The Official Game of Thrones Coloring Book: A Review

All men must die, but, apparently, all men must also color.

Last week, I wrote a review of George R.R. Martin's new novel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms; but, if you need another way to pass the time as you wait for The Winds of Winter, allow me to recommend The Official Game of Thrones Coloring Book. Coloring books may seem a little cheesy if you're over the age of ten (and I hope you are if you're interested in ASOIAF), but this isn't your elementary school coloring book.

With adult coloring books (whatever that actually means) currently in vogue, this book is an artistic gem that is more like a mini ASOIAF  art exhibit than a coloring book. I purchased this coloring book for some relaxing, holiday fun, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. The coloring pages were designed by five professional artists and it really shows. The paper is thick enough to prevent color from bleeding through if you decide to color with markers, the drawings are beautiful and intricate, and each coloring page is paired with a quote that refers to the image.

In terms of the actual coloring pages, the book begins with a series of pages depicting the sigils of the most important houses. The rest of the coloring pages are divided between images of the main characters, important ASOIAF locations, and other scenes from the books.

So far I've colored about two and a half pages and throughly enjoyed it (you can see my version of Sansa Stark below). I will say that these pictures take some time to color -- for example, it took me about six hours to finish Sansa (and she's one of the simpler pictures).

My Awesome Coloring Skills

My only criticism of this book is that some of the pictures are almost too artistic for coloring. Let me draw your attention to this beautiful picture of Bran and the Weirwood tree. It's gorgeous, but I don't even know how one would go about coloring this. I'll probably just leave this page blank in my book because, not only would it be difficult and time consuming, but it probably wouldn't be all that fun to color either. I feel like some of the artists lost track of the fact that someone was going to have to color these pages.

But Honestly, Who's Going to Color This

Personally, I would have preferred to have more pages with pictures of main characters -- which are more interesting to color. I'm hoping that Bantam Books comes out with a second edition of the coloring book that is more "coloring friendly."

Valar dohaeris