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What do you think caused Martin to loose his grip on the material?


Mwm

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A book has been released. When an author releases a book, they do promotion for it. His is quite limited compared to what most authors do -- the days of multi-city book tours stretching a month or two are long gone, for understandable reasons. 

He'll likely be back home after the Thanksgiving holiday, I expect, as he has family out in New Jersey.

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5 hours ago, Quaithe from Asshai said:

I don't know why, but I think you something good is coming soon.

Is it the announcement that he was just joking about Fire & Blood and he'll release the real one soon rather than the cure for insomnia that I am currently battling through?!

If Winds of Winter is akin to this, then I am definitely on the side of maybe it is better if he didn't release it at all.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

A book has been released. When an author releases a book, they do promotion for it. His is quite limited compared to what most authors do -- the days of multi-city book tours stretching a month or two are long gone, for understandable reasons. 

He'll likely be back home after the Thanksgiving holiday, I expect, as he has family out in New Jersey.

It was a joke. I am aware that he won't hide forever. But the timing was funny I thought, since the discussion with the cabin came just yesterday.

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3 minutes ago, T and A said:

If only people would not take every joke that is posted online so hard...It's a joke,  not a dick, for gods sake.

If only that made any sense? It’s not a dick, ok... and that means... what? 

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Come on people let's stay on topic, we're going to get this place locked. If nothing else, I'm just happy GRRM is in good spirits. I hope it keeps his mind from being overloaded. I know it's been 7 years, but I'm sure he's doing his best.

 

The Amazon reviews for Fire and Blood are filled with hate, can we please keep it away from this place.

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13 hours ago, sifth said:

Come on people let's stay on topic, we're going to get this place locked. If nothing else, I'm just happy GRRM is in good spirits. I hope it keeps his mind from being overloaded. I know it's been 7 years, but I'm sure he's doing his best.

 

The Amazon reviews for Fire and Blood are filled with hate, can we please keep it away from this place.

Thank you it some positivity! And I regard to fire and blood, I think people were expecting a novel, even though it was made clear from the outset that fire and blood was not going to be a novel. I read the amazon preview and I enjoyed!

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15 hours ago, sifth said:

Come on people let's stay on topic, we're going to get this place locked. If nothing else, I'm just happy GRRM is in good spirits. I hope it keeps his mind from being overloaded. I know it's been 7 years, but I'm sure he's doing his best.

 

The Amazon reviews for Fire and Blood are filled with hate, can we please keep it away from this place.

I think it is relevant to this topic.  Clearly a lot of work has gone into it and that has clearly slowed down the writing of TWOW.

I'd also say that the subjective views of Fire and Blood, combined with the subjective views on ADWD, don't bode well for TWOW.  To get back to the level of ACOK, let alone the exceptional levels of AGOT and ASOS, there is a long way to go and I fear that we won't even get anywhere near those heights even if the book is ever released.

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2 hours ago, Ser Gareth said:

I think it is relevant to this topic.  Clearly a lot of work has gone into it and that has clearly slowed down the writing of TWOW.

I'd also say that the subjective views of Fire and Blood, combined with the subjective views on ADWD, don't bode well for TWOW.  To get back to the level of ACOK, let alone the exceptional levels of AGOT and ASOS, there is a long way to go and I fear that we won't even get anywhere near those heights even if the book is ever released.

So what's the issue?

Are you saying that he is no longer a good writer?

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23 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

If only that made any sense? It’s not a dick, ok... and that means... what? 

It actually does make sense, just think for a moment :P. But the others are indeed right, lets forget it. I don't want to be responsible for closing this topic.^_^

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9 hours ago, Ser Gareth said:

I think it is relevant to this topic.  Clearly a lot of work has gone into it and that has clearly slowed down the writing of TWOW.

I'd also say that the subjective views of Fire and Blood, combined with the subjective views on ADWD, don't bode well for TWOW.  To get back to the level of ACOK, let alone the exceptional levels of AGOT and ASOS, there is a long way to go and I fear that we won't even get anywhere near those heights even if the book is ever released.

 

I sort of think the answers is both yes and no, when it comes to a lot of work being put into Fire and Blood. I've only read the first 40 pages, but a lot of the stuff in the book is reused assets from the World Book. In fact this is one of the most common complaints I've read in the Amazon reviews. To an extent I can sympathize with those people, who were expecting something more from Fire and Blood and basically only go the extended cut of something they already read. I suppose it's a case of something similar to the Aliens extended cut, metaphor I made in an earlier post.  I've only read the stuff about Aegon's conquest and his war with Dorne, but it's all pretty much word for word, the same as it was in the World book.

 

Another common complaint is, the entire thing reads like a wiki article, which is also true I suppose, but it's still pretty interesting stuff. Shame it wasn't written as an actual novel, or set of short stories though.

 

Long story short, I don't think as much work as you would think was put into this book, unless further down the line of Targ kings I start to see new material that wasn't in the world book.

 

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9 hours ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

So what's the issue?

Are you saying that he is no longer a good writer?

It's not that he's no longer a good writer, I think he stopped writing for the fans of ASOIAF and is now only writing for himself.

Now he has every right to do that.   But the consequence is many fans have noticed and are less than happy with his recent output, and I don't begrudge them that reponse.

 

 

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Quote

 

I'd also say that the subjective views of Fire and Blood, combined with the subjective views on ADWD, don't bode well for TWOW.  To get back to the level of ACOK, let alone the exceptional levels of AGOT and ASOS, there is a long way to go and I fear that we won't even get anywhere near those heights even if the book is ever released.

 

Multiple, large-scale (as in, with thousands of responses) polls have repeatedly placed ADWD as the second-best book in the series, with ACoK consistently coming last, so I'm not sure if that's a useful point of comparison (not that I agree with that, I'd rank AGoT as the best book in the series, followed by ASoS, ADWD, ACoK and AFFC).

The negative reviews of Fire and Blood keeping bringing up The Silmarillion as a point of comparison and suggesting that is also a bad book. But since The Silmarillion is one of the greatest works of the imagination ever published, those reviews aren't very useful.

(due to publisher vagaries, I've been sent a review copy of Fire and Blood which could only be sent after the book's official release date, and still hasn't shown up, c'est la vie)

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On 11/22/2018 at 12:52 PM, sifth said:

Come on people let's stay on topic, we're going to get this place locked. If nothing else, I'm just happy GRRM is in good spirits. I hope it keeps his mind from being overloaded. I know it's been 7 years, but I'm sure he's doing his best.

 

The Amazon reviews for Fire and Blood are filled with hate, can we please keep it away from this place.

Nope the book stinks!!!! It is like there are so many major subplots and meh who cares onto to tom butter bean who kills 6 kings one prince and i dunno kicked a frog for good measure now back to the main characters 

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Multiple, large-scale (as in, with thousands of responses) polls have repeatedly placed ADWD as the second-best book in the series, with ACoK consistently coming last, so I'm not sure if that's a useful point of comparison (not that I agree with that, I'd rank AGoT as the best book in the series, followed by ASoS, ADWD, ACoK and AFFC).

The negative reviews of Fire and Blood keeping bringing up The Silmarillion as a point of comparison and suggesting that is also a bad book. But since The Silmarillion is one of the greatest works of the imagination ever published, those reviews aren't very useful.

(due to publisher vagaries, I've been sent a review copy of Fire and Blood which could only be sent after the book's official release date, and still hasn't shown up, c'est la vie)

With all do respect, you kind of contracted yourself in this post. On one hand you say A Dance with Dragons is a very good reviewed book and should be respected. On the other you compare Fire and Blood with the Silmarillion, a book that does have good reviews vs one that doesn't. I think what's upsetting most fans is the fact that Fire and Blood is reusing a lot of the same assets of The World Book and is written like a wiki article. Like I said in two posts above, it's the literary equivalent of watching an extended cut of a movie. Sure there might be more details about certain things in Fire and Blood, but the fact that they were removed from the World books editing, means most of them probably weren't very important to begin with, much like the added scenes to the extended cut of a movie.

 

I'm currently only on page 40 of Fire and Blood and don't really notice any difference at all between the stuff I'm reading now and the stuff I read in the World book 2 years ago.

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15 minutes ago, sifth said:

With all do respect, you kind of contracted yourself in this post. On one hand you say A Dance with Dragons is a very good reviewed book and should be respected. On the other you compare Fire and Blood with the Silmarillion, a book that does have good reviews vs one that doesn't. I think what's upsetting most fans is the fact that Fire and Blood is reusing a lot of the same assets of The World Book and is written like a wiki article. Like I said in two posts above, it's the literary equivalent of watching an extended cut of a movie. Sure there might be more details about certain things in Fire and Blood, but the fact that they were removed from the World books editing, means most of them probably weren't very important to begin with, much like the added scenes to the extended cut of a movie.

 

I'm currently only on page 40 of Fire and Blood and don't really notice any difference at all between the stuff I'm reading now and the stuff I read in the World book 2 years ago.

I didn't mention reviews for ADWD at all (although they were pretty positive on release, often glossing over the book's weaker aspects). I pointed out that every time the wider fanbase has had a chance to comment on the quality of ADWD, they've unfailingly and consistently put up right up there at the top of the series. As a result, the "popular" consensus is that ADWD is one of the best book in the series. People saying, "the last two books are objectively crap", "the last two books were a letdown and everyone knows it" are therefore presenting their personal opinion and making an appeal to an authority and consensus that not only does not exist, but is constantly contradicting their views.

As I said, I don't agree with ADWD being rated that highly and would rate it third myself, but that's how these things go.

Fire and Blood is the 2012/13 text that both the World Book and the short stories drew upon, and absolutely everyone has made this clear consistently. The Conquest is verbatim pretty much the exact same text, and is then followed why what was previously published as Sons of the Dragon. The new material kicks in in force with the Jaehaerys section. The book is about 75% material never before published anywhere, by my back-of-napkin calculations, but even that material will have been summarised (to some extent) by Ran and Linda for the world book.

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