Roughspun

Hooray for e-books – I’m certainly going to try to move the battles back into aDwD. Combining aFfC and aDwD in an e-book was pretty nice.

Yes, it’s quite possible that the future will continue the capitalist world-view and confound productivity with artistic merit.

I really like the repeated confirmation that he intends to finish his manuscript first and then discuss with the publishers how to get it into publishable length. I think chopping off two plot arch endings of aDwD wasn’t … the best, and if a repetition can be avoided like this, that’s good. Also, since it was the publishers (editors) who advocated for moving chapters from aDwD to tWoW, they really shouldn’t be surprised to find it starting out at 200 pages longer than intended … As I take it, the final phase of work on aDwD was extremely busy parallel work: approximately, new chapters were written at the same time as chapters were (really really) finalised through the editors. Both editors apparently were closely in the loop about the status and size of the manuscript in the home stretch. I believe, in the case of aDwD, the work left after final delivery of the manuscript was strongly reduced by this, and they apparently/probably had settled on a target manuscript/book size during this final phase, so that the production plans possibly were already prepared ahead of time. By which I mean … not necessarily much. The actual text of tWoW might again be submitted in a very polished or pre-edited state, which the editors probably will already have seen. But, speculatively, the discussion about manuscript size / book length(s) might take some additional time this time round.

I think Helaena was played as autistic.

LOL whatever

They killed the kings. But they did not interrupt the lines of succession, leaving Stannis politically pretty much in the same place as before. The ritual accomplished precisely what it was for, but close to nothing to improve Stannis’ cause. Presumably, a stronger spell could have eradicated all three kingships with lasting effect.

oh by the way – this thread is about whether tWoW should be released in two volumes depending on its length. in this regard, the blog post is relatively informative and easy to understand.

a bit of news in the newest blog post: So, currently it isn’t even over the size limit!

In light of the books so far, agreed. But I wouldn’t be sure that hasn’t changed. I believe it must have been Anne Groell who confirmed in an interview that GRRM insisted on bringing aDwD up to the Ides of Marsh, to have a climax to cap off that story line. He pushed back on breaking the book off at a random point even then, but wasn’t able to get the battles in. Obviously this is speculation, but I can imagine GRRM not wanting to keep on fractally splitting the planned remaining plot into more and more books. Every publication sets him back months on writing. I think there’s a possibility that he wants to hit the climactic plot points he intends for tWoW. If tWoW falls apart into two novels written consecutively (i.e. not volumes finished concurrently), then chances of aDoS making it diminish drastically.

It’s a bit frustrating that the mode of publication of these books is still dictated by print. E-books are not limited with regard to size. FfC and DwD can easily be combined into a single ebook, and the end of DwD would not have needed to be trimmed in an ebook.

I think it’s quite possible that Euron had someone decipher the Valyrian glyphs on the horn. Besides, it almost sounds as if Moqorro doesn’t translate all that is written on the horn. It might just not be mentioned, though.

From the Victarion chapter previously read by GRRM we know that he has already given the order to blow the horn. So why do you think he won’t risk it?

It’s not a question of patience. To transcribe a live reading, you’d have to be able to write shorthand. Apparently, there was no one who did at any of the readings. The Victarion chapter was transcribed from a video recording of the reading. No recordings of the other readings exist (as far as I know).

@Solstice: Well, strictly speaking, there is no outright or definite confirmation that the shadowbabies are a form of shadowbinding (if I’m not entirely mistaken). It’s just very, very probable.

Mind quoting these?