Only 2 more books?

[Elisabetta Duò]

On 5 agosto 2017 at 2:48 PM, Livesundersink said:

Given how at the end of Dance Jon is still at the wall and is dead/dying, Dany is in the middle of bumf**k essos somewhere and previously had no plans to journey to westeros anytime soon and the lannisters are still in power in on the iron throne and war has come to westeros again the Euron and Faegon causing trouble. With all of this going is it will it be possible to bring the story to an end in just 2 books? even if both Winds and Dream are large volumes like Storm and Dance being 1000 pages each i just can't see the story coming to an end so soon when we have had 5 books building up to this conclusion with things only continuing to get worse for almost everyone.

Does anyone else agree with this?

I agree but I've read somewhere that GRRM said that the last book might be in II volumes as "A Storm of Sword" was, hence the books will be formally two but actually three.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I have a hard time seeing how the story could be completed in only two more books. The pacing of ASOIAF has gotten increasingly slower since AGOT, so while I do expect a lot to happen in TWOW and ADOS, I'm not sure how George will be able to fit in the Battle of Winterfell, the Battle of Meereen, in the Second Dance of the Dragons, the war with the Others, the rebirth of Jon Snow, Daenerys' invasion, the fall of Stannis and the Lannisters, the rise and fall of Euron, the maester conspiracy, and every other minor plot without spilling over into a third book. The fact that there are so many plots to juggle at this point is probably the main reason why TWOW has turned into such a long project. 

[Orphalesion]

On 08/08/2017 at 10:07 PM, Lew Theobald said:

While this, and your other observations, may be true, it only begs the question whether your expectations necessarily apply to novels either.   If a Christian -- or a lapsed Christian vaguely influenced by Christian culture -- does not expect the final absolute defeat of Satan (or whatever human elements he or she thinks Satan or analogous Evil Force metaphorically represents) at any point during his or her life, then he or she will not necessarily have such expectations for the end of a novel either.

Out of curiosity, have you read GRRM's THE ARMAGEDDON RAG?   What sort of defeat did the Forces of Evil suffer in that novel?  

I think the idea that a writer shouldn't introduce major elements into a story and then not do anything with them is pretty universal. And the coming invasion of the Others has been a major element of this story since the prologue of Game of Thrones. Even right now, with all the others storylines that have developed two of the five/six major POV characters are still primarily concerned with the coming of and the defense against the Others and their undead armies.

No I haven't read the Armageddon Rag, and neither has anybody I know, but from what I can tell from reviews online  

Spoiler

Morse failed to bring about Armageddon. Amanda failed to have the singer murdered and instead the final concert (which happened) went over the way it always "should" have concluded. So "evil" was dealt a defeat (no Armageddon for you!) 

and both storylines I can gather from the various summaries came to full fruition, in a pretty clever and sufficiently climactic way.

Also I'm not saying that the Others have to be defeated, they can very well conquer all of Westeros and rid the continent of humanity, all I'm saying is that, by the necessity of the importance the Others and the War for the Dawn have been given throughout the story so far, their invasion has to happen before the story is over. After all the Armageddon Rag didn't end before the West Mesa concert either.

What I'm saying is, no matter the results of the Others invading Westeros, the story can't stop with them still five years away from thinking about maybe, perhaps, possibly breaching the Wall at some point in the future (maybe), while Daenerys still sits in Meereen, trying and failing to pass reforms and thinking about going to Westeros some day. That would be very dissatisfying.  

I pointed out that Satan was dealt defeats in both the Gospels themselves and in the Revelation of John, because Damon_Tor tried to claim that the Satan vs. Jesus  "plot-line" in the Bible was "open ended" or inconclusive by the end of the text, which is simply not the case. No matter the expectation of the reader, at the end of the text Satan has been dumped into the Lake of Fire.

[Victarious2]

I believe three 1500+ manuscript page books will be enough.  So they'll come out to be somewhere between ASOS and ADWD in length.

Book 6 will be about moving all the pieces into place for the end-game.
Book 7 will be Dance 2.0 and the Wall falling at the end.
Book 8 will be The Long Night 2.0 and the aftermath.

If there ever comes a 9th book, it'll be an epilogue, but I hear he's scrapped that idea.

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

On 8/12/2017 at 7:16 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I have a hard time seeing how the story could be completed in only two more books. The pacing of ASOIAF has gotten increasingly slower since AGOT, so while I do expect a lot to happen in TWOW and ADOS, I'm not sure how George will be able to fit in the Battle of Winterfell, the Battle of Meereen, in the Second Dance of the Dragons, the war with the Others, the rebirth of Jon Snow, Daenerys' invasion, the fall of Stannis and the Lannisters, the rise and fall of Euron, the maester conspiracy, and every other minor plot without spilling over into a third book. The fact that there are so many plots to juggle at this point is probably the main reason why TWOW has turned into such a long project. 

You are right. And there's also the main mystery of the Others, what happened with the children of the forest, Asshai and shadow magic, R'hllor, the mystery of Faceless Men that is not a small thing, and also Doom of Valyria and how it plays into the main magic stuff. Some past events, like the supposed kidnapping that lead to rebellion, will require explaining. Also things like Dany's planned overtaking of Westeros is going sideways. The Ursurper is no more, and soon Cersei won't be either. So Dany has lost her main objective for going to Westeros, to avenging her family. Early chapters of TWoW shows a new Dorne storyline. GRRM is probably trying to wrap up everything in two books, hence the delay. Someone said that if WoW had GoT pacing, it would work. I agree. GoT managed to introduce dozens of characters, a whole bunch of realms, magic, history, court intrigues, and all that in less than 1,000 pages. If WoW goes that way, then it would prepare the story for the ultimate conclusion that would come in Dream of Spring. 

[falcotron]

GRRM will finish in two books.

Most of TWOW is the same kind of long travelogues and in-depth political machinations as the last two books, but the epilogue introduces a minor Northern character named Nelson. A recon mission to scout out the dead runs aground on Skagos, and he's the only survivor. But he discovers a strange bottle rolling along the coast. He removes the stopper, smoke pours forth, and a voice speaks to him in a foreign language.

Then, in IDOS, the smoke resolves into the form of a beautiful golden-haired woman, dressed for late spring rather than winter. They're unable to communicate, but after she kisses him he says, "Oh, I wish this spring maiden could speak Common." And then she can. He soon wishes for an end to the threat of the Others, and to the interminable wars wracking the lands, and, with a blink, it is so. But that's not the hard part. The hard part is living with their strange woman Spring who knows nothing of Northern customs—especially when Lord Jon comes over for dinner, and he has to keep Jon from discovering her magical powers and wacky antics. Nelson's best brief Roger Healey learns about Spring, and tries to blackmail Nelson into making her grant his wishes. Jon's advisor, Bran, can never prove to Jon that Nelson is hiding anything, but he never stops trying. Spring's evil sister, also named Spring, shows up to make trouble and try to steal Nelson away. Eventually, Nelson and Spring have to travel to her distant homeland to resolve an accidental threat to Basenji honor that could lead to them invading and destroying Westeros, but that's fixed when he proposes to Spring. Finally, they return to the North, with her now dressed as a perfect Northern lady, and live happily ever after.

Of course this story would probably take about 5 seasons and 139 episodes to adapt for TV, which is why D&D have decided to ignore it and write their own ending.

[the trees have eyes]

On 08/08/2017 at 6:45 PM, YOVMO said:

I have for a long time surmised that the end of ASOIAF will be apocalyptic with the new spring coming about without any humans on Westeros (I believe the FM are plotting to bring down the whole shebang), the dragons and others will neutralize each other and all men must die (literally). I always liked the thought of an epilogue where the flowers are blooming amongst the depopulated world with winter ending and all told from the POV of Jon and Arya who have warged into their wolves before dying.

What would be the point of this story though and how would it satisfy the reader who may well have spent three decades following the characters by the time the tale is done?  And from whose pov is everyone dying bittersweet?

Sounds like a lazy conclusion to avoid having to deal with any kind of resolution for the characters combined with the shock factor ending that seems eternally in vogue in some circles.  Thirty years of writing and everyone dies.  The End.  Really?

[the trees have eyes]

On 06/08/2017 at 3:29 PM, JNR said:

Sure.  If by "worse," you don't mean "less happy for the characters," but "further removed from any kind of logical conclusion."  We are nowhere near a logical conclusion in any subplot.

The only way GRRM could wrap the series in two books would be to accelerate his storytelling so much that it'd resemble what we saw in AGOT.  

Example: in AGOT, Catelyn travels from Winterfell to King's Landing and we don't get a single pitstop chapter, though such a journey should have taken her months.  Boom!  She's there, and the plot rolls forward as a result.

But It's been a long, long time since GRRM wrote this efficiently, and I don't see any sign he's going back to it.  Since AFFC he instead focuses on slooooow transitions, because (a) they let him explore his world in a little more detail and (b) they let his characters muse over various factors, which GRRM sees as fleshing them out as people.

Davos' chapters in ADWD are a good example.  About all he accomplishes, really, is to find out that Rickon is on Skagos.  Somehow, GRRM spends four (!) chapters achieving this tiny feat.  Why?  Well, I think it's because those chapters let GRRM explore both White Harbor (a place his story has never gone before) and Davos.

But that kind of decisionmaking on GRRM's part, if it continues in TWOW and ADOS, is just never going to finish the series in two books.  And he's on record that only he will ever finish the series.  When you consider that he tends to take 1.5 more years for each book than he did for the last, it seems increasingly doubtful that ASOIAF -- if an eight-book saga at least -- will ever be finished.

Yup.  Tyrion in Essos or Brienne in the Riverlands are even better examples of this trend.  The original rot started with Arya's holding pattern over the Riverlands for 2 books long after the story had run out of fuel for more chapters.  If he had that amount of trouble writing Arya into the sequence of events he had planned (which amounted to what really?  Being at hand but not caught up in The Red Wedding) or was that determined to show her experiences and their effect on her then that whole problem is magnified by the introduction of numerous more plot lines and characters.

A troubling parallel for me is RJ's The Wheel of Time.  RJ set out to write a ten book saga, a hugely ambitious undertaking, but although the first few novels moved pretty fast and introduced innumerable characters, nations, lands, politics, enemies and history - really all achieved in the first four - RJ began to slow down.  By the end of book six Rand had consolidated his position and we were ready for the epic confrontation that we had been building to since the start but RJ moved sideways, deciding to show us more and more of the world he had created, each new book taking us somehwere new and needing to flesh out the culture, history and politics of the area and introduce a sub-plot and characters that needed to be wrapped up.  The myriad of characters and sub-plots meant that some of the main characters hardly appeared in the middle section at all.  Sound familiar?

The series ended up being 13 or 14 books, I forget which. Books 7 - 11 are entirely forgettable and merge together in my mind, having no distinct purpose or memorable plot, they just tick off a number of boxes that could have been resolved much more satisfactorily in one book - or left out altogether.  The last three books were intended to be one but sadly RJ was unable to finish the story and Brandon Sanderson was brought in to finish them.  He immediatley said there was too much material for one book and set out to finish in two.  Bizarrely (or commercially) the publishers decided to make it three - even though he was not writing with any natural breaks in mind for this - which largely made the penultimate two books unsatisfactory scene setters with the final book delivering in largely epic style.

I suppose the parallel is that writing a massive epic with a fleshed out world and a myriad of sub plots is almost impossible to keep in check, something GRRM has been painfully aware of for some time.  The good news is that the story was finished in the end and though RJ was adamant for years that only he would finish his magnum opus he relented in the end rather than leave his story incomplete.

[Ser Petyr Parker]

Not to pile on, but I'm going to echo others and say anyone who thinks LotR has a fairy tale ending wasn't paying enough attention.

In fact, if I had to guess, I expect an ending quite similar to LotR. In order to defeat the Others and save humans, a balance will have to be achieved. Less ice means less fire, too, so dragons will disappear for real this time. The last of the giants and children will die out. The seasons will be "normal". Everything will be average: no more big or little people, just the medium-sized ones. No seesawing between ice and fire, winter and summer. Little magic will remain except for lame tricks.

This is honestly where I think things will go, and in fact the best argument I can think of against this ending is that it would be too similar to LotR.

 

As for two more books, I also expect that to become three for similar reasons to the splitting of AFFC and ADWD. Plus I think GRRM knows he won't be a real man until he makes the eight.

[BalerionTheCat]

Once the Long Night has come, the Others are south of the Neck, everything can go very fast. Daenerys has better come fast. I believe the war for the IT is not much relevant. The IT will be destroyed. The plotters will be taken in the middle of their plots. Who stays with the pack and who is alone, friendless. Who will look up from their petty affairs and take care of the big war between Ice and Fire. GRRM may dally one more book, or one and a half if he likes. But the war may finish as fast as Frodo casting the One Ring in Orodruin.

Only two books is enough if GRRM will it.

[falcotron]

7 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

I suppose the parallel is that writing a massive epic with a fleshed out world and a myriad of sub plots is almost impossible to keep in check, something GRRM has been painfully aware of for some time.  The good news is that the story was finished in the end and though RJ was adamant for years that only he would finish his magnum opus he relented in the end rather than leave his story incomplete.

But as I understand it (I stopped reading WoT pretty early on, and never paid that much attention to my friends who love it and want to talk about it, so I could be way off…), Jordan plotted out his whole story in a few thousand pages of notes, Tolkien style, which is why someone else was able to come in and finish it for him.

GRRM—everyone knows his "gardener" metaphor. He hasn't done that, wouldn't want to do that, and probably wouldn't even be good at it if he decided to try. If he dies, there's probably not much more info on what's supposed to happen in ADoS than what he gave D&D a few years ago. And what the characters naturally do in their situations will be different for any other author than for GRRM, so the story won't be ADoS. If we're lucky, it'll be like And Another Thing, which is a perfectly good novel in the spirit of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series with the same characters, but doesn't feel like the actual conclusion to the series, and isn't remotely what DNA would have written if he'd improbably finished The Salmon of Doubt.

[Trigger Warning]

Dance and Feast could have been much shorter, two books of similar size should be enough if we don't meander down too many side plots. 

[the trees have eyes]

6 hours ago, falcotron said:

But as I understand it (I stopped reading WoT pretty early on, and never paid that much attention to my friends who love it and want to talk about it, so I could be way off…), Jordan plotted out his whole story in a few thousand pages of notes, Tolkien style, which is why someone else was able to come in and finish it for him.

GRRM—everyone knows his "gardener" metaphor. He hasn't done that, wouldn't want to do that, and probably wouldn't even be good at it if he decided to try. If he dies, there's probably not much more info on what's supposed to happen in ADoS than what he gave D&D a few years ago. And what the characters naturally do in their situations will be different for any other author than for GRRM, so the story won't be ADoS. If we're lucky, it'll be like And Another Thing, which is a perfectly good novel in the spirit of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series with the same characters, but doesn't feel like the actual conclusion to the series, and isn't remotely what DNA would have written if he'd improbably finished The Salmon of Doubt.

RJ was supposed to be the examplar of the architect / watchmaker master crafter in contrast to GRRM's gardener approach.  All I can say to someone who hasn't read the story the whole way through is that there is a definite break after book 6 where things simply mark time for 4-5 books that is completely at odds with the pace of the earlier novels and it's very hard to keep going as you really aren't expecting much to happen.  In several entire books nothing much does which makes for a very disappointing read.  A multi-volume epic saga is a very hard beast to keep under control, however detailed a planner you are, and when you introduce more world-building and sub-plots and characters it inevitably escapes.  The tale does indeed grow in the telling.

But, yes, RJ was approaching the finale of his story and did have copious notes for someone else to pick up.  In an echo of GRRM he was adamant that it would be one book as there were no natural breaks in the remaining story to package into separate novels.  Brandon Sanderson however thought it needed two and the publishers decided it needed three.  GRRM's "only two more books" feels remarkably similar in that regard.

[falcotron]

20 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

But, yes, RJ was approaching the finale of his story and did have copious notes for someone else to pick up.  In an echo of GRRM he was adamant that it would be one book as there were no natural breaks in the remaining story to package into separate novels.  Brandon Sanderson however thought it needed two and the publishers decided it needed three.  GRRM's "only two more books" feels remarkably similar in that regard.

Having read those books, does it seem plausible to you that if it had been Jordan rather than Sanderson, it actually could have been done in one book? That's not a rhetorical question; as I've never read them, I have no idea, and I'm curious. 

It might be complicated by another fact: GRRM has been convincing Bantam to use smaller and smaller print and margins and more and more pages for each ASoIaF novel so he can call each one a single book (although many of the foreign publishers are splitting them in half), and Jordan might have had the clout and motivation to do the same thing, but Sanderson probably wouldn't. But anyway, that's probably not very relevant here—GRRM can't push too much farther, and if his conclusion is 4000 close-set pages, even he won't get away with calling that two books.

Also, I'm probably just asking this out of pure curiosity rather than any direct relevance. The fact that RJ and GRRM are apparently polar opposites in the architect vs. gardener division probably already tells us it's not worth going too far into the woods on the details of this stuff beyond what you've already said, if we want to draw any conclusions from it.

[snow is the man]

I think it can be done if he stops introducing so many new plots.

[the trees have eyes]

18 hours ago, falcotron said:

Having read those books, does it seem plausible to you that if it had been Jordan rather than Sanderson, it actually could have been done in one book? That's not a rhetorical question; as I've never read them, I have no idea, and I'm curious. 

It might be complicated by another fact: GRRM has been convincing Bantam to use smaller and smaller print and margins and more and more pages for each ASoIaF novel so he can call each one a single book (although many of the foreign publishers are splitting them in half), and Jordan might have had the clout and motivation to do the same thing, but Sanderson probably wouldn't. But anyway, that's probably not very relevant here—GRRM can't push too much farther, and if his conclusion is 4000 close-set pages, even he won't get away with calling that two books.

Also, I'm probably just asking this out of pure curiosity rather than any direct relevance. The fact that RJ and GRRM are apparently polar opposites in the architect vs. gardener division probably already tells us it's not worth going too far into the woods on the details of this stuff beyond what you've already said, if we want to draw any conclusions from it.

It's hard to see how he could have.  The penultimate two books are slow moving and include a lot of repetition that could have been culled quite easily.  This isn't surprising as BS thought he was writing one book that actually became two (where the dividing line was drawn i can't say).  The last book is however a fast moving relentless action spectacular that is a large book in it's own right and there is very little in it that you could remove to fit in an incerdibly distilled synopsis of the previous two books - there are after all plot points and story lines developed or wrapped up in those books.  I think BS was right that it needed two but whether RJ was hellbent on one, possibly to the detriment of his own story, I can't say.  He did on occasion say that he didn't care if they had to type in tiny print or develop a whole new technique of bookbinding to fit in the number of pages that he was planning to write so it doesn't look like he intended to compormise on the story he wanted to tell.  I suspect he would have relented on the number of books rather than cut short the grand culmination to his story and though this is obviously only my opinion I expect GRRM to do the same.

My point is that they might differ in approach but after 20+ years of writing the tale does indeed grow in the telling.  How is it possible for an author not to have a new thought, change his mind or decide to explore in different directions over 20 years?  I mean if we look back 20 years do we really see ourselves as having the same interests and intentions as then?  RJ and GRRM might apply different techniques and approaches to their writing but they both wrestled with the same forces and the same beast: how to keep a huge, sprawling, multi-layered, complex and engaging story on a (relatively) straight road to completion over a third / quarter of their lives.

[YOVMO]

On ‎9‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 6:59 AM, the trees have eyes said:

What would be the point of this story though and how would it satisfy the reader who may well have spent three decades following the characters by the time the tale is done?  And from whose pov is everyone dying bittersweet?

The point of the story would be the same as the point of life...nothing. The idea that there has to be a point is contrary to a lot of what I think George has done. The beauty of his books is that there is an underpinning nihilistic realism.

I can see how it could be unsatisfying, but life often is very unsatisfying. I think that my dream ending could be done very well or very poorly depending on that leads up to it over the course of 2 novels.

For whom would it be bitter sweet? Well for me. 30 years of beloved characters dead, no answers to some long standing questions that I have had for decades all very bitter...but sweet in the sense that the world has been cleansed and is starting a new with hope like after Noah gets off the arc.

On ‎9‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 6:59 AM, the trees have eyes said:

Sounds like a lazy conclusion to avoid having to deal with any kind of resolution for the characters combined with the shock factor ending that seems eternally in vogue in some circles.  Thirty years of writing and everyone dies.  The End.  Really?

I don't think it is lazy. I think that it shows the larger piece of the puzzle....Mike Tyson said it best, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

It isn't shock value either. Not to me at least. There has been all these binary sets ups of Magic Versus Science and Nobility Versus Peasantry and the sort, but in the end there is this doomsday cult that has been playing an increasingly important roll since the first book. It would be ultimately more satisfying than some absurd ending where someone sits the iron throne and there is peace and the force ghosts of Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark look on approvingly as ewoks dance around kings landing. In fact, any actual resolution to the problems that winds up being static is what I would call the most unsatisfying. Instead having a new spring be a literally new spring where flowers are blooming and the whole wheel starts over again would be really terrific to me, very Finnegan's Which begins midsentence and ends, some 900 pages later, in the beginning of the sentence that opens the book. That first word, btw, was riverrun which is, by grrm's own admission, where he gets the name for Riverrun from.

Not a lot of people complaining that Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is lazy and I have no reason to think that GRRM ending this series in a post apocalyptic spring with the world starting over anew would be lazy either.

[falcotron]

5 hours ago, YOVMO said:

In fact, any actual resolution to the problems that winds up being static is what I would call the most unsatisfying

Someone ending up on the Iron Throne isn't necessarily static, or absurdly Disney, or anything like that.

The fact that the world survived its existential threat and was able to recover relatively easily doesn't mean the ending is automatically Aragorn ruling wisely and well for a century. For example, if we see Dany on the throne, determined to push through even more radical reforms than Aegon V, with dragons and a strong royal army to back her up, and we don't know for sure whether that's going to lead to the first steps toward a modern enlightened monarchy or to tyranny under her son or to chaos as her lords are all either too weak or too recalcitrant… that would mean that ultimately, the day-to-day ruling of a kingdom is just as important as surviving the every-8000-years crises, but that would fit the themes of the story pretty well, not sell them out.

And if Dany is bitter over finding Jon, loving him, losing him to death, and having to make a political marriage to produce an heir, that would mean the personal is sometimes just as important as the grand scale, which also fits pretty well. It may be exactly the same kind of bittersweet as LotR, but GRRM has actually used LotR as an example of what he means by bittersweet, so that wouldn't be too surprising.

So GRRM doesn't need to nearly wipe out the world and set it on the long process of rebuilding from a post-apocalyptic wasteland to make the ending satisfying. Not that he couldn't do that and pull it off if he wanted to, just that it's by no means the only thing he could do.

[the trees have eyes]

6 hours ago, YOVMO said:

The point of the story would be the same as the point of life...nothing. The idea that there has to be a point is contrary to a lot of what I think George has done. The beauty of his books is that there is an underpinning nihilistic realism.

I can see how it could be unsatisfying, but life often is very unsatisfying. I think that my dream ending could be done very well or very poorly depending on that leads up to it over the course of 2 novels.

For whom would it be bitter sweet? Well for me. 30 years of beloved characters dead, no answers to some long standing questions that I have had for decades all very bitter...but sweet in the sense that the world has been cleansed and is starting a new with hope like after Noah gets off the arc.

I don't think it is lazy. I think that it shows the larger piece of the puzzle....Mike Tyson said it best, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

It isn't shock value either. Not to me at least. There has been all these binary sets ups of Magic Versus Science and Nobility Versus Peasantry and the sort, but in the end there is this doomsday cult that has been playing an increasingly important roll since the first book. It would be ultimately more satisfying than some absurd ending where someone sits the iron throne and there is peace and the force ghosts of Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark look on approvingly as ewoks dance around kings landing. In fact, any actual resolution to the problems that winds up being static is what I would call the most unsatisfying. Instead having a new spring be a literally new spring where flowers are blooming and the whole wheel starts over again would be really terrific to me, very Finnegan's Which begins midsentence and ends, some 900 pages later, in the beginning of the sentence that opens the book. That first word, btw, was riverrun which is, by grrm's own admission, where he gets the name for Riverrun from.

Not a lot of people complaining that Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is lazy and I have no reason to think that GRRM ending this series in a post apocalyptic spring with the world starting over anew would be lazy either.

A story has a point otherwise it wouldn't get written.  Stories don't just come to be out of the void.  I don't mean it needs a moral or a message, but GRRM has spent years showing his characters's struggles and borrows from Faulkner in saying the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.  That's not the cornerstone or the concern of a nihilist but a realist who wants to show the messy complexity of human existence and the troubles, sometimes nightmarish, that this characters go through.

Each to their own but the idea that an entitre species has to die because God / in story powers decided to press the factory reset button is in no way sweet or satisfactory.  We might tell the story of Noah's ark as a children's story with all the animals going up two by two sung to a nursery rhyme but I fail to see how Noah and a few animals being saved from what is tantamount to a planetary genocide is a good example of how a story should go.

Mike Tyson, though very quotable in this case, was not an author.  Robb Stark got punched in the face at the Red Wedding and a lot of other characters have too but the idea that everyone does takes away from any dramatic tension or realism.

The doomsday cult is of course merely one of many factions or actors in the novels.  There is no reason to give them any more weight in deciding how the story is going than the Dothraki or the Volantese.

And again, each to their own, but the idea that everyone dies is more satisfactory than a peaceful ending seems incomprehensible to me.  GRRM isn't writing Disney and he has said it will be bittersweet so I don't think the peace that may descend on Westeros or Planetos at the end will be the saccharine children's fable you fear.  GRRM is after all concerned in showing us the light and the dark side of human nature and of course human nature doesn't change.

It seems to me the ending you have in mind might suit a novella or a short story in an anthology but not an epic the author has poured so much effort into over the decades.

[The Bard of Banefort]

The one thing that gives me pause is if there is to be an eighth book, why that hasn't been spoken of yet. I suppose George could wait until TWOW is published to announce any changes in the series' length, but that doesn't seem to be his style. I can't imagine how the story could be concluded in only two books, but I would imagine that he would have realized this by now as well after working on TWOW for six years.