Martin’s website was last update just a few weeks ago and he’s still writing and has something like 9 more chapters to go.
HURRY UP!!!
NO!
No, don’t hurry. Don’t rush. Meander, if necessary. Dawdle. Procrastinate. Meticulously go over detail after detail, polishing until the book is damned good and ready. Whatever you do, don’t rush.
This book is going to be read for years to come. If he does it right, if the books continue to be as amazing as they have been, it’s going to be a long-lived classic of fantasy literature. The pressure to deliver a book being put on Mr. Martin by current fans (and, no doubt, salivating publishers) needs to come second to the pleasure of the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, who won’t even start reading this series until after the full thing has been completed.
That being said, the minute he’s finished with this last one, I’m starting A Game Of Thrones again; I figure, by the time Crows is published, I’ll be through the first three, and ready to go.
Personally, I started out hating, hating, hating Dany; I dreaded reading any of her chapters. Yuck. And I loved Arya.
Now, it’s been totally reversed.
It’s an amazing author who can do that sort of thing to his readers.
I still stand by my basic premise.
Is there anything further in the third book about Jon Snow’s parents? 'Cause I have a great theory about this but I’m hesitant to give it up unless it hasn’t already been shot down!
Don’t worry Jon Snow’s parentage is still a mystery.
And if your thinking Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon, then yeah, that is so far the most popular theory.Wonder how Jon’s going to react when he hears that!
Yes, though it’s not necessarily definitive. It’s a mild spoiler (nothing near as shocking as the one you previously got), so read on if you want to know the exact details:
While in the riverlands, Arya meets Edric Dayne, the current Lord of Starfall, and Ashara Dayne’s nephew. He mentions that he’s Jon’s milk-brother, because Edric’s wetnurse was Jon’s mother, Wylla (which is the name Ned mentions to Robert early in Thrones). Apparently she still works as a servant at Starfall, and claims that she was Jon’s mother, or it’s claimed of her. Having said all that, while Edric Dayne seems convinced of its truthfulness, he is only 12 years old, and thus younger than Jon, so he’s getting any information about what happened second hand.
So, if your theory is that Jon’s parents were Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, Wylla’s claim doesn’t necessarily disprove it, since she could be lying. The Rhaegar and Lyanna theory has been discussed extensively on the message board that ITR Champion linked to. I think it has a lot of merit, but we won’t know for sure for some time (I suspect Feast won’t give a definitive answer on the subject).
Geez! Martin maniacs are worse than Tolkien geeks.
I can see I’m going to have to clear some time and read the third book.
Yes, that was my theory, which, apparently, has already been done to death. I won’t go into details, since everybody probably knows them better than I, except to observe that a) lots of people know the secret of Jon’s parentage, if that is indeed the secret and b) he therefore unites Stark and Targaryen, though being illegitimate, not quite as well as a Robb - Danerys matchup would. In fact, given the rather, ahh, broad-minded approach Martin’s universe, and the Targaryen family in particular, take to these things, he could actually marry Danerys to clinch the deal.
I am impressed by this series so far. I encourage Martin to take as much time as he needs to continue it (so long as he doesn’t go all Jordan on us).
He has consistently confounded my expectations. No, that’s not quite right. I mean something stronger.
He has consistently lured my expectations into a dark alley, bashed them over their heads, dismembered them and gleefully spit on their skulls.
In real life, good people get killed in wars, bad people sometimes flourish, sometimes your allies are more dangerous than your enemies, and everyone believes they are acting for the best. Martin has captured this in this series.
A Storm of Swords made me do something I have rarely done before. After reading the wedding at the Twins passage, I had to set the book aside for six months before I found the strength to continue. It is that powerful.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you say that “lots of people” know the secret? The generally accepted version of the theory says that only the mysterious and reclusive Howland Reed knows the truth, assuming that neither he nor Eddard Stark ever told anybody. However, some of the visions that Daenerys saw in the house of the Undying also point in that direction, so she may figure it out by herself at some point.
Now, see what you did! You made me dig out the book and look it up. I see no point to put this in a spoiler box since 1) the reply will be pretty cryptic if you haven’t read the previous boxes and 2) I don’t know jack anyway.
Howland Reed was definitely there. But the passage read, "They found him still holding her body . . . " So there was more than one person there. There would also have been at least a midwife or better a maester who attended the birth. They, of course, can’t swear that who the kid is now but they could swear there was a kid. At the very least, Robert probably knew, though that wouldn’t do much good, I suppose.
In any case, there must have been a number of people who were in on the conspiracy and a number of people who could put two and two together. All the people who knew she was pregnant, for example, would have pretty strong suspicions.
Truthseeker,
Howland Reed was obviously at the Tower of Joy. He’s the only living person that we know was there for sure. I agree that there would have been servants there, maybe some guards (or squires, or stablehands) other than the 3 Kingsguard, and possibly a mid-wife or someone to help Lyanna with the birth (though since she died from it, maybe not). How many common people were at the Tower and what they knew is entirely a matter of speculation, we have no evidence one way or the other (other than that, as you point out, the quoted passage indicates multiple people). Wylla would obviously know if she was really Jon’s mother, but assuming that she isn’t, was she someone from the Tower and would she know the whole truth? We know so little about her, it’s impossible to say.
How common the knowledge of Lyanna’s pregnancy was is hard to say, given that it’s never directly mentioned in the series. I seriously doubt that Robert knew, because when he lists what he thinks Rhaegar did to Lyanna (and he does this several times, he seems to have a bit of an obsession with the whole thing) getting her pregnant is never included. Additionally, another child of Rhaegar’s would have been a huge deal (even if the child was possibly a bastard), I can’t imagine it not being mentioned in passing if it was fairly well known, even if everyone thought the kid was dead. And finally, Robert was probably the person Ned was trying to protect the baby from by lying about the whole thing. While I think Robert would have been uncomfortable with killing a baby, he clearly would have accepted it being done in his name (since he accepts what Tywin did). As far as we know Lyanna never left the Tower of Joy after she arrived there with Rhaegar, so whether anyone outside of the tower learned about her being pregnant is hard to say. The news could have spread, but there’s no evidence that it did.
My boyfriend and I have been reading this series aloud to each other (We’ve finished ASOS and are restarting with AGOT), and after we read this chapter, we were both completely in shock and didn’t pick the book up again for nearly a month. Now, that isn’t six months, but we were both REALLY into it, and it was one of our Things We Do Together, and neither of us wanted to pick that book up again for quite a while.
I give props to Martin for writing such a masterfully crafted story that deaths or plot twists can affect so many readers in such a visceral way. I cried like a baby after Ygritte died in Jon Snow’s arms
Whicj of the 3 books did you enjoy the most? Any of them not live up to your expectations?
I think for most people the best book was A Storm of Swords, with all it’s twists and turns, political back-stabbing, and great story-telling in general. The one I liked the least I would say is A Clash of Kings. Maybe cause it’s the second book, but it just seemed weak, and I just never remeber any ‘cool’ moments in it.
For me, the series got better as it went on. I was put off at first because the books didn’t adhere to what I’d built up in my mind - i.e., that the Good Guys would be okay and the Bad Guys would not, that people were either Good or Bad, and so forth. It took me a while to get into it fully, and I’m glad I did.
I appreciate the map at the beginning of the books, too. Allows me to see where everyone is in relation to each other, you know? 
That character pissed me off, so I was delighted after that part. I did get a little misty after the Red Wedding, and when Arya and the Hound were talking about it afterwards.
I started a thread about this series a year ago – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=164224 . I think I would have howled in despair if I knew then that a year would pass and we still would be waiting for the next book. And to think we’ll finally get the next book, read it in a couple days, and then have to wait another 2-3 years! Oh, the suffering.
On the Song of Ice and Fire EZBoard that’s been linked to in this thread, someone posted that George R. R. Martin’s wife Parris, upon hearing the “Jon [spoiler]is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna”** theory at a convention, exclaimed something to the effect of, “Good Lord, you don’t think George would do something so obvious?” (I’m trying to find the exact quote on that board, but unfortunately, its search function sucks, so it might take a while.) Now there’s some food for thought.
Aagh, my coding! Could a mod please fix that? Thanks!
Man that would really screw up everything wouldn’t it? If maybe it really was Ashara of Dayne,(I think that’s her name) or someone other people. Everyone just seems to accept the current theory as reality.
And yeah, it is taking too long, I just finished rereading the series and he leaves us with about 10 cliff-hangers.