+1
GoT gotta be THE book of century after LoTR!
I used to agree, but not after reading this series of essays: About | The Meereenese Blot I think GRRM has finished Act 2 and set up Act 3 beautifully. Whether or not Act 3 can match Act 1, however, remains to be seen. Agreed on the long odds of him finishing though.
But books 4-7 are the good ones in WOT!
Hell no - thats books 1-2.
Ditto; after reading that blog, I found myself compelled to re-read Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons and found both books to be better than the first time I read them. They were disappointing when I first read them because they didn’t provide more of the rollicking craziness that continued to build up through Storm of Swords, but re-reading them and catching a lot more of the subtleties was fascinating.
I am reading these essays in the blog… wow, great piece of work! Thanks for the link, John Reynolds!!
Ditto, great find.
I’m just catching up on this thread now after watching the whole TV series and reading the first book. This post makes me sad, in how:
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You poor fools still had no idea that A Feast for Crows was still two years away :-(
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This post is especially apt since the Iraq War ended up stretching out even longer than delays to ASOIAF books :-(
Major book/show spoiler found by someone that looked up the original A Dance With Dragons manuscript.
(May or may not still be valid, depending on GRRM’s intent.)
Last chance. This is a character spoiler
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Coldhands is NOT Benjen according to GRRM’s reply to his editor.
I wouldn’t call that a spoiler at all. One of the children (Leaf?) in a Bran chapter explicitly states that he was killed a long time ago.
Is that an un-spoiler?
Putting a fan rumor to rest?
Either way, good to have a definitive answer to that one.
Also, people saying people are dead in AsoIaF is definitely not grounds for them being dead. And if, so, if he was considered “dead” couldn’t he still be all white and walkery?
Are white walkers zombies? Dead people risen? I don’t have a clear idea on that theory.
I always thought CH was an ancestor of the Starks, like an old Brandon or something. Or maybe even a descendant of the original white walker, like maybe Bran’s white walker family equivalent. A white walker son that doesn’t want to murder everyone.
Yup. Despite the one character explicitly telling Bran that, fan speculation has persisted.
It’s because it had so many years to take root between publications of books 3 and 5. GRRM apparently likes smashing these fan rumors. His world book trashed the theory about Jaime and Cersei being the offspring of Aerys rather than Tyrion rather nicely. So we’re back to waiting for book 6 to see how those dragons act around Tyrion.
White walkers are fey, described very differently than how they appear in the show. Wights are former living things they’ve raised from the dead (humans, animals). Coldhands is definitely a wight, but I think what matters is who raised him from the dead and, perhaps to a lesser degree, the manner of the death. I doubt it was the white walkers or else he’d have the glowing blue eyes and would act as a revenant who hates the living. Duration of death could be a factor too. Melisandre was obviously raised very quickly after what I would assume to be was a ritual (she was a slave purchased by the worshippers of R’hllor, as very strongly hinted at in her one book 5 pov chapter). Catelyn lay dead for days, and the manner of her death was horrific, so despite not being raised by the Others she’s all about her vengeance. Melisandre is all about serving her god.
I guess we might have assumed this already, but Time magazine confirms that the next book will not be released this year.
SO MUCH SAD FACE.
Time isn’t confirming anything other than the UK publisher making that statement. Which, yes, is pretty damning, but not all that surprising considering GRRM didn’t dedicate himself to Winds until Jan of 2013. So he’s been working on book 6 for basically two years. 1H of 16 wouldn’t surprise me.
It’s going to be interesting to see semi-spoilers for the book dribbled out over the next couple of seasons in the show.
Especially since the show is supposed to conclude with the seventh season. Season 5 is already pushing past a Dance With Dragons in a few plotlines.
Problem is, we won’t have any way of knowing if the events in the show are true to what the producers have been told by GRRM or if they’re more deviations. Because at the rate at which they’re changing things I wouldn’t be surprised if by season 7 the two have little in common beyond cursory strokes.