Rather than a novel, Fire & Blood takes the form of a scholarly treatise about the Targaryen dynasty written by a historian within the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, Archmaester Gyldayn.[8][9][10] Gyldayn cites a variety of fictional primary sources for the historical events he describes, whose accounts sometimes conflict with each other, reflecting medieval methods of historiography and thus making Gyldayn an unreliable narrator from the reader's perspective.[11][12]

This section needs to be updated. (January 2019)

The first volume of Fire & Blood contains the following texts:

• "The Targaryen Conquest": Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.[13] Published in more or less same version in The World of Ice & Fire.[7]
• "The Peace of the Dragon": Aegon I's reign after his Conquest.[14]^{[better source needed]} While Aegon I's reign is briefly glossed over in The World of Ice & Fire, no parts of the text have been published before.
• "The Sons of the Dragon":[15] Focuses on the lives of Aegon I's sons, King Aenys I Targaryen and King Maegor I Targaryen, ending with Maegor's death and the ascension of Aenys's son Jaehaerys I Targaryen to the throne. An abridged version of The Sons of the Dragon was released in October 2017 titled The Sons of the Dragon in the anthology The Book of Swords.[15]
• "Heirs of the Dragon": Being about 17,000 words long, it focuses on the reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen and the succession crisis following the deaths of his sons. An abridged version, The Rogue Prince, previously published in the anthology Rogues in 2014, uses the majority of this text.[16]
• "The Dying of the Dragons": Being about 60,000 words in length,[16][N 1] it focuses on the great civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen civil war between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother Aegon II for the throne. An abridged version of 30,000 words was included in The Princess and the Queen,[18] which was published in the anthology Dangerous Women in 2013.
• "Aftermath — The Boy King and His Regents": Covering the first few years of the reign of Rhaenyra's young son Aegon III, when the realm was ruled by Aegon's regents. According to García, it is "almost as long" as The Dying of the Dragons in total word count.[16][13]

Fire & Blood is illustrated in a similar fashion to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The book contains more than seventy-five black and white illustrations by Doug Wheatley.[19][1]