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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 4042484" data-attributes="member: 20741">No. He said that he wasn't done and that was the problem. I think you are confusing the decision "cut the book in two" with the state of the manuscript at the time that decision was made.GRRM explained to a group of us in Toronto in January 2006 the following:AFFC was originally conceived as a novel about the length of Storm of Swords. The hardcover version of SoS was about 975 pages long.As he was writing and the manuscript page count passed about 100 pages over that which Storm of Swords was when that book was finished - and AFFC was STILL hundreds of pages shy of being close to "done" as GRRM had conceived it, he faced a choice.The problem was that the paperpack version of Storm of Swords pushed the technology of paperback book binding in North America and in the UK to its limit. Indeed, in some European countries, his local publishers had released Storm of Swords in two separate volumes, not in one, as its length had pushed the physical limits of their binding machines to the max. So at 1100 pages in hardcover, AFFC would "break the paperback press". And he thought he would go 300 or 400 pages more beyond this page count at least.  1100 hardcover pages was a maybe to his publishers at Bantam/Spectra; 1500 or 1600 hardcover pages was a non-starter.So GRRM faced a choice: cut chapters, or cut the book in half. GRRM said the choice was his and he elected to cut the book in two.  He reorganized his manuscript and began to write and adjust some of the Southern chapters so that the book had a clear beginning and an end. AFFC was then released in November 2005.He then proceeded to write that 400 or more pages he needed for his Book of the North and East - and then added some more and tweaked some more. That's where he is right now and where, it appears, that GRRM is still - and about 2 or 3 months shy of finishing off his work on that part of the manuscript if the publisher is to be believed. So he was not finished when AFFC was released - he was 400 or more pages away from complete. About half done with ADWD.In the end, it means that instead of one Storm of Swords length novel (what AFFC was supposed to be), we are getting a "Clash of Kings" length novel (AFFC) and a "Game of Thrones" length novel (ADWD's reported length) instead.</blockquote>

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