George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is without any doubt THE most popular and acclaimed dark fantasy novel series humanity has ever seen. So far, it consists of 5 huge novels which kicked off one of the best TV shows ever made – Game of Thrones and its prequel House of the Dragon. However, after the GOT Season 8 debacle by HBO writers, fans have been keenly looking forward towards final few novels by GRRM as they want to see what ending he has planned for the series. As of now, there are two more books planned for the series aka The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring but it doesn’t seem like we’re getting them anytime soon!
Game of Thrones – GRRM on The Winds of Winter Delay
The Winds of Winter aka the 6th novel in the ASOIF series is still barely 75% complete and it has been 12 years since A Dance With Dragons was published. The first 5 books released in fairly quick succession – 1996, 1998, 2000, 2005, and 2011 but it has been a long wait since then. Fans assumed this is because GRRM took active part in the development of HBO’s Game of Thrones as well as House of the Dragon, which is somewhat true. But the actual reason for the immense gap has now been explained by George RR Martin and in simple language it is – a writer’s block! While talking to Kevin Smith, Martin revealed:
“There are joyful days, when it really comes alive, and the characters come alive and the scene and the words are pouring out of you. It feels good. But there are not a lot of those days. There are also days where it’s hard. And I sit down and I read what I wrote yesterday and I say, ‘This is shit. Why am I pretending I can do this? This is terrible.’ And I wind up rewriting the whole thing. And I do that for several days and I go to my wife and I say, ‘Where’s my talent? What did you do with my talent? Did you put it somewhere else? I can’t find it anymore.’ Then I have a good day.”
This condition, as many of you might know, is referred to as writer’s block in which the writer is unable to produce new ideas do to any reason. In this case though, it looks like Martin has been trapped and blocked by his own awesome world. ASOIF and GOT have been the biggest adult global sensation of the 21st century and there are a lot of hopes and expectations riding on these final 2 novels. The poor reception of GOT season 8 surely didn’t help and Martin now knows he can’t do any of that. It seems like he has been overwhelmed by the pressure these expectations have put on him and that is the curse of being at the top of your field.
I am pretty convinced, that no matter what he writes, some portion of fans will surely be disappointed as no one can please everyone. In such extremely complex and GREY narratives, one simple cannot do each character or plot line justice. Same thing happened with Attack on Titan as some fans where highly critical of the ending, and the same happened with The Witcher saga. So, yeah, ending such dark character driven narratives is really hard and always disappoints a few. But while HBO failed to do any character or plotline justice, we are sure GRRM will hit the mark for most of them. To all the fans, I’d just like to say – manage your expectations if you want to ever read the ending of this incredible saga!
All 8 Seasons of Game of Thrones and season one of House of the Dragon are currently streaming on HBO Max.
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