MrX

GRRM announced today that he's spending 6 weeks next summer teaching at some writer's workshop in Seattle so go ahead and add a year to your prediction of when book 6 will be released

starman9000

Though maybe he'll be more productive there than on the celeb circuit.

MrX

I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't start working on it until next fall.

He mentioned after he finished ADwD that he had several anthologies, the next Dunk and Egg novella, and The World of Ice and Fire source book (itself several years overdue) to work on. If the show gets a 3rd season he would have to write his script in the first part of the year as well.

bdshort

Maybe it keeps him from getting burnout? I'm hoping we'll see the next (last?) couple a few years apart vs. the 5 or 6 we've been getting!

Anyway, I'm about halfway through - 44% according to my Kindle, and so far I am liking it quite a bit. I'm having a hard time keeping track of the characters with the strange names in the Daenerys chapters though, and I wish she would break out here dragons! The Bran stuff is pretty interesting to, so I'm disappointed to see so few listed in the table of contents.

Oh, and for repetitive phrases, "Words are wind" is the one I've been noticing a lot! I think Serjeant maybe noticeable since it started showing up in Feast, but not once in the first 3 books!

MrX

GRRM is at Worldcon in Reno and told people he hopes to have the next book out in 3 years.

He also read an Arianne Martell chapter from it

EDIT: ugh, reading the summary of the Arianne chapter and then his comments after really make it sound like this one is going to balloon again into another 1,000 page monster with plenty of fat that could have been trimmed.

Amator

Just finished it!

Other words/phrases GRRM uses waay too often:
jape
mummer's farce
c**t

Also I guess shat is now an official word now. I always thought it was a jape.

actionjackson29

Didn't he say the tv show wouldn't catch up with him? I believe at some point they're just gonna do there own thing.

Loc Nar

Almost finished with ADWD, and a curious realization dawned upon me. George R.R. Martin hates hands! The lowercase variety, I mean. Over the course of the series, I can think of seven significant characters that have had bad things happen to one or more hands:



Weird trend that is almost becoming comical. I'm probably also leaving some folks out who suffered some other form of hand trauma. Know any names to add to the list? Maybe George has been writing all these books out by hand and this is his subconscious revenge.

MrX

Qhorin Halfhand

Loc Nar

::smacks forehead:: How could I forget him?! You know, the uppercase Hands generally don't fare too well either. It's a conspiracy I tell you.

Hiro11

Finished it a few weeks ago. This was much better than AFFC but some of the plot lines moved at an almost glacial pace.

Strong points: Tyrion and Arya's story arcs zipped right along. The sequence involving Arya and her first "assignment" was probably my favorite in the book. Tyrion went trough some pretty surprising and thrilling adventures. Bran's adventure started out very strongly, but then seemed to peter out a bit. Also, the Boltons have been proven to be more threatening villains than the Lannisters ever were. The Lannisters were scheming and backstabbing, but the Boltons are simply complete psychopaths. I also liked, to a somewhat lesser degree, the Onion Knight material.

Weak points: not much happened with Jon Snow, Asha or especially Danaerys. This despite hundreds of pages being spent on them. Danaerys in particular was driving me absolutely crazy there for a while. I found some of her arc unreadable: we got it, GRRM, she's not being "true to herself". Cersei: Jeez, how much time can we spent building up to and the executing "the walk". Slooooow. One other issue, too many characters. Admittedly, this story started out complicated and we should know what to expect, but at this point it has become a figurative (and literal) blizzard of characters, back stories, places, plot points etc. I'm a pretty dedicated fan, but this is getting a bit ridiculous.

Still, it was a good read and I couldn't put it down. I do think that GRRM needs an editor and needs to push the story forward a bit faster. This book was better in that regard than the fuzzy, undisciplined AFFC, but it's still a problem. GRRM should have only committed to seven books if the story truly needed it, and at this point I'm not sure it does.

Groucho

Finally finished this.

Was disappointed that:



What was the big "spoiler leak" everybody was talking about at the beginning of this thread?

mgbfan

Finished it as well. Wrote a nice fat review and the browser crashed. So ... long story short ... thought it was good. Maybe a notch below #1 and #3. Glad to be able to open these threads again without fear of being spoilerized.

MrX

If you haven't been reading the essays over at Tower of the Hand breaking down Dance, I recommend you do.

This one on Dany is an interesting read

http://towerofthehand.com/blog/2011/...ast/index.html

Mordred

The Greatjon lost two fingers to Rob's wolf too.

Mordred

Finished this one yesterday. I brilliantly started a series re-read back the last week of June I think. Took a lot longer than I was expecting to get through it all. I enjoyed Dance but things in Mereen just really dragged on and on with not much happening. I also found it comical how many characters that were dead no longer are. It really started to grate on me a little bit... and it's obviously not done.

I really like almost all the different threads that are going, and I'm really interested in almost all of them (Dany was wearing thin on me) but there are too many to give much focus to them. There were something like 8 different cliff-hangers going on at the end. Hopefully they characters start coming back together and paring some of this down.

bdshort

Even though I started reading this back when it came out, I just finished it today. I'm not a slow reader, but I got sidetracked by other things in August, and was also just burnt out from a marathon read of the first four books, so I stopped. Anyway, overall I was pretty happy with the book, though I think Martin could have easily done some editing and released this and Feast as one book. Still, almost every character had some major developments, and to me it feels like a lot of shit is ready to go down in the next book. I think that the people complaining that nothing happened plot wise in this book should be happy with the next one. I just hope we don't have another 5+ year wait.

About Jon

Josh-da-man

Re: Jon

milo bloom

Trying not to read any spoilers here, but does anyone know when the paperback is coming out? I want to start Feast a little before that so I can jump right into Dance.

tks

starman9000

July 10th, but there is already a version of the paperback out split into 2 parts.

bdshort

I'm hoping The Winds of Winter has less use of such lines as "he was not wrong" and Dany saying "I am only a young girl and know little of such things..."

milo bloom

Thanks, I've got a little time then (reading The Phantom Tollbooth next, somehow missed it as a kid, then a re-read of The Handmaid's Tale).

johnnysd

I have to say that ADWD hammered the point home to me that

MrX

Someone sent me this amazon review

Twentyfour Characters in Search of a Story, April 5, 2012
By
Macaroni
This review is from: A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (Hardcover)
SPOILERS AHEAD

I'm Varamyr Sixskins. I'm here for the prologue to set us all up for the impending horrors of the North and all the excitement to come...

I'm Tyrion Lannister, the most popular character in all of Westeros! I spend this book meandering down a really slow river, ruminating bitterly about my life, misplacing my former charm, eroding all the goodwill I built up in the other books, and wondering where the whores go. Though perhaps I should have been wondering where the plot went. I also observe turtles and women, play board games, mouth off to all and sundry, and coincidentally run into various characters like some wandering monster in a D&D campaign. Maybe I'll make it to Daenarys in the next book, but at least I ditched that pig.

I'm Asha Greyjoy. I don't have much to do, so I'll be the POV character keeping track of Stannis and his forces. At the beginning of Dance with Dragons, he's working his way towards Winterfell to take it back from the Boltons. At the end of Dance with Dragons, he's...working his way towards Winterfell to take it back from the Boltons. Hope that helps.

I'm Ser Davon Seaworth, the Onion Knight. I'm still running errands for Stannis and getting captured frequently. It's a living.

I'm Bran Stark. I am a tree.

I'm Daenarys Targaryen. I'm only a young girl, and I know little in the ways of war, governance, what have you. I used to think I said these things to misdirect people, but as of DoD it seems to be true. I spend my time taking baths, fretting, being wishy-washy, and mooning over this hot mercenary dude. In the end I learn that "you have to go back to go forward." I would have thought that going backwards would be the last thing that this book needs, but I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of story advancement.

I'm Aegon Targaryen. I appear for the first time in book five as the long thought dead son of Prince Rhaegar and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. I know, right? What a surprise! It's like I was just pulled from thin air! I spend much of the book traveling to Daenarys, but then I change my mind and go and invade Westeros without her. Sort of. No one important has noticed yet. See you in the next book!

I'm Griff, aka Jon Connington. I'm here to get Aegon Targaryen on the Iron Throne. I tried to tell that kid not to wait until the fifth book to show up if he wants to be king. Now nobody's invested in us. We're like, peripheral characters or something. Nobody cares. I (*sniff*) just want someone to care, you know?

I'm Theon Greyjoy. Turns out I'm not dead, though I rather wish I were. It's been rough. On the bright side, my chapters were some of the only highlights of this bloated beast of a book. I even got to be almost a hero at the end! Can't wait for the next book. Redemption arc ahoy! People like me now!

Tyrion: Settle down sailor. You're not really a major character, and people still don't like you.

I'm Jaime Lannister. I snuck in to steal a chapter just like I would steal a kiss from my sweet sister. Oh look, there's Brienne! She's not dead after all. Whatever could have happened? Oops, we gotta go now, so I'll guess we'll never know. Blink and you'll miss us!

I'm Ser Robert *cough*Gregor*cough* Strong *cough*not dead*cough*. Gregor SMASH!

I'm the Hound. You know, I strongly suspect that I might not be dead either.

Tyrion: Quiet, you. No one even mentions you in this book.

I'm Wyman Manderly. I'm a minor character, but I bring a bit of awesome anyway. I was last seen bleeding from a neck wound. I wonder if I'll die. Your guess is as good as the author's.

I'm John Snow. I command the wall and defend Westeros from the horrors of the North. I count sides of beef and sausages, receive messages, meet with my staff, greet newcomers, and find bedrooms for all the wildings. Seriously, am I a commander or a butler? It's the end of the book already, we need some action! I'll march on Winterfell and retake it from the cursed Boltons! Away we go! Oh, dang it. Stabbed from all sides. There goes that plan. It sure does seem like I'll die now...

I'm Quentyn Martell. I'm kind of a side plot that has no impact at all on the main story. Then I die. But the good news is that I really am dead for sure!

I'm Melisandre. I get a chapter where I play with fire and see things and act all cryptic with people. Well, I have to amuse myself somehow. It's booorrring at the wall.

I'm Victarion Grayjoy.
Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main!
This book will end
Before I meet
Daenarys Targaryen!

I'm Aero Hota. Don't worry, I don't really remember who I am either. Not much to see here, anyway.

I'm Cersei Lannister. I get two chapters of humiliation. I can has some of Theon's reader sympathy now? No? Well then. I won't forget this. A Lannister always pays his debts...maybe in the next book.

I'm Ayra Stark. I'm in two chapters, too, and I kill someone, like I always do. But this time it's different; this time someone told me to. That's progress. Maybe someday I'll kill someone who has something to do with the main story.

I'm Barriston Selmy. I putter around Meereen, trying in some small way to advance the plot. Alas, to little avail. I'm too old for this.

I'm Kevan Lannister. I waited a thousand pages for a POV and all I got was this lousy epilogue and a quarrel in the chest. Oh well. At least I'm well and truly done with this mess.

Varys: Maybe.

We're the Others. We are the horror of the North and theoretically the real Big Bad Threat in this series. It's five books in, and we still haven't really gotten to do anything yet. To be honest, we're too bored to bother any more. We're going to invade Canada instead and subdue them to our icy will. Apologies everyone!

Alvis

You know nothing, Jon Snow.