Which book is House of the Dragon based on? It isn't a novel — it's written as an in-world history
The book behind House of the Dragon explained: what Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin actually is, why it reads like a history textbook with three unreliable narrators, which parts the HBO series adapts, and how much source material remains for the final season.
House of the Dragon names its source in every set of opening titles, but anyone picking the book up expecting another A Game of Thrones is in for a formatting surprise. Fire & Blood, published on 20 November 2018, has no protagonist, no dialogue scenes in the conventional sense, and no plot structure — because George R.R. Martin wrote it as a history textbook from inside his own fictional world.
A history book about a made-up dynasty
Fire & Blood presents itself as a chronicle compiled by one Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel, covering roughly 150 years of House Targaryen — from Aegon's Conquest of Westeros through to the regency of the boy king Aegon III — complete with Doug Wheatley's illustrations and the dry, source-weighing tone of an actual academic. Martin has jokingly called the project his "GRRMarillion", a nod to Tolkien's posthumous history The Silmarillion, and it grew out of two earlier novellas: The Princess and the Queen (2013) and The Rogue Prince (2014), both early passes at the same Targaryen civil war material.
Three narrators who don't agree
Gyldayn doesn't claim to know what happened — he compares what his sources claim happened, and they contradict each other constantly:
- Septon Eustace — a pious court insider whose account is detailed but conveniently flattering to some parties.
- Grand Maester Munkun — author of the official history, writing second-hand and long after the fact.
- Mushroom — a court fool whose testimony is the most scandalous, the most entertaining, and the least trustworthy of the three.
Three witnesses, three versions of every death and scandal — and the television series gets to pick whichever version makes the best drama, or invent a fourth.
What the show takes — and changes
The HBO series, co-created by Martin and Ryan Condal, adapts the book's centrepiece: the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen succession war set roughly 200 years before Game of Thrones. The unreliable-history format is a gift to the writers, and they've used it — most famously by letting Laenor Velaryon escape alive in season 1 where the in-world chronicles record his death. If the histories can't agree, the show argues, the histories can be wrong.
Season 1 aired in 2022, season 2 in 2024, and season 3 ran from 21 June to 9 August 2026 on HBO and HBO Max. A fourth and final season was ordered in November 2025; Condal confirmed in June 2026 that scripts were under way — "We're actively writing" — though cameras aren't expected to roll for a while yet.
Is there a Fire & Blood volume 2?
Not yet. The 2018 book is billed as the first of two volumes, with the second meant to carry the Targaryen story onwards towards Robert's Rebellion — but Martin hasn't written it, and readers of a certain other unfinished series will know better than to book time off for it.
For the record: the show's most heated fan arguments — who poisoned whom, who really gave which order — are usually arguments the book started on purpose. Martin built the disagreements in. HBO just inherited them.
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