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A Timeframe of Ice and Fire: Two Books, Too Many Upcoming Conflicts Left To Go


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3 hours ago, Ninerings said:

Not starting a fight with you personally, but it seems that no one cares to address his snotty answers to anything AWOIAF and the fact that he is not young and not exactly the picture of health.

So again...." standards"?

What can I say? I like how he writes his books, including Feast and Dance. All the little details and the overall consistency makes them a joy to reread. I care about the result more than his professional conduct.

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11 hours ago, The Coconut God said:

What can I say? I like how he writes his books, including Feast and Dance. All the little details and the overall consistency makes them a joy to reread. I care about the result more than his professional conduct.

Totally agree. Love the books too. Even AFfC and ADwD. But he straight up isn't going to finish the story and it is frustrating how he acts like his fans are peasants for DARING to want to read the rest of it.

 

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I care about results, but the results to me spell 'too many plots' to finish in two more books, and the longer it takes him to finish Winds the worse this outcome seems to be.  But then I don't think Feast and Dance, outside of a few individual chapters, were near the quality of the first 3 books, and I am not invested in most of the new POVs or the stories.  The Greyjoy POVs are okay, fairly interesting, but on the whole unnecessary, and the one eyed evil pirate warlock seems to me to be the author trying to top himself....so just not really a fan so far.  I hate the Dorne stuff, I hate the sand snakes, I don't much like Arianne, Doran is a fool, Quentyn's POV was a waste of time...so, the only hope to 'fix' that story is that the Aegon stuff is really good, but no matter how good, it will still be a huge diversion since it doesn't look like he makes it.  Dance made me despise Dany so I am no longer interested in her or what she does as I don't think she deserves to rule Westeros or anywhere else.  Same with Tyrion, I despise him marginally less than Dany, but his chapters were so boring and he became such a jerk, I don't much care about him either.  So, for main characters that only leaves me caring about Jon and Arya.....which I don't think is what the author's purpose was with the last two books.

But, I don't know, these conversations go around in circles.  Sure, if Feast and Dance had been combined as a single book, edited down by about 20% with less filler and more resolution it would have probably stood up to the earlier books in terms of quality and story.  But, that ship sailed  more than ten years ago, long before I had ever heard of GRRM.  I pity the people who started reading this series in the 90s.

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@Ninerings I guess I empathize with him. From your perspective, you're invested and you really want to read the next book. From his perspective, it's thousands of people constantly asking the same thing. And it's not helping.

If he doesn't work well under pressure and he has poor commitment ethics, nobody's going to change that at his age. I'd rather hope he will focus on the story being good, because that's something we know he's capable of.

@Cas Stark I agree about going in circles. There's not much I can say without repeating myself. I get your points, I just don't agree with that approach. Let's hope Winds will be released soon so that one of us is proven right!

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On 18/06/2017 at 3:06 PM, Cas Stark said:

I care about results, but the results to me spell 'too many plots' to finish in two more books, and the longer it takes him to finish Winds the worse this outcome seems to be.  But then I don't think Feast and Dance, outside of a few individual chapters, were near the quality of the first 3 books, and I am not invested in most of the new POVs or the stories.  The Greyjoy POVs are okay, fairly interesting, but on the whole unnecessary, and the one eyed evil pirate warlock seems to me to be the author trying to top himself....so just not really a fan so far.  I hate the Dorne stuff, I hate the sand snakes, I don't much like Arianne, Doran is a fool, Quentyn's POV was a waste of time...so, the only hope to 'fix' that story is that the Aegon stuff is really good, but no matter how good, it will still be a huge diversion since it doesn't look like he makes it.  Dance made me despise Dany so I am no longer interested in her or what she does as I don't think she deserves to rule Westeros or anywhere else.  Same with Tyrion, I despise him marginally less than Dany, but his chapters were so boring and he became such a jerk, I don't much care about him either.  So, for main characters that only leaves me caring about Jon and Arya.....which I don't think is what the author's purpose was with the last two books.

But, I don't know, these conversations go around in circles.  Sure, if Feast and Dance had been combined as a single book, edited down by about 20% with less filler and more resolution it would have probably stood up to the earlier books in terms of quality and story.  But, that ship sailed  more than ten years ago, long before I had ever heard of GRRM.  I pity the people who started reading this series in the 90s.

I actually believe it is possible to end the series in 2 books. It is a matter of how many characters GRRM kills in this book and if can get all/or almost all povs converging in a few places. If aegon takes KL, jon winterfell, danny leaves for westeros and characters like stannis or cercei die we can have easily almost every character going to KL, winterfell, danny or the iron islands...

If this happens GRRM has the first half of the last book to make these 3 resolve their problems and then the last half to deal with the ww. It should be possible because as there are so many povs together the story actually moves pretty fast...

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4 hours ago, divica said:

I actually believe it is possible to end the series in 2 books. It is a matter of how many characters GRRM kills in this book and if can get all/or almost all povs converging in a few places. If aegon takes KL, jon winterfell, danny leaves for westeros and characters like stannis or cercei die we can have easily almost every character going to KL, winterfell, danny or the iron islands...

If this happens GRRM has the first half of the last book to make these 3 resolve their problems and then the last half to deal with the ww. It should be possible because as there are so many povs together the story actually moves pretty fast...

I just feel like the last book will feel so rushed, in my opinion, if your scenario holds true. GRRM has said himself that Dany and Tyrion don't meet up until later into TWOW. That means she won't likely set foot in Westeros until ADOS. So that leaves half a book for her battle with Aegon and half a book for the battle for dawn. GRRM's original intent was three parts - war of the five kings, second dance of dragons, and battle for dawn against the white walkers. If he finishes the series in 7 books, that would mean part one took 3 books and parts 2 and 3 each took a half a book with 3 books in the middle just setting things up. It doesn't take a genius to see where the wheels fell off the train.

I can't see how he can make the last book flow and feel natural while also bringing a proper resolution to so many characters he introduced as well as proper ending to the story. But again, arguing in circles because I also don't feel we'll ever see an end to the story, so it doesn't really matter.

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8 minutes ago, SuperMario said:

I just feel like the last book will feel so rushed, in my opinion, if your scenario holds true. GRRM has said himself that Dany and Tyrion don't meet up until later into TWOW. That means she won't likely set foot in Westeros until ADOS. So that leaves half a book for her battle with Aegon and half a book for the battle for dawn. GRRM's original intent was three parts - war of the five kings, second dance of dragons, and battle for dawn against the white walkers. If he finishes the series in 7 books, that would mean part one took 3 books and parts 2 and 3 each took a half a book with 3 books in the middle just setting things up. It doesn't take a genius to see where the wheels fell off the train.

I can't see how he can make the last book flow and feel natural while also bringing a proper resolution to so many characters he introduced as well as proper ending to the story. But again, arguing in circles because I also don't feel we'll ever see an end to the story, so it doesn't really matter.

Exactly.  Seven books is no longer realistic based on the new stories and the pace of Feast and Dance, and what we know of Winds.

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4 hours ago, SuperMario said:

I just feel like the last book will feel so rushed, in my opinion, if your scenario holds true. GRRM has said himself that Dany and Tyrion don't meet up until later into TWOW. That means she won't likely set foot in Westeros until ADOS. So that leaves half a book for her battle with Aegon and half a book for the battle for dawn. GRRM's original intent was three parts - war of the five kings, second dance of dragons, and battle for dawn against the white walkers. If he finishes the series in 7 books, that would mean part one took 3 books and parts 2 and 3 each took a half a book with 3 books in the middle just setting things up. It doesn't take a genius to see where the wheels fell off the train.

I can't see how he can make the last book flow and feel natural while also bringing a proper resolution to so many characters he introduced as well as proper ending to the story. But again, arguing in circles because I also don't feel we'll ever see an end to the story, so it doesn't really matter.

I agree that it will seem rushed when we take into account the complexity and detail of the first 3 books. However I think GRRM will die before he writes 3 books. Besides with a fast pace and less plots the quality of the novels would increase and if he can make the characters drift towards jon, aegon, danny and the iron islands (because they are the most misterious and and resolved kingdom now) we could have a good story with several povs in the same location/plot. However when we see that the first 2 arianne chapters are a travel log about the effects of aegon conquest and she still hasn t met him... I kind of lose hope of any real development happening and start to think he would need more 4 or 5 books to end the story...

I mean is aegon going to leave storm's end by the end vol the next book? with so many chapters related to him already out the there and nothing really happening it is getting harder and harder. Not to even mention the north where things seems a light years from reaching a simillar place to the novels...

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If we go back to the original trilogy idea, it was (1) war of five kings, (2) Dany's invasion of Westeros/Dance of Dragons II, (3) fight against the Others. And we are soon to be six books into this and it will be that almost all of those books were for only part I of the original trilogy, we may get the very very beginning of Dany's invasion somewhere in Winds, but unless the pace triples in speed, we won't get her and Aegon squaring off and the resolution of that.  So, truthfully, even 8 books is a stretch at this point.  

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7 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

If we go back to the original trilogy idea, it was (1) war of five kings, (2) Dany's invasion of Westeros/Dance of Dragons II, (3) fight against the Others. And we are soon to be six books into this and it will be that almost all of those books were for only part I of the original trilogy, we may get the very very beginning of Dany's invasion somewhere in Winds, but unless the pace triples in speed, we won't get her and Aegon squaring off and the resolution of that.  So, truthfully, even 8 books is a stretch at this point.  

It is a bit dishonest to say that people haven t been fighting the others since the beguining of the novel... Besides, the final fight against the others should take more than 25 to 50% of a book because they don t have a plan of conquest. At most they will make a small breach in the wall, some ww will cross and animate lots of dead corpses through the 7 kingdoms and send them to kill everybody. Meanwhile the deciding battle will be fought either north of the wall, the wall or winterfell...

The important thing is to have the dance of dragons settled. If we consider that ADwD and WoW are equivalent to got and Acok to the battle between danny and aegon then it can be ended easilly in less than half a book (here we have just 2 rulers instead of 5).

In regards to the fight  against the others, jon snow been handling it since Asos... Characters like stanis, davos and mel were introduced to it in Adwd... It is probably the longest conflict in the books...

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I guess it's possible that only the first third of the original trilogy concept expanded to 5.5 books, LOL, and the other 2/3 can be taken care of in 1.5 books.  Seems unlikely to me though.  Seems more likely that it would need 2 books for Dany's invasion and conflict with Aegon and finally ramping up the Others conflict, and then at least 1 book for the final battle and wrap up.  That would put the series at 9 books total, since Winds doesn't appear like it's going to do much more than finally get Dany to land in Westeros.  

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3 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I guess it's possible that only the first third of the original trilogy concept expanded to 5.5 books, LOL, and the other 2/3 can be taken care of in 1.5 books.  Seems unlikely to me though.  Seems more likely that it would need 2 books for Dany's invasion and conflict with Aegon and finally ramping up the Others conflict, and then at least 1 book for the final battle and wrap up.  That would put the series at 9 books total, since Winds doesn't appear like it's going to do much more than finally get Dany to land in Westeros.  

Why do you say that the war of the five kings expanded to 5.5 books? it seems obvious to me that it ended in book 3 with several characters moving beyond that conflict before the end of the third book... so about 2.8 books?

In dance/ feast we have been preparing for danny's conquest. As it happened in the war of the five kingdoms we don t start with a war of conquest. There are a set of things that happen before. And if aegon conquers kings landing (and dorne and probably castleryrock), jon/rickon take winterfel, sansa the vale and tullys the riverlands with the others threatning everybody danny's invasion is kind of screwed because all pieces are in place already... I would say that in the original version danny would start conquering the stuff aegon did in the last book like it happens in the show...

 

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1 minute ago, divica said:

Why do you say that the war of the five kings expanded to 5.5 books? it seems obvious to me that it ended in book 3 with several characters moving beyond that conflict before the end of the third book... so about 2.8 books?

In dance/ feast we have been preparing for danny's conquest. As it happened in the war of the five kingdoms we don t start with a war of conquest. There are a set of things that happen before. And if aegon conquers kings landing (and dorne and probably castleryrock), jon/rickon take winterfel, sansa the vale and tullys the riverlands with the others threatning everybody danny's invasion is kind of screwed because all pieces are in place already... I would say that in the original version danny would start conquering the stuff aegon did in the last book like it happens in the show...

 

I didn't see Dance's interminable Dany in Meereen chapters as any kind of preparation for her invasion.  She is still in Essos.  She allegedly spends several chapters with the Dothraki, then presumably she has to somehow get another deux es machina plot gift to get her out of Essos leaving Slaver's Bay in decent shape, how many more chapters is that?   So that would make two books of Dany in Essos with nothing at all to do with Westeros.  At best, based on my understanding of the author's statements she might land in Westeros at the end of Winds.

Literally, nothing happened in Feast except for Cersei's arc, almost everything else, outside of Brienne's last two chapters was running in place, no forward movement.

So, unless the pace is very different from the Winds sample chapters overall--which in my opinion are the same, long, slow, overly detailed, not much happening tone from Dance and Feast...... I don't see how it's possible for the story to end in Winds and Dream of Spring and not feel very truncated.  

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21 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I didn't see Dance's interminable Dany in Meereen chapters as any kind of preparation for her invasion.  She is still in Essos.  She allegedly spends several chapters with the Dothraki, then presumably she has to somehow get another deux es machina plot gift to get her out of Essos leaving Slaver's Bay in decent shape, how many more chapters is that?   So that would make two books of Dany in Essos with nothing at all to do with Westeros.  At best, based on my understanding of the author's statements she might land in Westeros at the end of Winds.

Literally, nothing happened in Feast except for Cersei's arc, almost everything else, outside of Brienne's last two chapters was running in place, no forward movement.

So, unless the pace is very different from the Winds sample chapters overall--which in my opinion are the same, long, slow, overly detailed, not much happening tone from Dance and Feast...... I don't see how it's possible for the story to end in Winds and Dream of Spring and not feel very truncated.  

I liked the chapters about the battle in mereen. In 5 chapters the battle ends and we had 2 twists... It can t be much better than that. sansa chapter seems ok and the rest are garbage. Besides this danny might just have winned an armada to travel to westeros so that big problem is solved as soon as victarion's plot is done (which can be in 1 chap). The rest of what happens until she returns to mereen seems useless, but I think you are missing a point.

 

The lanisters/tyrell are imploding. If the faith declares for aegon (only viable option that isn t and adulterer or fruit of incest) or simply against them kings landing people might riot and kill/expell them from the city. If aegon conquers KL what is danny going to conquer? If we have starks in winterfell and sansa in a position of power in the vale they will unite quite fast for whatever reason, the riverlands are in tormoil that could be solved in the brienne/jamie chapters killing freys and rescuing hostages, dorne and kings landing are under a targ, caslteryrock and the highgardens are either ownerless or extremely weak...

There aren t any more schemes in court to play. When danny gets to westeros every faction seems to be decided and we will either have batles or peace treaties... I simply can t imagine a grand conquest with the bad guys already defeated and the good guys looking for peace and aliances to fight the others. To me aegon must be doing danny's initial conquest idea...

Just like the fight against the others, when we have a stark as comanders in the north it is a matter of alliances, dealling with some breach at the wall and final battle... To me what might fuck things up are the euron, the maesters and the faceless men because I have no idea what they are planning!!!

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Marg still has to have her trial.  Cersei has to have her trial.  Presumably Marg will lose and Cersei will win and remain in power.  Then we have to have Arianne and Aegon hooking up.  Aegon, presumably will fight Cersei and take over KL.  That's going to be a lot of chapters. Then we have whatever Euron is doing. More chapters.  Sam and Gilly.  More chapters.

And that is all on top of Dany getting her ass to Westeros, Tyrion getting to Westeros and Arya getting to Westeros.  Arya could conceivably get to Westeros in the chapter after Mercy.  But Tyrion is giong to take some chapters and Dany will take many chapters.  And then we have to have Aegon and Dany conflict.  

Sansa is still in the Vale, it will take at least a handful of chapters for that to change.  So more waiting.  We haven't even had the battle of ice yet, let alone the battle for Winterfell.  That is more chapters.  

Certainly a perfectly balanced story and set of events could allow all of this to happen in two more books. But, me, I don't think George is going to get the stars to align like that.

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19 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Marg still has to have her trial.  Cersei has to have her trial.  Presumably Marg will lose and Cersei will win and remain in power.  Then we have to have Arianne and Aegon hooking up.  Aegon, presumably will fight Cersei and take over KL.  That's going to be a lot of chapters. Then we have whatever Euron is doing. More chapters.  Sam and Gilly.  More chapters.

And that is all on top of Dany getting her ass to Westeros, Tyrion getting to Westeros and Arya getting to Westeros.  Arya could conceivably get to Westeros in the chapter after Mercy.  But Tyrion is giong to take some chapters and Dany will take many chapters.  And then we have to have Aegon and Dany conflict.  

Sansa is still in the Vale, it will take at least a handful of chapters for that to change.  So more waiting.  We haven't even had the battle of ice yet, let alone the battle for Winterfell.  That is more chapters.  

Certainly a perfectly balanced story and set of events could allow all of this to happen in two more books. But, me, I don't think George is going to get the stars to align like that.

I really doubt there will be a batle for KL. If either queen dies the aliance tyrell/lannister is over. If we add a scheming varys and an angry faith I don t see KL standing... There are too many obstacles for the lannisters to remain their throne... and it would be original to have the smallpeople overthrow cercei... I hope that in the ariane chapters they hook up and in connington chapters they conquer stuff ending in KL. It is entirelly possible to have KL falling in this book.

 

Danny and tyrion are going to westeros together in victarion's fleet. The doubt is if they do anything useful while still in mereen and wherever danny goes... I see in the worst scenario them leaving by the end of the book, the question is if they forge some aliance or already have an invavion plan (imagine if the next book starts with danny taking casterly rock...). And danny and aegon fight will either be a mariage thing, offer of dragons or a big battle. None of them will take a lot of chaps if we have 2/3 povs in each side of the conflict.

 

Honestly, I think sansa will be the lady of the vale and litlefinger will die. Littlefinger can die at any moment as long as someone in the vale finds out what he did to lysa or sansa what he did to her father. Its hard to predict how long it will take because both things will happen because of something unpredictable.

 

Do you really think we will read about a battle of ice? if it happens our only povs with stannis will flee... At most we will read about asha saving theon and going somewhere. It will happen in theon2 or asha1... However I really doubt jon plot will evolve as it must. During his first chapters there are a lot of thing he should learn in a dreamstate from bran... like warging and how to defeat the others. Then we have his heritage plot and howland reed and both things have to happen in the next 1.5books! Not to mention dealing with the boltons, the watch, the northners, the wildlings... The way I see it jon and danny have a lot to do compared to everyone else. Danny has to walk a lot of miles to walk and jon has a lot of miles of personal growth to go through.

Sam and euron I don t comment because anything can happen. I wouldn t even be impressed if euron transforms into a kraken and decides to travel through the see...

 

And I agre with you. If WoW is as good as the clash of kings then we can end the story in 2 books. If grrm continues with the endless and pointless plots then I think we need 4 or 5. He just needs to create a new plot for euron with information from oldtown and stannis and we have a much bigger story...

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I guess the first problem, though, is whether we'll ever see TWOW at all.

I mean, every time he posts on his Not A Blog he seems to have some new commitment... I wonder how much progress he's making.

As of course, it's his life, he can do whatever he wants with it, but still :'(

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