Five fucking years. Five fucking years. Five fucking years.
A Dance with Dragons was supposed to be half written at the time of the publication of A Feast for Crows. Where the fuck is it?
In those five years, you’ve reached 1311 pages, so you’re writing 130 pages a year, and have reached the point where the next book will be cut in half, a-fucking-gain!
When A Feast for Crows was published, I’d already thrown away the first three books in the anticipation that it would never come out. So I repurchased them, and so now I have the first four books, still, and I guarantee you, Mr. Martin, if they go in the garbage, you will never get another fucking dime of my fucking money, and if that means cancelling HBO, so be it, and if that means never reading another Wild Cards book, so be it, and if that means not arguing with the library when they want to discard the collection that contains Sandkings, well, obviously, so be it.
Pull your fucking typewriter out of your ass and start fucking typing.
My two favourite fantasy authors right now are George RR Martin and Stephen Erikson. Since A Feast for Crows was published in 2005, Erikson has published four novels in his Malazan series, each weighing in at about 890 pages, as well as two novellas. The final novel in the series is due to be published early in 2011.
I have long since lost any hope of ever reading a conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire.
I read A Game of Thrones not long after it came out, I guess. I think it was 1997. I was definitely a freshman in college at the time, so I was eighteen.
I am now THIRTY-ONE.
WHAT THE FUCK. I AM SO ANNOYED. DO IT FOR THE CAPSLOCK, GRRM.
There is such a strong temptation to read these books, and yet I am still horribly conflicted about this.
On the one hand everyone is so engaged that these books must be wonderful. On the other hand, my plans to kidnap Diana Gabaldon and force a conclusion from her shivering fingers already take up so much of my time . . .
I toyed around with some calculations and estimated that George R.R Martin has been writing at an average pace of 179 words per day. Just to put that into perspective I’d like to point out that the OP, when subjected to a word count check, has 181 words.
That old guy’s been working really hard, hasn’t he? I honestly don’t think he gives a shit anymore. Whenever I check his blog he’s always talking about football and other random bullshit.
What’s going to really piss me off is if he dies before finishing the series. Given his average writing pace and the life expectancy statistics, odds are pretty good that’s going to happen.
Indeed. I mean, Robert Jordan at least tried to finish his series before his death. Granted, said trial involved a ton of braid-pulling, women tisking at whatever a man does, and lots of (arguably) useless filler story, but still–he published.
Fuck you GRRM. With an early Targaryen dynasty dragon tooth.
He died, left extensive notes behind, and it’s being finished by Brandon Sanderson, whose is quite clearly focused on GETTING IT DONE. In the prologue of his first book (of three) he killed off two characters who had managed to hang on WAY too long.
The boy is getting the books finished. And it’s good to see.
…oh, and the GRRM rant…something new I should know about?
Fortunately for me, I found the last book in the series, “A Feast for Editors”, bloated and dreary enough that I kind of lost my taste for the series. So I’m not exactly waiting on tenterhooks for the next one.
Seriously, I think his problem was that his juvenile protagonists are too young and his older protagonists are either mostly dead or have had their stories told as much as they need to be told. After the second or third book, he really needed to say “And then 5 years passed:”. Instead of those five words, he’s using 2500 pages of people having just a generally miserable time.
I wasn’t thrilled with the most recent book either. Way more than I ever wanted to know about Theon and his stupid family and his stupid islands, and an irritating lack of Jon. It’s hard to tell because there are so many characters and I’m really not 100% sure who will actually survive to the end, but I’m pretty sure that Jon is supposed to be the protagonist of the story and he wasn’t in the fucking book.
Gahhhh.
Also, not enough Tyrion! Every book - not just ASOIAF books, but all books - should have Tyrion! And Cersei is still alive, boo!
Fuck it all, I’m gonna write me some fanfic that fixes all of this.
P.S. GRRM, I know how you feel about fanfic, too. Guess what? I don’t care anymore! If there’s no canon, guess what? People are gonna make their own shit up!
I’m so glad I stopped with the Dunk & Egg short stories. Nice world, but I’ll wait for a finished series *before *I start reading any novels. I find this good policy for fantasy in general. I mean, how unhappy would I be if I was waiting on The Return of the King for years? If Tolkien could write LoTR while holding down a full-time academic job, these other pikers are just slackers, IMO.
I didn’t get hooked on Martin - it might simply be I was recovering from an operation and was on massive morphine, or maybe I just don’t like his style - but I will add **Rothfuss **to the list. I loved his first book, but I now suspect the sumbitch will never finish the trilogy.
He hasn’t updated his website in the past 2 1/2 years, but scuttlebutt says he’s been busy with the HBO series. Still, he has the material, but he keeps rewriting it.
He also doesn’t look too healthy. He’s in the Jabba the Hut weight class.
So, I’d avoided getting sucked in until I finally realized that the George R R Martin who wrote the excellent Fevre Dream was the same one churning out this possibly endless epic. Now I’m on the 3rd volume & enjoying it. Well, it’s not much fun–far too grim for that. But dense & rich.
I’m already stocking my imaginary book pile with new writers so I can avoid obsessing while we wait for book 5. And I wish Martin good health. (Hey, guy, I just joined the nice new fitness center at work–some age-appropriate exercise & attention to the diet wouldn’t hurt!)
And I thought I’d link this reference to an SDMB classic:
I detest huge series like this just because it seems to go on forever. I like the wildcards series, and will read shorts by him, but I refuse to get sucked into a book series that never ends.
I’m of the opinion that for the series to get finished, Martin will first have to be hit by a Buick. And then we’ll all wonder if we really wanted him to finish the series after all.
Yeah, I’m anticipating a parallel of King’s Dark Tower series. For King, the first four were great, then he waited a bunch of years, got hit by a car, and wrote three half assed novels to finish it off, along with the worst ending ever. I’m afraid GRRM will do something similar.
I honestly don’t think he gives a shit anymore. Whenever I check his blog he’s always talking about football and other random bullshit.