Wednesday 24 October 2012

Our first glimpse of Asshai

The Lands of Ice and Fire - a collection of poster maps depicting the world of A Song of Ice and Fire - will be published next week. io9 have released some more sneak peeks of the collection, including our first-ever canon glimpse of Asshai and the Shadow Lands:



Readers of the books know that Asshai is a highly mysterious city located in the far south-eastern corner of the explored world, on the eastern shores of the Jade Sea, five thousand or more miles from Westeros. Beyond Asshai lies the even more enigmatic 'Shadow Lands', the home of mysterious people who always go masked in public (such as Daenerys's sometimes-ally Quaithe). Asshai was first mentioned in A Game of Thrones (published in 1996), but this is the first time it's been officially depicted visually in any form.

5 comments:

Brett said...

Now that's completely different from what I expected. It looks like the "Shadowlands" are a large stretch of mountains, with two major river valleys that culminate in Asshai.

There's also something that's cut off below, but which is in CAPITAL LETTERS and ends with a -TH. Can't way to see what it is.

Zaister said...

Interesting name for that island there...

Prankster said...

Huh. For some reason I assumed Asshai was a country rather than a city.

I've also been labouring under the assumption that it's the equivalent of Mordor in this world, and thus, narratively, the place one of the heroes (probably Dany) will have to visit near the climax.

Anonymous said...

regarding the TH part, would that not be from Sothoryos?

Adam Whitehead said...

"regarding the TH part, would that not be from Sothoryos?"

No, that's Ulthos, a new continent (or island-continent) revealed for the first time in this map collection.