what timeframe wil TWoW cover?

[Guardian of the Lhazareen]

gut feeling 2 years, I think it will be a longun

[Ser Alasdair the Bard]

Ok so the book lengths in original hardback (US Edition) publications (much bigger page) were according to wikipedia (my rounding up or down to nearest 50 pages) are 700, 950, 1000, 750, 1050. Now looking at that and from the way I see the first book, GRRM managed to fit between 6 months and 18 months in 700 pages for aGoT. Now going on what I have seen in media and my current estimates tWoW will be a mammoth book between 1200 and 1600 pages, hard back (US Edition). This being the case, if the book took say 700 pages to tie up all of the stories so that they are all vaguely parallel and maybe progress the book 6 months we would have somewhere between 500 and 900 pages left. I think then about 500 pages will progress the story another 6 months and then if there is a remainder that will be used to progress it a further 6 months, giving a grand total of 1 year, 6 months progress from lets say the stabbing of Jon Snow. Ok now we have that settles, we are now (forgive me if I am wrong) about 1.5-3 years into winter (I have no citation to prove this though I do seem to remember it being in the books as well as in the series that it was announced by the citadel). This being so if we forecast aDoS to be either one 1000-1500 page book or up to two 900-1000 page books (not split but two separate books) this could potentially have us somewhere between 5 and 8 years of winter from its official start earlier on in the series, until its end in aDoS (or aDos and one other book). This being said that would leave between 4 and 5.5 years of story (added half a year for the end of winter, start of next summer and end of series prologue etc). So working with this I am going to say that even after my speculation my bet is we see 1.5 years in tWoW, 2 years in book 7 and 2.5 years in aDoS (now book 8).

So now to a timeline. Seeing as we have 5 years and 6 months of story left by my reckoning I would say that of the 1 year and 6 months that occur in tWoW we will see Arya return about halfway through the book, Sam will be a very speedily taught but now fully qualified maester by the end of the book (he is meant to be extremely bookish, enjoying them while many maesters have little choice [youngest sons and what-not], he is driven, he is clever and he has a timeline of his own so he better be quick), Cersei will either be dead or, mad and at Casterly Rock waiting to be killed by Jaime (sorry I may be putting bits of my theories in :P ), Tommen will be king with Margaery as the "younger and more beautiful queen" by about 1000 pages into the book and then he will be dead by say the end of the book, like his big brother and Myrcella will have been killed in Dorne (valonqar prophecy, though she will have been married at this point so as to bring Dorne into the war fully), Aegon, meh I don't care, someone else can deal with his theories, Dany is too hard to tell, Jon the same though I reckon he will have been revived and be well, and have been revealed R+L=J by halfway through or 6 months of time, either one... and there as so many characters so I will leave the rest to you guys :P

I hope this MASSSIVE post will help, please feel free to add, chop, criticize but do so in a constructive and pleasant manner.Saying that, if I get directed to some other forum with a bunch of people like I have before (cough, the heretic forums) I will not be best pleased, they are avid fans with clever ideas, but they dismiss other peoples good ideas to quickly and just push a link in your face and say "you are wrong, be educated". This is not what I want, what I want is a structured argument, here in the intended forum, in the present showing original, or cited but old ideas.

Thanks for reading

:)

[aryagonnakill]

Since GRRM seems to be good at making travel times realistic then Winds will probably have to be at least a year and a half if not two, two and a half.

[Esa1996]

If Others move past the Wall, the the Wall will become the most useless construction in human history. It was built for event that happens only once in 8000 years and when it finally happens it doesn't work :shocked: ?

If the wall doesn't fall the whole "Other" plot line will be extremely boring. Just think of the awesomeness when the remnants of armies are running south with people disappearing every day and night and every now and then they run into wights or Others. Would make a good horror movie. I really hope GRRM manages to really make it scary.