And now for an off-topic (if welcome). Does anyone here collect first, limited, deluxe, illustrated, or otherwise specific editions of the Westeros books?

There’s a John Howe illustrated A Clash of Kings (2005, Meisha Merlin Publishing), and a Ted Nasmith illustrated A Game of Thrones (2015, Subterranean Press, in two volumes), but both of those are quite rare and expensive, as are all editions by those publishers.

There are two Harper Voyager slipcase sets (older blue edition and newer red edition). However, you never know if/when the next book comes out whether they’ll do a matching copy, which makes me rather shy of collecting these.

I’ll probably grab the trade illustrated edition of A Game of Thrones (0008209103), but for the full series I’ll wait till the next book drops.