Excellent question- I just started A Clash Of Kings and am having trouble getting back up to speed, too!
Thanks!
Does anyone else agree that Game of Thrones is the best of the four books so far? To me what makes it special is that it starts off with characters who are quite happy and then introduces misery and death into their lives in the inimitable GRRM style. This is much more dramatically satisfying than a story where the characters are bounced from one horror to another. Plus I enjoyed the bits where Eddard plays the gumshoe while investigating Arryn’s death.
It’s not the last chapter.
Wow this is bad news if true. I read GRRM’s website occasionally and I thought the book was quite close to completion; perhaps some time this year. It looks like he is taking more and more time with each book. I envy those who get into this series after it’s finished and can read all the books in a few months.
Amazonhas updated their release info and says:
Publisher: Spectra (October 27, 2009)
The book has not been finished yet, any and all release dates are wild ass guesses. There hasn’t even been an update to his “when will adwd be done” part of the website since january 07. The only thing we know of is he needs to finish it and then it takes about half a year for it to be ready for publishing, october is a good guess though.
I know. But Amazon also used to have the 2013 release date and since they’ve changed that, I assumed they know something you and I don’t 
I seem to recall though, that he wrote almost an entire other book before deciding he needed to write more interim stuff. So is it possible that we might have several releases a year apart after this?
Yeah, they know nobody will pre order a book with a 2013 release date :).
Well sure 
The way I recall it, the book he’s working on now is the book he almost finished before deciding he needed to do Crows.
I’m starting to feel it’s Robert Jordan all over again and he’ll die before he finishes it. He’s 60 now and from his pictures he’s quite overweight. At the current rate the last book will be out about 2020. Plus i’m expecting further ‘I have so much story to tell, i require more volumes’ as happened with the Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons split.
I would love to be proved wrong but i'm not hopeful.My hope is that the HBO pilot will be successful, and that he’ll put aside his other projects and finish the story.
I just want to say that I am despairing of ever seeing the next book. The date has been pushed back so many times that I’ve almost lost faith in Martin entirely. In fact, I’m starting to hate him a little.
How many books does he allegedly have left in the series? And does he plan to finish them before he dies? What exactly is the hold up? I know, it’s his creation and he owes us nothing, so I have no place feeling proprietary about this. However… yeah. I still want to kick his ass whenever the subject comes up.
Ahh
This.
It was my understanding that he had written the “backstory book” but it was too large and his publisher made him cut it in half. Half was published as **Feast of Crows **and the other viewpoints, covering the same time span, would be brought out shortly as Dance of Dragons.
Of course, I have gotten accustomer to being lied to by writers.
Yep, we were told that because of the split, a Feast for Crows would be released first. Then A Dance of Dragons next year at the latest. Feast came out 3 years ago this March. 
Was that before or after he had to rewrite due to ditching the five-year skip?
This was after the rewrite. No, if , buts,or wriggle room. I remember it was said very clearly at the time that most of it was done and it would be out next year.
Worse i got the date wrong Feast came out even earlier than i thought. It was Oct 2005 (nov in the US), not March 2006), so it’s already been over 3 years.