suits display and ceremonial rereading more than casual commute reading.