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A Song of Ice and Fire -- **Unmarked Spoilers For All Books including ADWD**

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C

Chris R

Member
The D&e stories are great for someone who loves asoiaf but hasn't read them yet. It's nice to see more of the world in "peace" times
 
J

jett

D-Member
Chris R said:
The D&e stories are great for someone who loves asoiaf but hasn't read them yet. It's nice to see more of the world in "peace" times
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Speaking of which, I just received the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms book. Very nice black and white illustrations in there. What peeves me though is that the book's cover is blank when you remove the paper cover. I don't really care for those, but I don't really for having a book without a cover of any kind either. :p
 
I

Incandenza

Banned
I dunno if anyone else has been paying attention to GRRM's latest master stroke in dashed hopes, but it's excellent. Yesterday he responded to a comment on NotABlog regarding progress on TWOW, during which he mentioned he was planning on making a year end post the next day (i.e. today). Queue fandom explosion as people anticipate an update about the book.

And then today...

Sometimes I hate Live Journal.

I've been working all day on a new post, a long long long look back on the year that is ending, and all the things that happened in it, the good and the bad.

I know, I know. I should have broken it up. Made it three posts, or four.

But I didn't, and somehow I lost it.
Click to expand...

Fucking perfectly executed.
 
T

Tubie

Member
Y

You Know Nothing

Member
Incandenza said:
I dunno if anyone else has been paying attention to GRRM's latest master stroke in dashed hopes, but it's excellent. Yesterday he responded to a comment on NotABlog regarding progress on TWOW, during which he mentioned he was planning on making a year end post the next day (i.e. today). Queue fandom explosion as people anticipate an update about the book.

And then today...

Fucking perfectly executed.
Click to expand...

This is hilarious.

He is becoming the troll he was meant to be.
 
bengraven

bengraven

Member
Incandenza said:
I dunno if anyone else has been paying attention to GRRM's latest master stroke in dashed hopes, but it's excellent. Yesterday he responded to a comment on NotABlog regarding progress on TWOW, during which he mentioned he was planning on making a year end post the next day (i.e. today). Queue fandom explosion as people anticipate an update about the book.

And then today...



Fucking perfectly executed.
Click to expand...

Why would he troll people? Seriously, he said he was going to make a year's end post, maybe talk about his progress in Winds (he never promised anything). But seriously, he has zero reason or need to troll people at all. He's a professional adult, he probably doesn't even think of these concepts.
 
Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Haven't caught up with released chapters of TWoW, but just found out that Stannis

TWoW minor spoilers
entrusted the important task of travelling with the Iron Bank representative and getting sell swords to a queen's man. That won't bite him in the ass >_>
 
B

Basileus777

Member
bengraven said:
Why would he troll people? Seriously, he said he was going to make a year's end post, maybe talk about his progress in Winds (he never promised anything). But seriously, he has zero reason or need to troll people at all. He's a professional adult, he probably doesn't even think of these concepts.
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Maybe he has a sense of humor.
 
I

Incandenza

Banned
bengraven said:
Why would he troll people? Seriously, he said he was going to make a year's end post, maybe talk about his progress in Winds (he never promised anything). But seriously, he has zero reason or need to troll people at all. He's a professional adult, he probably doesn't even think of these concepts.
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Oh, I'm not saying he's doing it intentionally.
 
D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
jett said:
CBHdYB8UgAAt4hD.jpg


http://www.amazon.com/dp/1101965487/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Has anyone seen this in the wild? I'm interested in getting a physical collection of the books (I've read them digitally), but it seems like they're tiny in size, unless I'm misreading the product description.
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I bought that set for my Mom who just got into the TV show for Christmas. The text is VERY tiny.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Yea the blog thing...Martin isn't trolling, he might not even know what that is. But for the first time I'm not feeling confident about TWOW at all. Perhaps I should wait on his mini update before giving up but something feels off. He sounds like he's hiding bad news. Which blows my mind given how much free time he had this year; he's been home without events since late August.

He said he wanted to get the book out before S6. Given his recent refusal to give deadlines or predictions I assumed that was a realistic goal, something he may not make but something that suggested he was progressing well and continuing to do so. Now I don't know. He's said he has rewritten far less than the last two books, he has had more time to write than he did during Dance's final couple years so what's wrong? This book has almost taken as long as Dance.

Bottom line: if he doesn't drastically change his priorities he won't finish the series anytime soon, if he finishes it at all. It's clear he is not capable of attending multiple cons a year and writing while he's home for a month or two before leaving again. Something has to give.
 
J

jett

D-Member
PhoenixDark said:
Yea the blog thing...Martin isn't trolling, he might not even know what that is. But for the first time I'm not feeling confident about TWOW at all. Perhaps I should wait on his mini update before giving up but something feels off. He sounds like he's hiding bad news. Which blows my mind given how much free time he had this year; he's been home without events since late August.

He said he wanted to get the book out before S6. Given his recent refusal to give deadlines or predictions I assumed that was a realistic goal, something he may not make but something that suggested he was progressing well and continuing to do so. Now I don't know. He's said he has rewritten far less than the last two books, he has had more time to write than he did during Dance's final couple years so what's wrong? This book has almost taken as long as Dance.

Bottom line: if he doesn't drastically change his priorities he won't finish the series anytime soon, if he finishes it at all. It's clear he is not capable of attending multiple cons a year and writing while he's home for a month or two before leaving again. Something has to give.
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I think it's best to accept he will never finish the series.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
Getting the book before the next season never felt realistic. It sounded like a soft goal that GRRM wasn't committed to and thus would never happen.
 
H

hythloday

Member
PhoenixDark said:
Bottom line: if he doesn't drastically change his priorities he won't finish the series anytime soon, if he finishes it at all. It's clear he is not capable of attending multiple cons a year and writing while he's home for a month or two before leaving again. Something has to give.
Click to expand...

Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
I just assume it's never coming out, and if it ever does, well that will be a happy surprise.
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I wouldn't say I think Winds is never coming out, but it's far enough away that I've decided to just not worry about it anymore. Somewhere I read (probably on the Not A Blog or on GAF) GRRM said was really into his writing when Dance came out, but he stopped to do all the promotional touring and take a long break, and I think taking those months off really ruined his momentum.

I'll be ecstatic when a release date is announced but being antsy and upset about it is wasting my time when there's lots of other authors whose work I can read.
 
ToyMachine228

ToyMachine228

Member
Throw me in the "GRRM is trolling" camp after this last "year end" blog post debacle. I love aSoIaF, I think GRRM is a very intelligent man, all that. But at this point I really don't think he's profoundly motivated and I think he's playing with us at times. I think he does believe he will finish the series but I don't think he's putting any pressure on himself whatsoever to do so. I really think he's more interested in football than writing right now.
 
R

RedShift

Member
Seeing as he's now rewriting a shorter version of the post in chunks I don't think he's trolling. Don't think there's a TWOW update yet, but there was this

GRRM said:
I did a lot of travelling last year. Probably too much. You don't have to chide me about that. I know, believe me, I know. I am trying to cut down on travel this year and in subsequent years, at least until Ice & Fire is done.

But it's a struggle. I love travel -- not the flying, but being there, seeing other parts of the world, meeting my readers. As a kid, I never went anywhere at all except in my imagination, so now, when I have the means, travel is hard to resist. It's a big wonderful world.

Also, I am not getting any younger (some of you love to remind me of that). Travel is fun, but it can also be taxing. I am all too aware that if I don't take some of these trips now, age and health may preclude my ever taking them. Who knows what awaits me (or you, or you, or you) five years or ten years down the road?
Click to expand...
 
bengraven

bengraven

Member
So far five or six very long blog posts are up all published today.

If these are the short version of his long one, my god.

Zero on ICE and FIRE except a bit of talk about the Emmy.
 
I

Incandenza

Banned
Well he's written all the sections leading up to the one we actually want, which means we can expect the final section sometime in 2017.
 
A

adamsappel

Member
RedShift said:
Seeing as he's now rewriting a shorter version of the post in chunks I don't think he's trolling. Don't think there's a TWOW update yet, but there was this
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Take your vacations, George. Watch your football games. You've earned them. I don't blame him one bit. Writing is hard, and I imagine even moreso when there's a slavering audience howling for more, while also calling you fat and lazy and complaining that your earlier stuff was better.
 
T

Tubie

Member
I will both laugh and cry if he ends up not even mentioning Winds at all and these are all the posts we're gonna get.
 
G

GSR

Member
Well, there it is:

You wanted an update. Here's the update. You won't like it.

THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished.

Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You're disappointed, and you're not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, "I have completed and delivered THE WINDS OF WINTER" on or before the last day of 2015.

But the book's not done.
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I do recommend reading the whole thing; while it's true the radio silence until now has been frustrating, he's honestly pretty open about what happened in this post, just after the fact.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
And the other shoe drops:
Nor is it likely to be finished tomorrow, or next week. Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. (Those 'no pages done' reports were insane, the usual garbage internet journalism that I have learned to despise). But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course... but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures.
I suppose I could just say, "Sorry, boys and girls, still writing," and leave it at that. "It will be done when it's done." Which is what I have been doing, more or less, since... well, forever. But with season 6 of GAME OF THRONES approaching, and so many requests for information boiling up, I am going to break my own rules and say a little more, since it would appear that hundreds of my readers, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, are very concerned about this question of 'spoilers" and the show catching up, revealing things not yet revealed in the books, etc.

My publishers and I have been cognizant of these concerns, of course. We discussed some of them last spring, as the fifth season of the HBO series was winding down, and came up with a plan. We all wanted book six of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE to come out before season six of the HBO show aired. Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant THE WINDS OF WINTER had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October. That seemed very do-able to me... in May. So there was the first deadline: Halloween.

Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s. And as spring turned to summer, I was having more bad days than good ones. Around about August, I had to face facts: I was not going to be done by Halloween. I cannot tell you how deeply that realization depressed me.
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But I won't make excuses. There are no excuses. No one else is to blame. Not my editors and publishers, not HBO, not David & Dan. It's on me. I tried, and I am still trying. I worked on the book a couple of days ago, revising a Theon chapter and adding some new material, and I will writing on it again tomorrow. But no, I can't tell you when it will be done, or when it will be published. Best guess, based on our previous conversations, is that Bantam (and presumably my British publisher as well) can have the hardcover out within three months of delivery, if their schedules permit. But when delivery will be, I can't say. I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out.
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So we're not getting it in the first half of 2016 for certain. I suppose now we can start rooting for a Fall release.
 
U

ubiblu

Member
Basileus777 said:
And the other shoe drops:
So we're not getting it in the first half of 2016 for certain. I suppose now we can start rooting for a Fall release.
Click to expand...

Yeah, all signs point to a 2016 release date, which is basically what most of us skeptics had hoped at worst anyway.
 
B

Brakke

Banned
Doesn't GAF do new threads when they get to 400 pages? What's our subtitle for the next one? "A Time For Waiting"?

ubiblu said:
Yeah, all signs point to a 2016 release date, which is basically what most of us skeptics had hoped at worst anyway.
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What "signs"?
 
S

Steelyuhas

Member
Brakke said:
What "signs"?
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George is directly saying it was a serious goal to have the book published this spring, with the final deadline to make that happen being just a few days ago. Although he's missed that, I think it's pretty fair to say there's at least a solid likelihood that it gets published sometime later in the year.
 
M

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
It's weird how he talks about S6 maybe spoiling the books because it catches up. I thought S5 was already there, which is why I didn't watch S5...

(And no, I didn't read past the "Stop reading if you aren't caught up" warning, heh.)
 
B

Basileus777

Member
Steelyuhas said:
George is directly saying it was a serious goal to have the book published this spring, with the final deadline to make that happen being just a few days ago. Although he's missed that, I think it's pretty fair to say there's at least a solid likelihood that it gets published sometime later in the year.
Click to expand...

He also wrote a long section about how he's pretty much given up on even attempting to meet deadlines. According to him there are months of writing left in the best case scenario (which won't happen and he basically says so) and after that it will take the publisher 3 months to get it out. It might come out this year, but the tone and wording used in that blog post doesn't make me very confident in it.

Morrigan Stark said:
It's weird how he talks about S6 maybe spoiling the books because it catches up. I thought S5 was already there, which is why I didn't watch S5...

(And no, I didn't read past the "Stop reading if you aren't caught up" warning, heh.)
Click to expand...
The real insanity will come when we don't know what is a real spoiler and what is just the show rewriting things.
 
G

GasProblem

Member
ubiblu said:
Yeah, all signs point to a 2016 release date, which is basically what most of us skeptics had hoped at worst anyway.
Click to expand...

"But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well."

Doesn't really make me confident it'll be released in 2016. Q1 2017 at best.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
Morrigan Stark said:
Aren't we already at this stage? Hell, I thought the "Night's King" thing in S4 was kind of in that territory already, to be honest.
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Yeah, there's been some of that. It'll just get a lot worse when the show is beyond the books in terms of the timeline. And now that's going to happen in a few months.
 
R

RedShift

Member
Sad news.

I'm not planning on watching the show anymore, and I know I won't avoid spoilers completely but I guess from April until the release of ADOS I can't really discuss ASOIAF on the internet anymore.
 
M

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
RedShift said:
Sad news.

I'm not planning on watching the show anymore, and I know I won't avoid spoilers completely but I guess from April until the release of ADOS I can't really discuss ASOIAF on the internet anymore.
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It's not so bad. I've managed to avoid S5 spoilers pretty much completely.
 
R

Randdalf

Member
Basileus777 said:
And the other shoe drops:
So we're not getting it in the first half of 2016 for certain. I suppose now we can start rooting for a Fall release.
Click to expand...

Well not necessarily, if he finishes it in March they can still do their expedited publishing by June, for example. I feel optimistic that we're close to the finish line.
 
Moff

Moff

Member
I am not surprised and at this point I wouldn't even be surprised if TWOW released after the show is finished.
and it doesn't even bother me.
and I am certainly not mad at or disappointed by GRRM, that's just silly. he should do whatever he wants at the pace he wants.
 
P

Pluto

Member
Basileus777 said:
And the other shoe drops:
So we're not getting it in the first half of 2016 for certain. I suppose now we can start rooting for a Fall release.
Click to expand...
Way too optimistic. :(

RedShift said:
I'm not planning on watching the show anymore, ...
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But with all the changes the show makes it's impossible to know what's a spoiler and what isn't and if we don't know it's technically just speculation, the books are still unspoiled.

I guess if something really big happens like Arya assassinating Cersei for example that will most likely be a spoiler but it would also be all over the news and almost impossible to avoid.
 
K

Kinokou

Member
Morrigan Stark said:
It's not so bad. I've managed to avoid S5 spoilers pretty much completely.
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I think I saw one in the other thread :/ And one in the form of a picture on a national newspaper site, followed by the headline "spoilers for agot latest episode inside"...

Hopefully they are too gumbled up and minor to matter in the big picture.
 
R

RedShift

Member
Pluto said:
Way too optimistic. :(


But with all the changes the show makes it's impossible to know what's a spoiler and what isn't and if we don't know it's technically just speculation, the books are still unspoiled.

I guess if something really big happens like Arya assassinating Cersei for example that will most likely be a spoiler but it would also be all over the news and almost impossible to avoid.
Click to expand...

I'm not avoiding the show just to avoid spoilers, it's more that I really though s5 was awful and if I did watch it would just be hate watching.
 
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