Is ASOIAF really just a generic fantasy story? *Spoilers*

[Ser Gareth]

I'm putting this in the TWOW forum because it references the Mercy chapter.

I first read AGOT in 1998 and it blew me away. I'd read a bit of fantasy before but they were all pretty generic. Good vs Evil, heroes and villians etc. AGOT seemed instantly different to that. It was more of a drama and full of intrigue. For the young characters it was almost like a coming of age story. It was low fantasy, big on character development. Then when Eddard lost his head I really did know this was something special.....

I love the books, don't get me wrong, even though it's clear that GRRM seems to have developed writers block (I consider ASOS the best book in the series and when you think how large it is and how fast it came out after ACOK that demonstrates that GRRM did have direction and motivation at that stage) and AFFC and ADWD were nowhere near the standard of AGOT or ASOS. Despite this I've re-read them several times.

But the more I re-read them the more I think maybe ASOIAF is a generic story on the inside and superficially doesn't appear to be on the outside. The other problem I am beginning to have with it, is how improbable and convoluted many of the character meetings in the books are.

Eddard's death has created the illusion that anyone can die at any time. But that's simply not true is it? At least not for the main POV characters from the first book. Tyrion has dodged death so many times now it's bordering on ridiculous. Actually it is ridiculous! But not as ridiculous as Arya's continual cycle of chance meetings with other significant characters in the books (good job Yoren picked her out from the hundreds in the crowd and managed to reach her for example). She could travel to Dothraki sea and bump into someone on her hit list it seems. Go for a drink, oh there's two of them. I'm going to be in a play on a different continent, oh look there's another! I am presuming that Westeros is meant to be a big place, and the world even bigger. But that doesn't stop Brienne bumping into some Brave Companions in the arse end of nowhere, Sam bumping into Bran & Arya and Tyrion crossing paths with just about everyone he can now he has left Westeros.

The other thing that bugs me immensely is the sheer apathy shown by the rest of Westeros to the Others. NW sents out ravens telling the continent the Others do exist and are bearing down on the Wall and the rest of the realm reacts with? Well nothing. They soon find out Stannis is at the Wall, so communications are clearly flowing from that way. But no one seems to care. Tyrion went to the Wall and yet despite his good relationship with Mormont, he completely ignores Ser Alliser Thorne's arrival and publically mocks him. At no stage does Tyrion, who is meant to be one of the brightest characters in the books think to himself "Hang on a minute, it must be pretty bloody important if Mormont has sent this tosser all the way to King's Landing with a hand in a jar, maybe I need to verify this somehow".

From day one we've had visions and dragons. Now we have all sorts of magic popping up but ultimately it seems to be coming down between a battle of the "evil" Others vs everyone else. I am sure there will be some superficial twists along the way and I love the way GRRM makes us care about the characters and puts a shade of grey into the equation, but it really does seem to me as if it is just following a standard fantasy outline after all.

So in TWOW are we going to have the secret Prince, who has just been betrayed, reborn to save the day? Probably. There has been so much foreshadowing (another bugbear of mine from the books, almost all of it seems to come true too! Even the fact the Wolf is called Ghost.....) that it's nailed on really.

I'll continue to stick with the books and I sincerely hope that he does manage to finish them but I can't say that I am not becoming disillusioned with them a bit. It's gone from being potentially one of the greatest stories ever told to an anticlimatic let down with AFFC and ADWD, and more concerning to me with monkey's leaping from boats, pork scratching steaming hands (and the crew seem fine with this, bizarre), man entwined within a tree and yet another resurrection on the cards? Is that it really is more D&D than War of the Roses.......

Does anyone else feel the same way? Or have I just got cynical waiting so long between books?

[Whitering]

Well, it's not quite as bad as you have mentioned. I mean, the Riverlands are a big place, but with only a few occupied place (at the time of Storm of Swords) such that it is not outside the realm of possibility that two characters would run into each other. If you look at the map, it makes sense that Tickler and Polivar were there and it did launch the novel forward. The show is truly horrible in this respect though, just people meeting all over the place like it's taking place in a snow globe sized world.

Brienne was near the Saltpans, where the Mummers had been searching for a ship before the raped and pillaged the place, basically making sure no more ships would go there (poor planning). The Mountain's men were kind of floating around after that, Raff may have been one of the crew Jaime sent to escort the men that wished to go the Wall to a sea port. After that they headed back to KL, and it was suggested to Giles that he hire some of them to be his bodyguards, which he no doubt took to heart after Kevan and Pycelle were assassinated. I guess he took in a show, we know there are a few playhouses, so let's say there was a 1/4 chance he'd end up at the one Arya was working at.

Sam was wondering around the foreign docks, exactly where Arya roamed selling seafood. They probably also weren't far from the brothel where Arya liked to hangout occasionally. She probably noticed a fat guy, apparently from the Night's Watch no less and was drawn to him. She is very observant and Sam is kind of obvious.

Vic's crew are probably terrified of him, the monkeys are some degree of proof (to me) that Moquorro is undead (a la Beric). We do notice foreshadowing here more than other places because we have, annoyingly, 5 years between books to contemplate them in minutia.

George can still wreck the books for me. I mean, even through the 4 or 5 bad books of Wheel of Time I was fine, but I can't reread it because the last book was pretty horrible (my opinion), so the whole series is toast even though The Shadow Rising is one of my top five favourite books.

In my opinion there are some serious issues coming up. Given George's writing style and everything I feel needs to happen before the ending (which had better be more substantial than WoT's), he needs 3 more books, not two. I don't look forward to the 11 years of waiting but there you have it.

Spend some time in the heresy threads. Plenty of people have fankwanked a fantasy that the Others are not "evil" since George only does that with people, like Ramsay and Gregor. My personal belief is that the Singers (Children) nuked Hardhome because it was a violation of the pact between them and the First Men. There's just tons of stuff like that. Even if this series was generic fantasy, it is very well written.

I do agree that characters have escaped death on a regular basis (Tyrion) such that you would assume they were gods themselves. George kind of wrote it in Storm, and I think he corrected it in Feast where Arya remembered being hungry a lot, but this young woman, even on horseback, traveled alone for 6 days in a war torn wilderness. Yes she was by a river, but not one you'd want to drink out with all the bodies in there, and it was turbulent, but she's smart, so assume water wasn't an issue. I don't know too many people who could survive for that long in her situation, it's harder than you think. But ya, Arya, at least, gives the impression she has a life time of boy scout/girl guide training (not sure what Girl Guides learn heh).

It's the 5 years between books that leads to questions like this from fans of the series. My advice, play some of the better written adventure games and branch out your entertainment.

[Winter Blues]

GRRM has a certain narrative magic in which he infuses fiction-history and fantasy, transcended by intelligent and often poetic, literature. He makes it easy for one to forget that, while reading, they is literally traveling through a world created in the mind of another person!

The problem I believe GRRM faced in writing AFfC and ADwD is that, before we can reach what I believe will be the real climaxes of the story, he had to (1) overcome the 'back story hurdle' where history becomes the forefront--there is no way to grasp the present story without it, (2) keep his characters and their stories relevant--a difficult task, no doubt; there are just so many of them! (3) expand the supernatural-- we were given a taste in the first two books, a little less in the third. This is fantasy, right? But how do you do so without branching into the quintessential cheesy 'generic fantasy story'? (4) The damn TV show should've started AFTER he was finished with book 6!

You have to look at the story from the outside in, and with more consideration on the process of taking an idea so huge (ASOIAF) and putting it in narrative form.

As to your dig about the unrealistic bits: (I may sound like a surrealist) the whole point of fiction writing is for readers to step outside the realms of belief and to always expect, especially from a guy with the brains of GRRM, some extraordinarily stuff.

PS,

I can understand the anti-climax that happens after the Red Wedding, as no event in literature matches the utter disbelief and shock of reading several important characters die in just a turn of a page! What a letdown AFfC and ADwD must seem in comparison!

[sj4iy]

Martin himself has admitted that his story elements aren't particularly original, but that he tried to make them his. So yes, there seems to be an stereotypical fantasy story under the politicking, sex and violence, but that doesn't make it bad. There's nothing new under the sun, but artists can take something old and made it new again. That's really what Martin is doing for many people.

[The Kinkslayer]

Most of the chance encounters in the series happen at the inn by the crossroads because... well is at the crossroads.

Tyrion cannot die because of his dwarvish plot armor, also, he is a snark that doesn't believe in grumpkins.

Arya crosses everyone's path because she is Arya underfoot.

My biggest nitpick to the series has been shoehorning Bran's assassination attempt to Joffrey, some plot points are better left as mysteries.

[GERM]

I'm putting this in the TWOW forum because it references the Mercy chapter.

I first read AGOT in 1998 and it blew me away. I'd read a bit of fantasy before but they were all pretty generic. Good vs Evil, heroes and villians etc. AGOT seemed instantly different to that. It was more of a drama and full of intrigue. For the young characters it was almost like a coming of age story. It was low fantasy, big on character development. Then when Eddard lost his head I really did know this was something special.....

I love the books, don't get me wrong, even though it's clear that GRRM seems to have developed writers block (I consider ASOS the best book in the series and when you think how large it is and how fast it came out after ACOK that demonstrates that GRRM did have direction and motivation at that stage) and AFFC and ADWD were nowhere near the standard of AGOT or ASOS. Despite this I've re-read them several times.

But the more I re-read them the more I think maybe ASOIAF is a generic story on the inside and superficially doesn't appear to be on the outside. The other problem I am beginning to have with it, is how improbable and convoluted many of the character meetings in the books are.

Eddard's death has created the illusion that anyone can die at any time. But that's simply not true is it? At least not for the main POV characters from the first book. Tyrion has dodged death so many times now it's bordering on ridiculous. Actually it is ridiculous! But not as ridiculous as Arya's continual cycle of chance meetings with other significant characters in the books (good job Yoren picked her out from the hundreds in the crowd and managed to reach her for example). She could travel to Dothraki sea and bump into someone on her hit list it seems. Go for a drink, oh there's two of them. I'm going to be in a play on a different continent, oh look there's another! I am presuming that Westeros is meant to be a big place, and the world even bigger. But that doesn't stop Brienne bumping into some Brave Companions in the arse end of nowhere, Sam bumping into Bran & Arya and Tyrion crossing paths with just about everyone he can now he has left Westeros.

The other thing that bugs me immensely is the sheer apathy shown by the rest of Westeros to the Others. NW sents out ravens telling the continent the Others do exist and are bearing down on the Wall and the rest of the realm reacts with? Well nothing. They soon find out Stannis is at the Wall, so communications are clearly flowing from that way. But no one seems to care. Tyrion went to the Wall and yet despite his good relationship with Mormont, he completely ignores Ser Alliser Thorne's arrival and publically mocks him. At no stage does Tyrion, who is meant to be one of the brightest characters in the books think to himself "Hang on a minute, it must be pretty bloody important if Mormont has sent this tosser all the way to King's Landing with a hand in a jar, maybe I need to verify this somehow".

From day one we've had visions and dragons. Now we have all sorts of magic popping up but ultimately it seems to be coming down between a battle of the "evil" Others vs everyone else. I am sure there will be some superficial twists along the way and I love the way GRRM makes us care about the characters and puts a shade of grey into the equation, but it really does seem to me as if it is just following a standard fantasy outline after all.

So in TWOW are we going to have the secret Prince, who has just been betrayed, reborn to save the day? Probably. There has been so much foreshadowing (another bugbear of mine from the books, almost all of it seems to come true too! Even the fact the Wolf is called Ghost.....) that it's nailed on really.

I'll continue to stick with the books and I sincerely hope that he does manage to finish them but I can't say that I am not becoming disillusioned with them a bit. It's gone from being potentially one of the greatest stories ever told to an anticlimatic let down with AFFC and ADWD, and more concerning to me with monkey's leaping from boats, pork scratching steaming hands (and the crew seem fine with this, bizarre), man entwined within a tree and yet another resurrection on the cards? Is that it really is more D&D than War of the Roses.......

Does anyone else feel the same way? Or have I just got cynical waiting so long between books?

Yes. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 3 books though. Martin borrows from history, it is his thing. It is a good series for the first three books, and the last 2 have yet to be judged until the series is finished, but there is nothing mind blowing there.

[Mrmanakan]

@germ & ser Gareth

The "last 2" technically are really just one massive book. And when they are put together and read together they hold up a lot better. I don't think you can compare either one without the other, which is hard with the whole big gap in releSing the two books. But they were technically meant to be released as one book.

I do agree that some of the chance encounters may seem a little convenient but at the same time when I was a kid I went to Disneyland and saw someone who I went to school with and we both lived hundred of miles away. So in life chance encounters do happen and when dealing with hundreds of characters. When I was reading the books I didn't think "omg this is so unbelievable that would never happen" but then again I also didn't think that when reading about dany hatching her eggs. It is fantasy in it's own way but even in the second book with the fire Mage who made a ladder out of fire magic has always been relevant. As to having your typical good vs evil and a "hero" well Jon, dany and Brienne are the only 3 that seem heroic. And Danny's a lil too selfish for me to even think that. I guess if Jon is dead will really decide if it fits into the usual fantasy theme. But at the end of the day do you really want him dead?

Oh and with the foreshadowing I kind of like his style with it. And plus it makes things more interesting In between books maybe looking back with the end I'll think differently.

Sorry about bad spelling and grammar half asleep right now

[Prince of the North]

Heh, well, in many ways Martin is subverting fantasy tropes. But in order to subvert fantasy tropes Martin must first establish them. And, of course, not all fantasy tropes will be subverted in ASoIaF ;)

[Cas Stark]

I kind of agree, he seems to be increasingly lost in his "garden" and can't find the path. We started with a strong, complicated but still fairly straightforward story, but in the last two books it has seemingly meandered out of control. A huge number of new POVs introduced, but nothing much is resolved, and if the new POVs take center stage then it turns into an entirely different series than what people have though they were reading.

The author has also very much overused clifflhangers and people who are dead who are not dead, either they were never dead, their death was faked or they have been brought back from the dead. Doing this a couple of times is okay, but we're to a half dozen now.

He needs an outline, whether he thinks he does or not, he does. His "gardening" approach has led to too many weeds in the garden which are overgrowing the flowers he so lovingly planted.

[Coluber]

To put it in simple terms, I don't think that ASOIAF is just a generic fantasy story, as I've read (and forgotten) quite a few of the most generic ones. Nonetheless, it is a fantasy story with some of the expected tropes. And really, you can't have every character die. WWII was brutal, but people did survive it.

[Northernmonkey]

I'll be honest, I really hope that it doesn't come down to three heroes riding three dragons into a battle with the others. For me that would just be your typical generic fantasy stuff.

[Faceless Man Friday]

I'll be honest, I really hope that it doesn't come down to three heroes riding three dragons into a battle with the others. For me that would just be your typical generic fantasy stuff.

Yes it is my hope that "the dragon has three heads" means something entirely different. A pleasant surprise for once from GRRM rather than a heartbreaking one.

[GERM]

I'll be honest, I really hope that it doesn't come down to three heroes riding three dragons into a battle with the others. For me that would just be your typical generic fantasy stuff.

Martin is typical fantasy with plagiarized historical stories, lol.

[Theodore James II]

My problem (a small blemish on my love for the series) with the first three books are that, in reality, more is happening that is very story-altering outside your few main characters. There's not ten people around which an entire war can be told. But then, the Greyjoys became players, and their story needed to be told, including what they had been doing behind the scenes. The Martells became more vital, and I was happy to find they were very involved with the story even when we weren't looking.

The whole idea that GRRM is making his story more convoluted is, I think, an attempt at realistic storytelling. In generic fantasy, everything literally revolves around one (or maybe two) characters. ASOIAF absolutely does not. And that is one more thing that separates it from your run-of-the-mill fantasy.

I doubt it will come down to Good versus Evil. We think that is where he is taking it because our minds have been crafted our entire lives to predict a generic outcome. It is not coming from our own brains; it's the generic fantasies of the past that lead us to believe these predictions. GRRM would never write a Good versus Evil ending because he is smart, and he knows better, and he wants to be better than that. Will Tyrion live out a life of peace and quiet and whores? Will Daenerys sit on the Iron Throne? Will Cersei die a horrible, horrible death? Will Arya finish with her list? Will Sam just eat and be merry the rest of his days? These are things we want or expect; it is very hard to tell the difference. It is also very difficult to tell the difference between what we think is uncommon/game-changing and what we think is unnatural/rule-breaking. Though a case could be made against him, I believe in GRRM. After all, he gave us AGOT and ASOS (and ADWD, which I loved); I think at least ADOS will be as epic, if not TWOW.

*When Cersei dies, please let it be at Jaime's hand somehow*

[Bog Devil of Greywater]

It'd be impossible to tell a story without including tropes. A story without tropes wouldn't appeal to anybody past a certain point. Nobody is going to read 7 and possibly 8 massive tomes to find out that nothing they invested in worked out in the slightest and that humanity never had a chance to begin with- because that's what we're ultimately dealing with here- a story about humans triumphing over outside forces they aren't at all prepared for. Which is a trope. It's a better written Independence Day with zombies instead of aliens.

Remove tropes from literature, and you'd have to hate just about any story ever told. Tropes are tropes because they are a living breathing part of most every story. Fantasy, Horror, High Literature be damned- tropes exist in all of them.

Like the OP, there are plenty of things that make me crazy about ASoIaF. I agree with him about Tyrion. His plot armor is so thick that the Red Viper couldn't possibly find a weak spot with his poisoned spear. Other characters die at a single misstep, yet Tyrion can waddle from one blunder to the next without much cause for concern. It's really lessened his appeal to me through the series. When plot armor is so apparent that it should have it's color described in the text, a character needs work.

Ned drove me crazy with the amount of deference he showed to Catelyn about a child. "I want Jon to stay with Robb". No, says Cat, he can't stay here. "Well, then- I'll send him to the wall to never father sons or be warm again". This is the same character who flipped out when Rhaegar's kids were killed, and again when Robert wanted to dispose of a teenage Dany. But the uber-honorable Eddard Stark discards a child he raised in Jon to a miserable life on the wall with a single sentence from his wife. Perhaps he only cares about Targaryen kids. Oh, wait.

And don't get me started on Dany spending two books obsessing over Daario and halting her forward progression as a character, or how a minor lord like Littlefinger with no real power, no real lands, no real riches, and no army can always find allies to go along with his schemes against people with far more power and resources- and win. Those kinds of things make me batty, but I tolerate them because the story overall far outweighs any issues I have with it.

A great story is a great story, even with some tropes and silliness included.

[Peasant Rebel Leader]

The story certainly seems a bit constructed sometimes, but then it is a mosaic of different view points after all. ASOIAF is better at describing scenarios and exploring characterizations, i.e. the good and evil in every person. The road is the aim here and not if the endboss is defeated, Below all this, there is the skeleton of a generic fantasy story, but it's not as bad as the op makes it sound. I can live with Tyrion, Dany and Jon riding three dragons against the others as long as the literature and the way to get there reads fine and logical itself. Take the example of ADWD King's Landing, in hindsight I find it highly interesting how we can get to a "kingdom, in which the Evil Queen " reigns, which could conceivably be the starting point in so many fairy tales. She even has a undead monster that does her every bidding. But the causality to get here seems fine (within the constraint of the book-world realism of course).

[The Human Abstract]

It'd be impossible to tell a story without including tropes. A story without tropes wouldn't appeal to anybody past a certain point. Nobody is going to read 7 and possibly 8 massive tomes to find out that nothing they invested in worked out in the slightest and that humanity never had a chance to begin with- because that's what we're ultimately dealing with here- a story about humans triumphing over outside forces they aren't at all prepared for. Which is a trope. It's a better written Independence Day with zombies instead of aliens.

..

A great story is a great story, even with some tropes and silliness included.

Well said.

I also notice a lot of Grrm fans hung on the "unpredictably" of it all. There's nothing special about "unpredictability", and it's easy to do. What's hard to do is keep it exciting while at the same time having the story makes sense with events naturally following from what's been set up. And, frankly, George does that way better than most. But, as he himself said, the reader should be able to predict some things. It makes the story more enjoyable and logical.

[sj4iy]

Well said.

I also notice a lot of Grrm fans hung on the "unpredictably" of it all. There's nothing special about "unpredictability", and it's easy to do. What's hard to do is keep it exciting while at the same time having the story makes sense with events naturally following from what's been set up. And, frankly, George does that way better than most. But, as he himself said, the reader should be able to predict some things. It makes the story more enjoyable and logical.

^This. I'm tired of the "Well, that's too obvious!" or "Well, he just HAS to subvert that trope or I will be angry" comments.

Not everything has to be hidden, not everything has to be subverted. The story can still be good even if you expect certain things to happen. It actually gets tiresome when nothing at all is predictable because then the story doesn't flow right and it starts to make less and less sense.

[Ygritte]

^This. I'm tired of the "Well, that's too obvious!" or "Well, he just HAS to subvert that trope or I will be angry" comments.

Nothing everything has to be hidden, not everything has to be subverted. The story can still be good even if you expect certain things to happen. It actually gets tiresome when nothing at all is predictable because then the story doesn't flow right and it starts to make less and less sense.

Seconded, or thirded. I don't want GRRM to start doing stuff that makes no sense just to be ~edgy~. Sometimes the payoff from foreshadowing is really satisfying! And the thing I've always heard about mystery writing is that you want the solution to be a surprise for a moment, but then make perfect sense when you think about it and look back on the clues, and I think he's at least influenced by mystery writing in these books.

[alienarea]

I'm putting this in the TWOW forum because it references the Mercy chapter.

I first read AGOT in 1998 and it blew me away. I'd read a bit of fantasy before but they were all pretty generic. Good vs Evil, heroes and villians etc. AGOT seemed instantly different to that. It was more of a drama and full of intrigue. For the young characters it was almost like a coming of age story. It was low fantasy, big on character development. Then when Eddard lost his head I really did know this was something special.....

I love the books, don't get me wrong, even though it's clear that GRRM seems to have developed writers block (I consider ASOS the best book in the series and when you think how large it is and how fast it came out after ACOK that demonstrates that GRRM did have direction and motivation at that stage) and AFFC and ADWD were nowhere near the standard of AGOT or ASOS. Despite this I've re-read them several times.

But the more I re-read them the more I think maybe ASOIAF is a generic story on the inside and superficially doesn't appear to be on the outside. The other problem I am beginning to have with it, is how improbable and convoluted many of the character meetings in the books are.

Eddard's death has created the illusion that anyone can die at any time. But that's simply not true is it? At least not for the main POV characters from the first book. Tyrion has dodged death so many times now it's bordering on ridiculous. Actually it is ridiculous! But not as ridiculous as Arya's continual cycle of chance meetings with other significant characters in the books (good job Yoren picked her out from the hundreds in the crowd and managed to reach her for example). She could travel to Dothraki sea and bump into someone on her hit list it seems. Go for a drink, oh there's two of them. I'm going to be in a play on a different continent, oh look there's another! I am presuming that Westeros is meant to be a big place, and the world even bigger. But that doesn't stop Brienne bumping into some Brave Companions in the arse end of nowhere, Sam bumping into Bran & Arya and Tyrion crossing paths with just about everyone he can now he has left Westeros.

The other thing that bugs me immensely is the sheer apathy shown by the rest of Westeros to the Others. NW sents out ravens telling the continent the Others do exist and are bearing down on the Wall and the rest of the realm reacts with? Well nothing. They soon find out Stannis is at the Wall, so communications are clearly flowing from that way. But no one seems to care. Tyrion went to the Wall and yet despite his good relationship with Mormont, he completely ignores Ser Alliser Thorne's arrival and publically mocks him. At no stage does Tyrion, who is meant to be one of the brightest characters in the books think to himself "Hang on a minute, it must be pretty bloody important if Mormont has sent this tosser all the way to King's Landing with a hand in a jar, maybe I need to verify this somehow".

From day one we've had visions and dragons. Now we have all sorts of magic popping up but ultimately it seems to be coming down between a battle of the "evil" Others vs everyone else. I am sure there will be some superficial twists along the way and I love the way GRRM makes us care about the characters and puts a shade of grey into the equation, but it really does seem to me as if it is just following a standard fantasy outline after all.

So in TWOW are we going to have the secret Prince, who has just been betrayed, reborn to save the day? Probably. There has been so much foreshadowing (another bugbear of mine from the books, almost all of it seems to come true too! Even the fact the Wolf is called Ghost.....) that it's nailed on really.

I'll continue to stick with the books and I sincerely hope that he does manage to finish them but I can't say that I am not becoming disillusioned with them a bit. It's gone from being potentially one of the greatest stories ever told to an anticlimatic let down with AFFC and ADWD, and more concerning to me with monkey's leaping from boats, pork scratching steaming hands (and the crew seem fine with this, bizarre), man entwined within a tree and yet another resurrection on the cards? Is that it really is more D&D than War of the Roses.......

Does anyone else feel the same way? Or have I just got cynical waiting so long between books?

Fully agree.

I am even more sceptic. Without proof I am convinced the original plot has been changed when the five year gap got scrapped.