The Winds of Winter: The Latest Info (updated 10 July 2022)

[Cas Stark]

I also thought Feast and Dance were much, much inferior to the first three books.  Yes, there is still beautiful writing in both books and great plot and characters, but overall, they're both hugely over-written, too much pointless detail, too many new, lesser characters and way too much spinning out of the story and slowing it down to a snails pace.

I think the issue with GOT was not so much that the show itself--writing/consulting--was taking up all of GRRM time, but that getting the huge $$ plus becoming super famous, meant that he became distracted.  Distracted by now being able to fund a lot of side projects, distracted by the fame, distracted by the lure of more TV/film projects. Also, distracted by the huge upsurge in interest in the stories, where before the fandom was typical fantasy geeks, now tens? maybe hundreds of thousands of people were engaged in the minutia, and that also was a distraction for GRRM.  It has ended up having been really a worst case scenario.

We're getting toward the tail end of summer, and soon it will be another year without Winds.  

 

Edited August 10 by Cas Stark

[csuszka1948]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I also thought Feast and Dance were much, much inferior to the first three books.  Yes, there is still beautiful writing in both books and great plot and characters, but overall, they're both hugely over-written, too much pointless detail, too many new, lesser characters and way too much spinning out of the story and slowing it down to a snails pace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly, I think the problems from FeastDance came from the fact that GRRM originally intended a 5-year gap between the 3th and 4th book - because he wanted to tell a coming-of-age story besides the regular fantasy stuff - but later scrapped it.

"NG: Three more volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire wait to be written. What shape do you expect them to take, and are their titles finalized as yet?

GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better." - 2000

He initially intended Dany to get to Westeros in the 4th book, but but without the gap he couldn't move her out of Meereen quickly (since after the catastrophe of Astapor she decided to stay), so had to invent an entire Essosi plotline (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Volantis etc.) and new characters for a Southern plotline (Aegon, Euron Crow's Eye, Arianne) while she is away, plus chapters for the main characters to go through a ruling (Jon, Cersei, Dany), traveling (Tyrion, Jaime, Brienne, Sam) or training (Arya, Sansa, Bran) arc.

The Northern plotline from ADWD was great, but the rest of it simply didn't have so many new engaging characters and the plot has gotten too complicated.

Edited August 10 by csuszka1948

[Cas Stark]

Oh yeah, I've said for years he should never have scrapped the gap.  Yes, it worked better for some arcs than for others, but considering he gave a almost the entire back story of Westeros and the various houses in the first 150 pages of GOT, I'm sure with some discipline and creativity he could have easily made the gap work.  That would have led to two much better books and possibly he and we would not now be stuck in Winds purgatory.

[Summerland]

I want much more than a "steady progress". I want an explanation, detailed. 

"A Dream of Winter" is what this book should be called.