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Let me say that I’m all on board with an author taking as long as they need to finish telling the story, and I’m not telling George R.R. Martin to hurry up with The Winds of Winter. However, the latest milestone has me worried.
It turns out that we’ve waited the exact same amount of time for the sixth installment of the A Song of Ice and Fire saga as we had to wait between Books 1 and 5. Yes, it’s taken the exact same 5,543 days that it took to publish Game of Thrones and A Dance with Dragons to get to this point for The Winds of Winter.
There is still no sign that this novel is coming. I know The Folio Society hinted that something exciting was coming after the news of the deluxe edition of Game of Thrones was announced, but I don’t think it’s a publication date.
Back in January, Martin admitted that sometimes he’s not in the mood to write Winds, and I totally get it. There’s so much pressure on you to do something that the inspiration disappears.
But this has me worried about the novel. If we ever get it, I don’t think it’s going to live up to the expectations that people have. I’m worried that it’s going to feel like one of those stories that wasn’t worth the wait, and I don’t think that will have anything to do with Martin.
Sure, it would have started off that way, because there was so much hype for a long time. Martin would offer updates, and just recently, he shared that he had an idea that he loved but couldn’t use, because it didn’t fit the characters that he’d initially created.
Now, it comes down to the TV series, the spinoffs (both in terms of TV and books), and simply fan expectation and theories. I do think Game of Thrones* getting ahead of the books has ruined some of it, because there are going to be some storylines that go the way of the books.
Can we really have Jon Snow dead when it seemed like so much sat on him being a secret Targaryen? That would be the only way to work against the initial part of the show’s storyline, right? Of course, once Jon comes back from the dead, there are other ways to make the story different, especially when it comes to anything to do with Daenerys and Winterfell, but there’s already so much built up and so much expected.
So, I worry. I also worry that there are going to be storylines from the show that are in our heads too much. Okay, so the minute I hear that there’s a publication date for The Winds of Winter, I’ll be doing a re-read of the first five books in A Song of Ice and Fire*. I’ll be doing some deep dives into the book lore, but I’m not the same as everyone else. And I just know there are going to be some show-first fans that get it in their heads that they know what has happened and then affect the fandom’s enjoyment of it.
With all that being said, I want to read The Winds of Winter. I want to see how Martin envisions his story ending, seeing what the Game of Thrones showrunners ignored or overlooked. I just worry about it.
