A new book about all things Zelda is coming in January: The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, by Shigeru Miyomoto, published jointly by Dark Horse Books and Nintendo. Based on pre-orders alone, it has already reached #8 on Amazon.com’s top ten list.

Princess Zelda, if you don’t know about her, is one of the main characters in Nintendo’s popular Legend of Zelda video game series, first produced in 1986 in Japan, first sold in the U.S. in 1987, and presented on Nintendo consoles and otherNintendo products, now including the Wii, ever since.The series, which is frequently cited as the most popular video game series of all time, stars protagonist Link, a hero in a Peter Pan getup whose main task is usually to save Princess Zelda. In almost every game in the series, she is either kidnapped by the game’s villain or under threat of kidnapping.  Nevertheless, although in some of the series titles Zelda is one of those passive Snow White-type princesses, in other titles she takes on an active role to fight the forces of evil arrayed against her–more of a Princess Bride kind of girl.

The official U.S. web site for the series is www.zelda.com. From time to time, the site and other Nintendo sources have published complex time-lines linking all of the games in the series together into a master plot. This new book is just what Zelda fans want: an authorized version of how the entire legend of Zelda ties together.

Two interesting Zelda factoids: 1. Shigeru Miyomoto named Zelda after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. 2. Robin Williams named one of his daughters after the Princess herself.