Finished: Fire and Blood (Martin) A very good, and typical George R.R. Martin book chronicling the beginnings of the Targaryen family in his fictional Westeros set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, a major character in The Game of Thrones books. The book starts with Aegon the Conquerer, the Targaryen king who united the Seven Kingdoms after his fiery conquest with his dragons. King Aegon is the 1st of the Aegons, but certainly not the last. In this wordy book, with many, many, many names, we follow the lineage of Aegon down through the years as it gets to the crucial war that led to the beginning of the end of the Targaryen dynasty...the war known as the Dance of Dragons. At this point, the king is Viserys Targaryen. He and his wife, Aemma, have only one child, a daughter named Rhaenyra. When Aemma dies in childbirth and people start to question the succession of the throne with no son as an heir, Viserys declares that Rhaenyra will be his heir. He has all the families of the kingdom "bend the knee", swearing oaths to support Rhaenyra as the first queen upon his eventual passing. A bit of a conundrum occurs when Viserys remarries, the young Alicent Hightower, who proceeds to give him three sons and a daughter. Of course, the firstborn is Aegon II and talk by many soon turns to Rhaenyra being passed over as the heir by her half-brother, Aegon II. Talk by many people, but not Viserys. He always insists that Rhaenyra is his heir and that oaths were sworn. Rhaenyra has three sons with her first husband before marrying Daemon, her father's brother, and giving birth to two more sons, the first one naturally named Aegon, or Aegon III. When Viserys eventually dies, when Aegon II is 23 years old, Aegon II claims the throne, and of course, is challenged by Rhaenyra in the bloody Dance of Dragons war, where nearly all of the children and grandchildren of Viserys parish. We DO know that a Targaryen king named Aegon succeeds Viserys, but which Aegon will it be?? I really enjoyed reading this book, especially since I'm in the middle of watching the series and wanted to learn more about all the characters. :-)