Beedhrom

And: I just wonder if the announcement from Not a Blog found here, which mentioned: "Sansa, Sam, Aeron Damphair, Arianne, and Brienne have no chapters in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Several of those characters had chapters written, completed, and polished that have been moved into THE WINDS OF WINTER." might lend itself to the notion that instead of condensing two and a half books worth of material into two books, it might be something more like putting two and 2 2/3 books into three books?

This is making me structurally rethink some things and it casts a new light on some others. If you look at where this Ur-AGoT (as in Ur-Hamlet) ends, it's roughly 705 pages into ASoS. So, structurally - and of course I am reaching, projecting, and alowing all of the changes GRRM has made in the interim - the last 420 pages of ASoS would have been in an Ur-ADwD, along with AFfC and the the present incarnation of ADwD. I think if we really only did have three books, and only two of them, we would see the material in AFfC as part of proper place - not a novel, but a chunk of story (and, unfortunately, only half of that chunk). Rather, its part of a second "meta-book," which includes everything from the last 3rd or so of ASoS and all the way to the end of ADwD, with some chapters in ADwD and AfFC occurring simultaneously. I think also what is happening here, is that we will end up with 8 books - that like A Game of Thrones, GRRM will realize that once he has finished a book's worth of material for TWoW, he will realize he's less than halfway done and have to add one more book.