George R.R. Martin’s best-selling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire—which spawned the blockbuster HBO series Game of Thrones—is now getting its own adult coloring book. The book, which is being “authored” by Martin himself, will be released in October by Bantam.
The existence of a Thrones coloring book speaks to both the series’ massive appeal and to the emergence of adult coloring books as a mainstream activity. Coloring books can actually be therapeutic for adults, according to a variety of psychological studies. A stress-relieving adult coloring book is currently #17 on Amazon’s best-seller list, just a few spots behind the boxed set of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
But coloring in illustrations from Game of Thrones—known mostly for its death, despair, and brutal violence—might not prove to be very therapeutic. We assume that certain scenes from the books and TV series, namely those that depict sexual violence, will not appear in the book.
What will appear, though, are 45 original black-and-white illustrations by multiple artists. According to Time, one of those artists will be John Howe, who’s renowned for his drawings of Middle-earth, the setting for The Lord of the Rings.
Here are some images from the HBO show that we think would be fun to color (spoilers abound!):
