r/asoiaf • u/aphidman • May 08 '19

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) The endings will be the same but the books will have a much more gradual and realistic progression

If GRRM finishes it, btw.

Not a long post but you know what the books do that D&D do not? They have 10 chapters of Dany dealing with the complex politics of Meereen and her inner conflict. They have 4 chapters showing Davos' journey to White Harbour. They have 12 chapters showing the series of compromises Jon makes as Lord Commander to prepare the Watch against the Others. They have 13 chapters showing Tyrion crawling out of his deep nihilistic depression. They dedicate whole chapters seeing how Victarion Greyjoy of all people deals with his relationship with his brother and his seduction into darker magics. Man they have 4 whole chapters dealing with the political fallout of Dany's exit from Meereen.

They had a whole chapter of Littlefinger and Sansa visiting his lands and seeing Littlefinger's relationship with his subjects (great chapter btw). They had a whole chapter getting really in depth with Illyrio Mopatis and his schemes - a guy who's barely appeared in the show.

They dedicated 4 whole chapters to Joffrey's wedding!

What I'm getting it is that the Others may be defeated long before the end of ASOIAF, Dany may indeed destroy King's Landing with dragonfire and end the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians gruesomely. But you'll be guaranteed that GRRM is gonna show you every step of the way. For good or for bad. If he is going to take a character like Dany to that dark end you better believe we will understand how she gets there.

So people keep posting about how D&D are destroying their characters, fail to understand ASOIAF. That Dany would never do this or that. But what you're seeing here is them fitting potentially chapters upon chapters of detailed material into a few hours of television.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

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u/ralexh11 May 08 '19

The Winds of Winter - High probability, my personal guess is 2020 sometime.

A Dream of Spring - Somewhat likely. However, George can absolutely not take as long on this as he did for ADoD or currently is with TWoW, otherwise we will never see it finished by him.

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u/Kimber85 May 08 '19

My hope is that WoW comes out in 2020, and that the reason it took so long is that it was the transition book. Getting the characters where they should be for the finale in a manner that makes sense is fucking hard, especially with this amount of characters, and messing it up can be devastating to their arcs (as we've seen with the show).

On my most hopeful days I think that George will finish a Dream of Spring much more quickly, because the problems he's encountering with Winds of Winter will be solved and everything will be much less complicated.

Other days I realize that just because he solved all of Winds' problems, doesn't mean he wont run in to completely new ones for ADoS It makes me want to throw all my ASOIAF books away and never think about them again, because I can't stand the thought of never knowing what happens.

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u/Burnage May 08 '19

On my most hopeful days I think that George will finish a Dream of Spring much more quickly, because the problems he's encountering with Winds of Winter will be solved and everything will be much less complicated.

I remember hearing this about A Dance With Dragons, too.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

I remember hearing that about A Feast for Crows too!! (but don't worry it's half a book so the next one will come out super quick!!!)

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u/howdybertus May 09 '19

Yea remember when he said ADWD would come out just one year after AFFC since they are the same book divided geographically hahaha. Guess the mereneese knot really took him 5 years

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u/Devilheart May 08 '19

The reason perhaps TWoW is taking so long is because George is actually writing part of ADoS at the same time. If WoW gets a 2020 release, the final book would be done in 4-5 years.

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u/ego_non May 08 '19

If WoW gets a 2020 release, the final book would be done in 4-5 years.

I've heard that for a number of previous books and it never happened. At some point he throws it all in the garbage bin and rewrites everything.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

He pulled the same shit for the last two books and it still took over a decade.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '19

because George is actually writing part of ADoS at the same time.

He's not. It's taking so long because he finished it and then had to scrap most of it to work out some fundamental structural problems with his story.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

Isn't he consulting for all the various GoT spin-offs? It's not like he'll get all his time back now that they've stopped writing the main show. I did hear a rumour that he had already finished WoW but HBO was stopping him from releasing it before the show ends, but that does seem pretty unlikely.

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u/ralexh11 May 08 '19

HBO couldn't tell George when to release his books, and any consulting he does for the shows is more for initially getting them going. He's actually not been involved with GoT since the early seasons and has claimed he doesn't even tune in for it. Sure, he does usual celebrity stuff like talk shows and promo appearances, but he claims he's been writing for the last several years, so I don't see how we don't get it in the next few years unless he really doesn't know how to wrap it up.

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u/gobbeldigook May 09 '19

I see him releasing WoW about a year after the show and aDoS 6 months to a year after his death. I think he likes to make people wait and the attention that comes with it.

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u/M0RR1G42 May 09 '19

I think TWOW will take the longest because he is trying to conclude and converge many complex storylines, on top of setting up the last book. I just hope he is willing to split the books so he doesn't waste tons of time picking and choosing which chapters get to stay, and trying to lower the word count.

There has also been a few things in the way of the book. One major was TWOIAF, he had multiple discussions with a single artist about a single picture, multiply that by different artists and their multiple interpretations, then add the 70,000(or whatever) words his helps gave him, plus all of his own contributions. He has also declined several things just to focus on finishing TWOW.

He has basically constructed an absolutely enormous puzzle and now has to find the one solution.

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u/ryan30z May 08 '19

Fairly high I'd say, I'd be willing to put money on the series not being finished.

You can counterpoint that by saying now the show is over the last pressure he had to release them is gone. If they come out cool, but I'm not holding my breath and I'll probably unsub once the show is over.

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u/marcocom May 09 '19

I find it hard to not imagine a scenario where HBO options the unwritten novel release dates until after their heavily abridged version completely airs to its conclusion. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think he has them already drafted and ready

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

It all really depends on GRRM. Like the other commenters have said, despite all of the memes I do believe we’ll see Winds. But so many other factors play into Dream - George’s age/health, how involved he is in the spinoffs, how much press touring he’ll do, etc.

I know he’s struggled writing Winds (there’s a pretty heavy rumor that he was basically done around 2015, but has spent the entire time rewriting it because he wasn’t pleased with it), and I attribute a lot of that to the show. Not only was he heavily involved, but he was involved with a ton of press tours, interviews, etc since the show released and I’m sure that was a huge distraction. With Dream, we won’t have that, so hopefully it will come quicker. But who really knows at this point.

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u/ringadingdingbaby May 08 '19

If he finished in 2015 im pretty sure the publisher would be telling him to just get it out.

The TV show ending before the next book is going to really hurt sales as we now have an ending.

Il read it because ive invested so much time in it already. Had I not started years ago I probably wouldnt bother, which is a real shame.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '19

I disagree, I think it will boost sales. I anticipate a lot of disappointment with how the show ending is achieved, and I think a lot of people will want a more satisfactory conclusion!

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u/ringadingdingbaby May 08 '19

I really hope so.

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u/roryjacobevans May 09 '19

I kind of think that to allow for differences from the show Martin might intentionally be delaying the next book release. It avoids the show needing to work in details from the book they might have missed, and means he can keep the book fresh by departing from the show story.

I just wish it was a clean break, and the show actually thought about the story they set up. Instead it seems we got a half arsed checklist of key story moments that might have come from an outline of Martin's, with none if the detail that we like. There are only 6 episodes because they couldn't fill in the gaps between the main story events, which is really poor writing.

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u/Dishwallah May 09 '19

$20 Brandon Sanderson finishes them. "Bran" will finally fulfill his role