A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
ISBN: 9780007507672
Description
A young, naive but courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals - in stature if not experience. Tagging along with him is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg 0 whose true identity must be hidden from all he and Dunk encounter: for in reality he is Aegon Targaryen, and one day he will be king. Improbable heroes though they be, great destinies lie ahead for Dunk and Egg; as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.
Reviewed on 7th September 2017
This collection features the three novellas also known as the 'Tales of Dunc and Egg' - 'The Hedge Knight', 'The Sworn Sword' and 'The Mystery Knight', all previously published in various anthologies, but in this edition illustrated throughout.
Thy are a good and very readable collection. It's nice to dip my toe into a good story or three based in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. The setting is some 200 years prior to the main series, which means there's nothing here to spoil the main storyline, and so they can be read at any point. In fact, this collection would serve as an excellent place to start and see if you would enjoy reading the vastly longer novels.
While the illustrations are in themselves impressive and give a good view of the characters and the action, I found that quite often what was depicted didn't quite match the action described in the prose, which was a bit disappointing - for example in one place Dunc is shown with sword drawn while in the text he explicitly doesn't draw it.
Overall though a really enjoyable set of tales and I'd love to read more adventures of this pairing if any more appear in the future.
