GRRM is tweaking sample chapters. Desired/feared changes?

[The Winged Griffin]

In all honesty, I feel like all the sample chapters, save for the battle chapters like Barristan I, will have to be trimmed or go through severe cuts if the story of TWOW is to fit in one single book. Either that, or TWOW is released in two books, which I would absolutely love, but which doesn't seem to be the road George is taking.

We know from George's last update that he has been recently revising some sample chapters, one of them most likely being Mercy (is this chapter cursed? It seems like the 100th rewrite he's done on this chapter). Also, the fact that he has mentioned Arya quite a few times over the past year seems to indicate that in addition to revising the Mercy chapter, he has also probably worked on the few Braavos chapters after Mercy. And he has reportedly sent a bunch of TWOW Arya chapters to the guy who was hired to paint the map of Braavos in The Lands of Ice and Fire, so it seems that he is (or perhaps was) going through a severe change in Arya's story, if it required him to rewrite and revise those chapters for such a long time.

On 1/3/2021 at 3:03 PM, Loras said:

There is another naval battle to come though between the Iron Fleet and the Volantene fleet too.  But you are right, it’s tricky to predict when his death is going to come - but likely that it will.

I don't believe there will actually be a battle between the Volantene fleet and the Iron Fleet. It would feel preety redundant, like some sort of a second Battle of Fire. It seems extremely likely that the slaves (which represent a majority of the force Volantis sent) will revolt, and that the fleet will almost entirely turn to Dany's side unscathed. Heck, for all we know, they already revolted along the way and when everyone expects the Volantene fleet to be the final nail in the coffin for Daenerys's forces, it will turn out to be their unexpected rescue. Perhaps it could happen in a somewhat similar way as in the show : Daenerys (which I expect will have been back from the Dothraki Sea by that time) burns only one or two ships to incite surrender or revolt in the rest of the fleet, so that she gets 300+ ships almost effortlessly.