reminder: the books were never good. They were good page turners and the story was interesting enough to make you want to see how it ended, but the more you analyze them and think about them, the worse they are.
Game of Thrones was great, imo. Tight and engaging. And Clash of Kings was good too, but a little too bloated. He made a mistake letting the story getting away from him and being forced to split his next book in two. He needed an editor with some power to force him to tighten up the story. Both Storm of Swords and Feast For Crows suffered when a tighter, combined volume would have been better received. I though Dance With Dragons was the best since the first. His biggest problem is just being too in love with his words. He doesn't want to let go of something that may be good on its own, but when added onto the massive narrative is just fat to be trimmed. (same thing happened with Rowling, who by book 4 was big enough to say "no" to her editor, and why Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix were so bloated) That's why he'll never be Tolkein. JRRT had the good sense to keep the Silmarillion in his back pocket, as the place to put all of his other ideas.
Yeah that's true, but I don't think JRRT would have cared either way. He was an old school WWI Brit. Global fame probably would have annoyed him.
I think we all agree that while the books are good, maybe even great, they're not SO GREAT that they should take three decades to finish.
They are having a GoT convention at the end of the month here. Not too many confirmed guests to get excited about. Biggest names are Syrio, Melisandra, and Ramsey. Kinda wanna go and punch Ramsey in the face lol.
Storm of Swords and Game of Thrones were my favorites. I read SoS in about 4 days while at the beach with my family. Overall, I'd say the books are good but the story has become too convoluted and disjointed for them to be considered great.
I would agree with that. #4 is my favorite book because of the Jaime stuff. Tolkien's ability to be succinct with such an epic story is remarkable after you watch someone like Martin take 20 years to write his story.
Pretty sure that it was feast for crows and dance that were supposed to be one book. I remember his blog when he Split them and said they'd be out less than a year apart.
going by memory, he started with a trilogy A Game of Thrones = focus on the war in Westeros between Starks and Lannisters mainly A Dance with Dragons = focus on Danny bringing the war to Westeros to claim the throne The Winds of Winter = focus on the Others bringing the war down south But as he wrote GOT he realized he had a lot more story so the first book ended up being spread out across five books, with book six presumably to be about Danny coming back to Westeros and book seven to be about the Others....But now that I type that it really does seem hard to believe he'd turn his first planned book into five but keep the planned-second book as just one. If it weren't for age and fan-frustration I'd easily buy into the idea that he'd stretch out his original idea for Danny's invasion into three books, and then stretch out the last book into three (making the series an 11-part, 50 year writing project). But nah,surely not. He'd be dead before he finished them anyway. edit: nevermind I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah I think he said he had about 500 pages that were supposed to go on the end of Feast for Crows but he instead moved them over to the beginning of DWD. he figured that was half the book already written so expected to have the second half done in a year. But he ended up re-writing all of those pages and taking 6 years to get it out, and even then he's said that there were two big battles he wanted to include in DWD that he instead will open Winds of Winter with. The man simply needs a proper editor who can tell him no.
Hopefully they're just slapping his name on it to have a big name attached to the project, and he's not all that involved. However that book sounds pretty good. Will check it out.
In his head it was a trilogy. But it took him three books to write the first part of his trilogy. His original plan was to introduce the world and the kids and then have them all seperated across the world in part 1. Then there was going to be a 7 year (I think seven) gap between part 1 & 2 so the kids could be mature for the rest of the story. He wrote himself into too many corners and realized the story wasn't cinched up enough after ASOS that he could skip that far forward. This of course led to the "meereenese knot". His vision of the second part of his story was having the characters establish themselves and then start making they're way back together. But now the problem was he had to figure out a way for the charectors (and dragons) to grow both physically and mentally/emotionally to reunite in westeros and start fighting the walkers. A problem he still hasn't solved and who knows if he will by the end of book 6.
Tolkien covers 10,000 years in 3 sentences and somehow you still follow along perfectly. It's masterful.
Add another project, affirm that his main focus has got to be the books: http://time.com/4791258/game-of-thrones-george-r-r-martin-interview/
Hottake. Regarding future HBO projects, the Dance with dragons will be too expensive to shoot. And already D&E is said to be out. What if they do ancient history? Like before the first men came over. The black stone theory is interesting. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Black_stone
Dunk and Egg would be cool and not overly expensive in terms of cgi. Roberts rebellion would be the best, nit I think it might be to early for a prequel with characters that were already on the show. Needs to be something further back in the past so it seems new.
I went down a rabbit's hole and stumbled upon this: Mashable had a joke story out yesterday, written by "George RR Martin's copy editor" saying that the book is done but he's just too swamped with other stuff to get around to editing it... http://mashable.com/2017/07/16/george-rr-martins-copy-editor-winds-of-winter/#OqC6pV8JQmqV ...which led to some korean news site running the story as though it was legit... http://en.koreaportal.com/articles/...-copyeditor-cannot-edit-yet-delayed-again.htm
Pretty sure Robert's Rebellion has been shot down too. They said since everyone already knows the out come.
Not saying you're wrong but that seems kind of dumb. Everyone knew everything that was going to happen through the first four seasons of the show.
Only the book readers did. Show and book fags know the gist and final outcome of the rebellion. From Martin: By the time I finish writing A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert’s Rebellion. There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know. That’s not a story I want to tell just now; it would feel too much like a twice-told tale.
2018 maybe he says Talking about a history book on Westeros that he's aparrently had time to do while not doing anything else...
I used to worry that he wouldn't live to see the end of the series. Now I'm angry that I've already lived to see the end of the series.
My theory is even if he does finish them they won't be released until after the show ends. Keep that money stream flowing in.
I'm intrigued by the Fire and Blood books but I'll never understand why he keeps working on this superfluous material before finishing the main project.
he's been writing ASOIAF for over two decades and is bored of it zero creative energy and drive for it now, especially given that HBO is telling his story for him
Yep boredom and complacency. Just like the hero he wants to emulate. Cause whenever anyone thinks of JRR Tolkein they think of a slob who couldn't even be counted on to finish his own book series.
telling a version of his story for him... Very sad that he most likely won't finish. Even if the WoW makes it to shelves, will he even attempt a Dream of Spring? no, will def. die before that one is done