Early reviews for the highly anticipated House of the Dragon series have begun to come out. The prequel series to the wildly popular Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon season 1 will premiere on HBO Max August 21 and air weekly on Sundays for a total of ten episodes. Taking place two hundred years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series will follow the civil war within the ruling Targaryen family known as the Dance of the Dragons.

Game of Thrones is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, and House of the Dragon will be adapted from parts of Martin’s 2018 bestseller Fire & Blood. Set almost two centuries before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, the series centers around King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine) and his brother Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) as conflict brews between them after Viserys appoints his firstborn daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) as his heir, setting her up to be the first woman to ever sit the Iron Throne. Rather than a story that sprawls the entirety of Westeros, House of the Dragon focuses on a specific family plunged into conflict by years of familial struggle for succession and deep but strained relationships.

Related: House Of The Dragon's Biggest Cut Character Avoids Betraying Tyrion Lannister

After watching the first six episodes of season 1 ahead of its release, the press has begun to release early House of the Dragon reviews. With only a couple days left before its official release, the HBO series seems to earned the approval of critics, whose notices are mostly positive. Read several excerpts below:

Alexander Harrison, Screen Rant

These descriptions of the key relationships are simplifications, but like the best character dramas, things simultaneously are and are not that simple. Even as audiences watch the political reality tightening around the Targaryens, sealing their fates in amber, it cannot help but feel like everything might be avoided if even one of these pairs could just work through their issues. The time dedicated to developing these conflicts is so judiciously spent that when the first blows finally are struck, it will be enthralling.

Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

By the end of the first hour, all the main pieces are in play, countless political, domestic and actual storms are brewing, old alliances are being broken, new ones formed and treachery is never more than a spear’s length away. House of the Dragon looks set fair to become the game of political seven-dimensional chess that its predecessor was, designed to reward diehard fantasy fans in full measure without alienating the masses that will propel it to the top of the ratings.

Stephen Kelly, BBC

It's a rich, textured work, sharply written and handsomely directed, with a budget that far outstrips season one of Game of Thrones. There are lavish dragon sequences from the start, for instance, while it's notable that the third episode features an enormous celebratory hunt, full of sets and extras. In early Game of Thrones, a similar sequence consisted of a small group of characters in some woods – a bugbear of George RR Martin, who originally wrote the hunt as befitting of a king.​​

Daniel Fienberg, THR

House of the Dragon looks like you want a Game of Thrones-adjacent series to look, which comes in no small part from the contributions of director/co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik. Jim Clay’s production design is rich and layered and takes even locations we know to more expansive places, though it’s a hair limited because most of our time is spent in King’s Landing, rather than the whip-around-the-kingdom approach of the original series. Jany Temime’s costumes are ravishing, though again limited because of those same factors. Ramin Djawadi’s score is epic and if it feels like he’s mostly paying homage to himself, who can blame him? And the visual effects, supervised by Angus Bickerton, are exceptional, though I’ll just keep repeating that as great as the dragon effects are, the person-sitting-on-dragon effects are pretty bad.

Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone

But the spinoff unfortunately proves a poor test case for the less-is-more theory when it comes to adaptations of George R.R. Martin’s books. A more streamlined show built around a character as rich as Tyrion, or Arya Stark, could perhaps work smashingly. House of the Dragon, unfortunately, is filled with characters and conflicts that would struggle to hold the audience’s interest if they were just one small element among the many of its parent series. As the only subjects, they’re almost uniformly dull, preventing House of the Dragon from justifying its existence as anything other than a calculated piece of brand extension for the newly-merged Warner Bros. Discovery.

Therese Lacson, Collider

The courtroom politics and the intrigue of shifting dynamics are enough to keep you hooked, and I found myself hungry for more episodes and eager to know the fate of these characters. While we only knew the Targaryens as a folklorish dynasty seen through the eyes of Daenerys, it's exciting to see the house when it was at its height. There is enough to love in House of the Dragon that keeps me coming back for more. Between the dragons, the strength of the actors, and the twists and turns of the plot, I'm eager to see where we will be taken next.

Darren Franich, EW

So the show wants the relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent to take center stage. But the early episodes bungle their dynamic, with an unspecific friendship that's relegated to the sidelines. The drama heightens when clear battle lines get drawn. The first introduction of the grown-up characters is flat-out stunning, establishing palpable and sorrowful consequences for earlier decisions. And the sheer number of childbirth scenes would be a running gag if the show didn't render them, with vivid detail, as a genuine medical horror. Dragon doesn't soar immediately, but no House was built in a day.

Viserys ponders

Audiences have been eagerly awaiting more Game of Thrones after a disappointing season 8 in 2019, but have also been weary after the letdown of the show’s finale. With mostly positive reviews, viewers can rest easy knowing House of the Dragon appears to return to the same world of allegiances and betrayals, political games, and complicated familial ties. Based on these reviews, the show appears to jump right back into the world of Westeros, quickly setting up interesting relationships while incorporating the action of Game of Thrones.

While the jury is still out on whether House of the Dragon will prove a worthy successor to Game of Thrones, the show's interesting insight to the history of the Targaryens seems to have made it worth at least a fair shot. Although some critiques indicate the Targaryen civil war storyline is not strong enough to stand on its own, the majority praise it for setting up such complicated conflicts quickly and effectively. Overall, House of the Dragon appears to effortlessly transport viewers back into Westeros while giving a fresh take on its intricately intertwined noble families.

Source: Various (see links above)