George R.R. Martin releases sample chapter of The Winds of Winter (spoiler alert)

NewJeffCT · Dec 30, 2011

Martin has released a sample chapter of the forthcoming book The Winds of Winter, book 6 in A Song of Ice & Fire. As somebody who thought Feast for Crows was "meh" and Dance with Dragons was frustrating at times, though a step up from Crows, this sample chapter is very good...

HUGE SPOILERS at link if you have not read A Dance with Dragons yet.

GRRM - Wild Cards Sample

Also note - this chapter takes place before the end of A Dance with Dragons.

Olgar Shiverstone · Dec 31, 2011

Well, that answers a few questions. Wonder how long he's going to tease us this time?

NewJeffCT · Dec 31, 2011

Olgar Shiverstone said:
Well, that answers a few questions. Wonder how long he's going to tease us this time?

He has supposedly committed to turning out the next two books in a more timely fashion, but who knows what can come up over the next few years?

Game of Thrones, season 2, airs in 2012 (A Clash of Kings)
Game of Thrones seasons 3 & 4 are supposedly going to be filmed together and should encompass A Storm of Swords material, and maybe a bit of A Feast for Crows) That would be 2013 and 2014.

Seasons 5-6 would be Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, airing in 2015 and 2016. Winds of Winter in 2017 and 2018, meaning Martin would need to wrap up books six and seven by 2018, I would think.

Hopefully, HBO doesn't need to put the show on hiatus for a year to allow Martin to catch up (a la Mad Men on AMC)

That's all speculation, though. Everybody thought A Dance with Dragons would come out a year or so after A Feast for Crows, too.

Olgar Shiverstone · Jan 1, 2012

See, that's what I'm afraid of ...

The script work for the HBO show will take up a huge amount of GRRM's time, so I'm not hopeful that promises for speedier publication will be met. ADwD took what, six years, and was better than half written at the start of that time? The distraction of production of GoT for the screen only accounts for some of the later delay, and neither it nor the prior two novels seemed to have improved their editing with the extra time..

Frankly, in my selfish little heart of hearts, I want GRRM to concentrate on scripts for HBO and sub out finishing the series to Brandon Sanderson, who seems to be able to get things done in a timely fashion and write pretty well in another author's voice. It's a shame when a dead author finishes his series ahead of a live one.

NewJeffCT · Jan 1, 2012

Olgar Shiverstone said:
See, that's what I'm afraid of ...

The script work for the HBO show will take up a huge amount of GRRM's time, so I'm not hopeful that promises for speedier publication will be met. ADwD took what, six years, and was better than half written at the start of that time? The distraction of production of GoT for the screen only accounts for some of the later delay, and neither it nor the prior two novels seemed to have improved their editing with the extra time..

Frankly, in my selfish little heart of hearts, I want GRRM to concentrate on scripts for HBO and sub out finishing the series to Brandon Sanderson, who seems to be able to get things done in a timely fashion and write pretty well in another author's voice. It's a shame when a dead author finishes his series ahead of a live one.

well, GRRM only wrote one episode for season 2 (episode 9 - Blackwater) and I think that is the general plan for the show going forward.

He gets writing credits because he wrote the books, but he only actually wrote that one episode in season 2.