A Song of Ice and Fire books

[Infinity9999x]

So anyone think we'll get a release date for the new book anytime soon?

[DACrowe]

I bet they announce this summer that it will be slated for release in late 2014.

And then we will get it in 2016 at the earliest.

[CrypticOne]

Originally Posted by DACrowe

I bet they announce this summer that it will be slated for release in late 2014.

And then we will get it in 2016 at the earliest.

Man.... you just depressed the hell out of me.

[Sawyer]

Far be it for me to rush the man, but he really does need to get his chubby ass in gear.

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by Sawyer

Far be it for me to rush the man, but he really does need to get his chubby ass in gear.

It can't be easy writing these books what with all the houses and politics to deal with.

[Sawyer]

There comes a time when you must choose between what is right and what is easy.

[Baramos]

I think Martin has said he wants the turn-around for Winds of Winter to be three years from the publication of A Dance With Dragons due to Game of Thrones' production. So let's say 2015 to give him an extra year on that.

[CrypticOne]

Every time he finishes a chapter he should just put it on his website.

[DACrowe]

It seems to me that the story has honestly escaped him. I sincerely believe that AFFC and ADWD could have been condensed into one book or even skipped in large swaths all together. He doesn't want his story to end and now the story has gotten out of hand in a lot of ways and he has to bring it to a close. Just my own feling.

[Infinity9999x]

Originally Posted by DACrowe

It seems to me that the story has honestly escaped him. I sincerely believe that AFFC and ADWD could have been condensed into one book or even skipped in large swaths all together. He doesn't want his story to end and now the story has gotten out of hand in a lot of ways and he has to bring it to a close. Just my own feling.

I started to feel that after reading books 4 and 5 as well. But I'll reserve judgement until I see how they all wrap up. But at this point, I felt some of the new characters he introduced, while interesting, may not end up contributing all that much to the overall story in the long run. That's just my gut feeling at this point and I could be totally wrong, but that was the sense I got reading the last two books.

[Spidey-Bat]

http://westeroscraft.com/

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/30/ga...-in-minecraft/

[Baramos]

Originally Posted by DACrowe

It seems to me that the story has honestly escaped him. I sincerely believe that AFFC and ADWD could have been condensed into one book or even skipped in large swaths all together. He doesn't want his story to end and now the story has gotten out of hand in a lot of ways and he has to bring it to a close. Just my own feling.

That might be part of the problem--he wants to hold himself to the seven-book schedule for various reasons, possibly to avoid being one of those guys who lets his series expand into way too many books (Robert Jordan for instance). And I'm sure if he came out and said he wanted it to be 8 now then half the internet would roll its eyes and ***** about it. BUT it might aid him in getting them out a little faster if he could tackle less of the plot at the time or felt he had three books to expand into instead of just two more.

[DACrowe]

I think at an average now of 1500 pages a book, there is absolutely no reason he cannot finish the story in two. Honestly, at the end of the superb ASOS, it felt like the story was ending its second act and about to enter its third. Instead, we got caught in the weeds that were AFFC and ADWD, which basically amounted to 3000 pages of set-up and curtain raising for the end of the story with a plethora of new characters that are ultimately meaningless beyond their few chapters to the overall story.

The first book is a great prologue to the story. Books 2 and 3 put the story into vivid motion and propelled with exhilarating momentum. Books 4 and 5 have brought it to a screeching halt.

If he stayed focus on his main dozen or so protagonists like he did in ACOK and ASOS, I believe he could easily conclude the story in two massive novels. It seems more a desire to explore every inch of his universe has taken him off course and he doesn't know how to get back on. Another way to say it, in an admittedly forced analogy, is that he started writing his LOTR and midway through the 2/3 mark it turned into The Silmarillion.

At this point he needs to write his ROTK (so to speak) in two volumes. We have been waiting for the story to reach its climax since the end of ASOS and we continue to bide time. If he focuses like he did with the first three books, I am sure he can end it very beautifully in two more installments.

[Forty-Two]

I rather enjoy his exploration of every inch of his world. Admittedly though, it may work better if he just finished his current saga and then proceeded to flesh things out in his world in spin-off novels. I would be over-the-moon about a prequel series; seeing the fall of Valyria told by characters that were as well developed as the ones in the current series would be amazing. G.R.R.M. Could definitely develop a universe just as in-depth as J.R.R.T. But, like all of the tales of Arda and Middle-Earth, there would definitely be some tales that catered almost exclusively to the hardcore fanatic.

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by DACrowe

I think at an average now of 1500 pages a book, there is absolutely no reason he cannot finish the story in two. Honestly, at the end of the superb ASOS, it felt like the story was ending its second act and about to enter its third. Instead, we got caught in the weeds that were AFFC and ADWD, which basically amounted to 3000 pages of set-up and curtain raising for the end of the story with a plethora of new characters that are ultimately meaningless beyond their few chapters to the overall story.

The first book is a great prologue to the story. Books 2 and 3 put the story into vivid motion and propelled with exhilarating momentum. Books 4 and 5 have brought it to a screeching halt.

If he stayed focus on his main dozen or so protagonists like he did in ACOK and ASOS, I believe he could easily conclude the story in two massive novels. It seems more a desire to explore every inch of his universe has taken him off course and he doesn't know how to get back on. Another way to say it, in an admittedly forced analogy, is that he started writing his LOTR and midway through the 2/3 mark it turned into The Silmarillion.

At this point he needs to write his ROTK (so to speak) in two volumes. We have been waiting for the story to reach its climax since the end of ASOS and we continue to bide time. If he focuses like he did with the first three books, I am sure he can end it very beautifully in two more installments.

You may not be aware of this, but his original plan was to have 3 year time jump between ASOS and the next book, A Dance With Dragons, and tell those 3 years in flashback while advancing the story. He tried doing this then abandoned it feeling that too much important info was relogated to flashbacks. This led to him ditching the time jump and covering the events in real time which resulted in a gargantuan book that had to be split in two. So in a very literal sense the story did get away from him. And it would, also, seem his editor has taken a very long sabbatical.

At this point the story is just to big for me to enjoy in print form. It needs a good editor. I love the world and the story, but I just don't enjoy slogging through 1,000+ pages when I have so many other books I want to read. I don't need to be told what Tyrion is having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; or about the everyday woes of the Kahleesi. After 3 books I was well aware of her problems, and the eating habits of the characters. I didn't need 2,000 more pages of it. Move this **** along, already. Get to the end game.

[DACrowe]

I didn't know that until I had finished AFFC but it already made sense. Yes, originally ASOIAF was meant to be a trilogy and then when he reached ACOK it was to be elongated into 4 novels.

That makes so much sense reading the first three. I could see why he may have needed 5 books ultimately (one to be the "winds of winter" and one about the endgame after the worst of it). But AFFC and ADWD just feel so self-indulgent. There is very little in either of them until each's final 200 pages that matters. He honestly could have skipped them with a time jump and should have. He just didn't want to let it go. And when it is clear to the reader that 50% of your novel is irrelevant to what will come in the next book (or two) of the series, it does become a slog.

AGOT was a great prologue to the series in many ways. It set the stage for where most generic fantasy writers would begin their story (the noble father slain and the boy king off to war). ACOK and ASOS were riveting novels of rising action and escalation about that said war that both subverted the genre tropes and deepened them. At the end of ASOS, the stage is set for the endgame to begin.

It is unfortunate that he will ultimately take about 15 years and two monotonous novels to get to that end game. I honestly will not mind if the show highly changes and condenses things after the fourth season of next year.

[Infinity9999x]

Originally Posted by DACrowe

I didn't know that until I had finished AFFC but it already made sense. Yes, originally ASOIAF was meant to be a trilogy and then when he reached ACOK it was to be elongated into 4 novels.

That makes so much sense reading the first three. I could see why he may have needed 5 books ultimately (one to be the "winds of winter" and one about the endgame after the worst of it). But AFFC and ADWD just feel so self-indulgent. There is very little in either of them until each's final 200 pages that matters. He honestly could have skipped them with a time jump and should have. He just didn't want to let it go. And when it is clear to the reader that 50% of your novel is irrelevant to what will come in the next book (or two) of the series, it does become a slog.

AGOT was a great prologue to the series in many ways. It set the stage for where most generic fantasy writers would begin their story (the noble father slain and the boy king off to war). ACOK and ASOS were riveting novels of rising action and escalation about that said war that both subverted the genre tropes and deepened them. At the end of ASOS, the stage is set for the endgame to begin.

It is unfortunate that he will ultimately take about 15 years and two monotonous novels to get to that end game. I honestly will not mind if the show highly changes and condenses things after the fourth season of next year.

That's the same way I felt after reading books 4 and 5. Too much was in there that left me going "well, this is interesting...but why do I care?" I mean, did we really need Cersei to become a POV character in book 4? Did we honestly learn anything about her we didn't know already? And as you said above, he's introduced all these characters in books 4 and 5 and with most of them, I've just been wondering how exactly this ties into the overall plot, and if they'll end up being all that important. Too many of them felt unneeded. Quentyn Martell is a perfect example. That character was completely unneeded. His only major function in the story was releasing the dragons and that easily could have been achieved without the introduction of an entirely new character.

[Marvolo]

From an article in July 2011.

''I do sometimes think I've thrown too many balls in the air, but having thrown them in the air, it's my obligation to juggle them,'' Martin says, then jokes: ''Why did I have to make it the Seven Kingdoms? Wouldn't Five Kingdoms have been sufficiently complicated?''

At 1,040 pages, Dance is Martin's longest book in the series, yet is actually shorter than the author intended in terms of the amount of story that's covered. There's at least one large battle sequence that Martin didn't have time to include, and several character threads end in tantalizing cliff-hangers. In other words, as satisfyingly huge as Dance is, you're going to want more. Which leads to the dreadful question: When can the devoted expect book 6?

Fans can reassure themselves that Martin is working toward a conclusion, since he's often said he'll end the series with the seventh novel...right?

''I'm as firm as I am,'' Martin says, ''until I decide not to be firm.''

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,2047...511966,00.html

All those quotes are worrisome and point to a writer who needs an editor and a taskmaster. The fact he had to leave out a major battle from ADWD and conclusions to character threads should tell him he has a problem. That stuff should be with the book it is supposed to be with. Not pushed to the opening of another book that is years away. You don't open a book with the end of the previous. Cut all the BS day to day stuff of characters eating, dressing, sexing etc and get to the meat. Extraneous BS does not a story make.

[Baramos]

Eh, A Feast For Crows is actually a very short book compared to the rest (look at the size of the font next time you read it compared to A Clash of Kings), people complained it took so many years to write. Then he writes a very very big book in A Dance With Dragons, and people complain it took so many years to write. The guy just overthinks his writing (I remember watching some video interview of his where he talked about the writing process for ADWD, and how he rewrote this one sequence with Tyrion about four or five times), and we'll just have to get used to it.

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by Baramos

Eh, A Feast For Crows is actually a very short book compared to the rest (look at the size of the font next time you read it compared to A Clash of Kings), people complained it took so many years to write. Then he writes a very very big book in A Dance With Dragons, and people complain it took so many years to write. The guy just overthinks his writing (I remember watching some video interview of his where he talked about the writing process for ADWD, and how he rewrote this one sequence with Tyrion about four or five times), and we'll just have to get used to it.

I don't mind him taking long. I mind that his writing is clearly suffering. When you can't get the climax and endings to character threads in the book they belong in and have to open the next book with it there is a problem. He is letting unimportant character actions (eating, meandering, redundant/nonrelevant convos, and extraneous characters get in the way of the story's overall progress and integrity. I don't mind him taking a long time, but I do expect the quality of writing to reflect that amount of time otherwise what is the point of taking all that time.

And any director, editor, writer in film and books will tell you that at some point you just have to release the material and let it go. If you spend too much time looking at it you will just find new things to nitpick and the story ends up suffering for it. "Films aren't released. They escape." I think there is truth in that about books as well. Sometimes you just gotta cut it loose and let it be. Maybe if Martin wasnt giving himself 6+ years to write each book he wouldn't have as much time to overthink it and add all this stuff that isn't really relevant and could simplify it. A tighter schedule might actually help him.

[Infinity9999x]

Well the past few posts we haven't been talking about the time so much as the quality. The past few novels felt too bloated, and I know I at least thought he could have pared down both quite a bit. The main plot feels like its gotten away from him.

Originally Posted by Baramos

Eh, A Feast For Crows is actually a very short book compared to the rest (look at the size of the font next time you read it compared to A Clash of Kings), people complained it took so many years to write. Then he writes a very very big book in A Dance With Dragons, and people complain it took so many years to write. The guy just overthinks his writing (I remember watching some video interview of his where he talked about the writing process for ADWD, and how he rewrote this one sequence with Tyrion about four or five times), and we'll just have to get used to it.

[CrypticOne]

I don't know how people can say AFFC and ADWD are of lower standards than the first three books. All have been awesome reads for me. And it has kept me guessing on how this will all end up. I also don't see how GRRM will end this series with two more books. So much stuff is happening. And the Others still haven't shown up yet.

[Spidey-Bat]

AFFC and ADWD aren't inferior, they just have a lot of POVs that I don't care about *coughareohotahcough*

[CrypticOne]

Originally Posted by Spidey-Bat

AFFC and ADWD aren't inferior, they just have a lot of POVs that I don't care about *coughareohotahcough*

WHAT?! That dude is badass! I wish I was him! I hope he and Victarion come across each other in battle!

[Spidey-Bat]

He's not a badass, he's dull. The only reason I can get through his chapters is because you learn about the Martells through him. A POV from one of them would be far more useful.