There’s a new app to help non-book readers understand Westeros

HarperCollins is hoping to appeal to the casual reader by launching a new Game of Thrones app for iOS.

The product was designed in collaboration with digital studio Reason and has incorporated input from Martin and also fans of the Game of Thrones TV show and will be free for users to download on iPhone or iPad across the world, apart from in the US, Canada and the Philippines.

If that’s not enough, another app called A Game of Thrones Guide goes even deeper, letting users track characters’ locations chapter-by-chapter.

You can read up on big events like the Red Wedding and see how Martin originally wrote those scenes.

It’s no easy task diving into George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book saga upon which HBO’s Game of Thrones is based.

Further users of the app will find that iconic passages from the books which relate to the HBO TV show can be read without stumbling on possible spoilers.

And they tend to have an insight into what’s going to happen on the small screen.

The app now includes 40 excerpts from the five published books in A Song of Ice and Fire, none of which takes more than half an hour to read. That is likely the opposite effect that Harper Collins wants, but that is certainly what the app will be used for.

Ironically, A Game of Thrones: Get into the Books arrives just as fans of the series have run out of books to get into.