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George RR Martin Finishes A Dance With Dragons
Lil'wombat writes "George RR Martin has completed his long awaited conclusion to the A Song of Ice and Fire series. A Dance with Dragons will be published on July 12, 2011. Let the celebrations begin! And everyone was worried that he was going to pull a Jordan."
I don't believe that this is the end... More books in the series are anticipated.
Dance with Dragons is the 4th of 7 planned books. It is not the conclusion to the series.
First Duke Nukem Forever and now this.
I'll echo someone I read a couple of days ago and say this is the longest wait for half of a book I've ever encountered.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
1) The link says specifically that the book isn't done but it's close enough to done to give it a publication date
2) It's not the series conclusion. It's the 5th of 7 planned books that was originally supposed to be 3 books total :)
According to his own website, GRRM hasn't even finished it yet. I'm not believing anything about this book until I can buy it.
That it's not as disappointing as the last one..
Maybe it's just me, but it seemed like a great departure from his normal style (the bad guys actually think about what they're doing, which makes them interesting), and had the "bad guys" acting like they'd never encountered politics before in their lives.. Just had a few "belief no longer suspended" moments in it..
Hope this one goes back to the old "dark and gritty".. Victories are great and all, but in the earlier volumes, they were earned..
I loved the series until the whole Caitlyn-returns-from-the-dead-and-becomes-a-witch-queen incident. That was just ridiculous and smacked of one of his TV scripts. I will still read DWD though ...
The first LINE of TFA says " No. Sorry. Not done yet."
How the hell do you go from that to "hey it's done!"?
I mean come on. Even for Slashdot this is retarded.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I remember back in the day, as a young man full of optimism and energy, eagerly anticipating the second half of this marvelous novel.
Now at last I might take it in my wrinkled, trembling hands and gaze in wonder through rheumy eyes, ever so slightly before the reaper takes my withered husk from this world!
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I'll echo someone I read a couple of days ago and say this is the longest wait for half of a book I've ever encountered.
Agreed. If you can't see a big "F-U" from Martin between the lines, you aren't paying very close attention. 100% due to Martin and Robert Jordan, I will never, EVER pick up and start reading another book series that isn't completed the day I buy the first one. Screw you guys, screw you all.
While Robert Jordan may have died before he finished the series, I think he and his wife/editor made a good decision in selecting Brandon Sanderson as co-author to complete the final 3 installments. While many people got jaded around books 4-5-6-7 (YMMV), I think Jordan picked up his original style around books 10-11; A Knife of Dreams was fantastic. 12 and 13 were co-authored, but were both excellent works. A Memory of Light is still in the process, but it is expected to be just as good, or better than, the previous two.
So even if GRRM does kick the bucket, if he "pulls a Jordan" that means that he'll have written out enough notes for a solid conclusion to his fictional world and have selected a competent co-author who can finish out strongly. Is that such a worst-case-scenario?
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Was anyone actually worried he would "pull a Jordan?"
Yes. He's going to be well into his 70's before he's done, and he weighs like 400lbs.
Nah, with all due respect to the author of my favourite series, he was slow. Though it had more to do with his fascination to delving way too deep into often unnecessary details rather than him unable to write a plot in a first place. (For instance, did he really need to spend all that all that screen time on Galina?). That meant that he ended up wasting too much time summing it up.
Brandon Sanderson really did cut out the "no-doubt-interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant" plot trivia. That's why he was able to bang out two books in about as many years. Him and Jim Butcher are some of my favorite modern day authors. I highly recommend their works.
Though if you like, you an replace "Pulling a Jordan" with Author Existence Failure, but that will entail you loosing all track of time :P
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Nah, with all due respect to the author of my favourite series, he was slow. Though it had more to do with his fascination to delving way too deep into often unnecessary details rather than him unable to write a plot in a first place. (For instance, did he really need to spend all that all that screen time on Galina?). That meant that he ended up wasting too much time summing it up.
Brandon Sanderson really did cut out the "no-doubt-interesting-but-ultimately-irrelevant" plot trivia. That's why he was able to bang out two books in about as many years. Him and Jim Butcher are some of my favorite modern day authors. I highly recommend their works.
Though if you like, you an replace "Pulling a Jordan" with Author Existence Failure, but that will entail you loosing all track of time :P
Disclaimer: I am a fan of the Jordan books, although I don't think I could explain the plot to you.
Which is my Preferred Theory on what happened to Jordan: I don't believe he had the whole thing plotted out, and ended up in Twin Peaks land - so many plot points to clear up that it just couldn't be done, and he couldn't decide which ones to abandon. (I think Sanderson has done a great job just focusing on the important ones, while keeping the general style.) But if I had to compare Wheel of Time to another series, it would be like taking all the Dragonlance novels and running them as one continuous series instead of breaking them up into particular three-four book plots.
Was anyone actually worried he would "pull a Jordan?"
Yeah, their is concern... check out this timeline:
* A Game of Thrones (1996)
* A Clash of Kings (1998) 2 years
* A Storm of Swords (2000) 2 years
* A Feast for Crows (2005) 5 years and next book half done
* A Dance with Dragons (not in 2011) 6 years
* The Winds of Winter (forthcoming) so 6 years (GRRM age now 68+)
* A Dream of Spring (forthcoming) so 6 years (GRRM 75+)
Unless something really changes in the speed of his writing we are likely never going to read the ending.
Meanwhile, Steven Erikson just completed the 10 book Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is at least the equal of ASoIaF, as of Tuesday with the release of the 10th book. He started the series 4 years after Martin started ASoIaF.
May be a good time to post Neil Gaiman's blog entry on why George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
This is one of the best fantasy series I've ever read.
Actually, it's more what I'd call "realistic" fantasy. Now, before you start telling me that fantasy is by definition not realistic, let me explain.
Martin's characters are some of the most relentlessly human I've seen in a fantasy series. None of the characters, save a few who live on the edges (so far) have been pure good or pure evil. Everybody is a shade of gray.
Add to that the fact that Martin isn't afraid to kill off major characters, and it's a delight to read.
The first 3 books of the series are among the best 3 consecutive books written in the fantasy genre. 4 dropped off a lot, though. It's an extension of Glen Cook in that it is gritty and people die, but it is in the style of high fantasy rather than Cook's rather accessible everyday writing style(and book length). The books are very light on magic, but high on mysticism and legend. Think of it mostly as a historical middle age book with a bit of fantasy/magic thrown in(it does grow with the series though). If you want a teaser for the style, read The Hedge Knight short story.
The best combination of authors I can come with is the realism of Cook plus the settings, intrigue, and quality of a Guy G Kay novel.
Hi,
i consider the reference to Jordan as bad taste and offensive toward Jordans family. Do you think he intended to die? As a comment, i would have expected such a missstep, but as story this is a very, very low level.
Furthermore: the story belongs to the author and only him. If he decides to take 17 years for the next book (as Tokien did after The Hobbit), one has to wait. I would rather wait in vain, than pushing for a book the author feels not happy with.
Disappointed, Martin
Actually, part of what made this book so long in coming was the fact that GRRM initially wanted the 4th book to skip ahead years, with some of the intervening detail revealed in flashbacks. He got partway into writing it, and realized that wouldn't work.
So, he started over. Then he realized that this new approach required him to fill out all sorts of stuff that he hadn't counted on, which made the book length explode. Then he seperated them into two, and "A Feast for Crows" was born.
He has stated many times that he wrote himself into a corner (my words, not his), referring to the issue as a "Meerenese Knot". It appears he's finally resolved this, and now is comfortable setting a hard date to be finished with the manuscript.
To be fair, Martin was struck by a very bad case of writers block because of the way he wrote A Feast for Crows. He was trying to cut down on the number of characters in the book so he left a bunch of important characters out, but was left with the problem of writing the second book with events that characters in the first one had already experienced. Hopefully he won't have the same issue with the final two books. So there's hope that they'll both get published this decade.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I think it's important to note that the series isn't really a fantasy series. It has fantasy elements, but that is not the focus. Thematically, I would have to say it's tragedy. I wish I'd known that when I went into the series. It's good, but if you expect the good guys to win the day...
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Yeah, as my wife would say, his books are character driven, not plot driven. The plot exists as a setting in which to explore the characters' motivations and choices, rather than the characters existing merely to move the plot forward.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I didn't like the Ice/Fire series. It barely classifies as fantasy in the first place. After so many books, there's just a mere hint of supernatural elements. Most of it is like some fictional European history. And though there are quite a few interesting characters in the book, I'm getting tired of them just missing each other and never fucking meeting up....Martin has a real problem with tying up storylines.
Too much fluff. Have you seen the way Isaac Asimov writes? Now that's the way to get a book going! No long boring descriptions of the damned landscape for example.
Apparently "Pulling a Jordan" means to go down with what looks like a career ending injury, only to come back and have the best game of his life.
Why wouldn't you want him to pull a Jordan?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Personally, I like the Jordan style much, much better for WoT. There's an essential life to the story, and characters, that's missing. A lot of the things that seem unnecessary, even in retrospect, are there to justify the otherwise insane decisions the characters make; for me, it was clearest at the beginning of the Galad/Perrin confrontation--the characters just seem to move on strings, acting for no real reason other than that's what's necessary to move the plot along. I don't mean that to discourage anyone from reading the Sanderson WoT books though--especially since there is a lot in there where, either Jordan wrote it himself, or Sanderson's ability to imitate his style waxes and wanes, because the magic is there, just in spurts. The example I spoke of was probably the worst, and it wasn't that bad.
Anyway, even (or maybe especially) if you don't lie WoT at all, you should check out Sanderson's other works. Mistborn was pretty good--that's a high compliment for fantasy, which is usually absolute shit--and The Way of Kings, the only published book from the Stormlight Archives, is fucking amazing. I honestly haven't loved a book this much since The Fires of Heaven (I liked WoT before that, but that's the book that made me love it).
As for what the article is actually about, for those who have read it, is there an actual story arc going on? I read I think around halfway through the first book, and it just seemed like a bunch of disconnected subplots, and keeping track of all the characters even in that little bit was extremely difficult--now that I know he takes his PoV characters seriously it'd probably be easier, but I remember it being a real challenge to even remember what I already read about them. And maybe it's trite of me as a reader, but if I'm going to read about swords and magic and all that, I'm looking for a story about something more than the machinations of a bunch of people squabbling over power. From what I read, it seemed that that's all there would be.
But, I loved the writing. I loved the characters, and how well the author got into their heads. I guess I'd like to be on the bandwagon for this one, so (please) without spoiling anything, is there an actual story here?
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And the Tolkien estate sues him for writing fantasy and using two Rs as middle initials.
Just to provide a bit more insight on what Martin is attempting to accomplish in this saga; he's actually a historian by education who specialized in the war of the roses. All the squabbling that occurs is a remythologization of that power struggle, because people generally don't want to read stale history books (and by people, I mean the fiction consuming public). So it's pretty integral to his goals a writer and continues throughout the whole series, but the POV chapters lend very well to get in to the minds of various people and villains often end up having shades of gray which adds a great dynamic IMO. Don't know that any of this changes your opinion on his work though :)
Robert, not Michael.
I think it refers to dying with your epic fantasy series unfinished.
EXACTLY why I refuse to read Stephen R. Donaldson's latest Thomas Covenant series. That jackass can release the last one before I even crack open the first one. I bugged my local SciFi bookstore for ages when I was in high school, waiting for White Gold Wielder.
I'm actually thankful to Robert Jordan for making the later books of the WoT series unreadable, thus saving me from caring about how the series would have ended had he written it.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Mod parent up. Seriously, he'll be lucky if he finishes this before he reaches his 80's. If he spent the same effort actually writing the Song of Ice & Fire books that he puts into writing his blog everyday, the thing would be done already. These books are the best fantasy-fiction I have ever read (although a bit dark), but these books are super low on the author's priority list.. He even went so far as to tear into his fans on his blog, saying he doesn't owe us anything... I think we'll be LUCKY if he pulls a Jordan (that is to say, leaves enough outline and material for a follow-on author to finish the story after he dies)... I think it is FAR more likely that this will be the last book that we see in the series, leaving this really amazing series stranded.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
... you don't think it's clear that, at that point in writing the series, Goodkind read him some Ayn Rand and thought it was the most genius shit ever?
I mean, Jagang is instantly transformed from being a badass conquerer who wants to break your spirit and take everything from you just because he's such a badass and can to... a guy who wants to bring communism to the world. That completely pisses on the characterization of the major antagonist of the series. Faith of the Fallen isn't just a bad, unoriginal book, it's in that "Highlander 2" special echelon of being a sequel so bad, it actually ruins the good entries in the series before it.
I'm not understanding the summary for this story in the context of what you've written. Why does it say that he has "completed his long awaited conclusion" to the series when there are still two more novels after it to be written and released. Poking around, I read that he may have written a few chapters in later books... but is that it?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
A lot of people will lam-bast him, or defend him... whatever... here's my take on it:
I started reading his incredibly good books 11 (that's ELEVEN) years ago. They were great books! But waiting 5 years for a Feast for crows? I waited till it came out on paperback, got about half way through it and realized there was no point. I didn't remember any of the characters or the plot, and didn't feel like re-reading 4000+ pages just to catch myself up. Now, 17 years after the series started he finally writes the last book. Good for you George. Maybe my kid can read it when he gets old enough. But as for me and a lot of your audience? You lost us a decade ago. You got too involved in other projects, even politics for gods sake.
I'd suggest the Malazan Book of the Fallen too then, by Stephen Erikson.
Get through Gardens of the Moon (the first book) and give the second one a go too, even if you don't like the first. It starts in (innovative) generic fantasy mode but swiftly turns up the ratchet, goes heavily multi-threaded, ties together story threads across millenia and has some of the harshest treatment for 'main' characters I've seen in mainstream books.
I mostly love it for the constant ratcheting up of the bar for "don't fuck with..", where someone you don't fuck with in the first book or two is destroyed in a middle book just to demonstrate how much nastier someone else is - who is then ripped apart to prove that an earlier character whose abilities were doubted really is that nasty.
Great writing, great story, excellent series.
I have to admit, the rising tide of venom about the lateness of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS has gotten pretty discouraging. Emails, message boards, blogs, LJ comments, everywhere I look (and lots of places where I don't), people seem to be attacking me, defending me, using me as a bad example of something or other, whatever. I can and do avoid most of the online discussions, although I do regularly get emails from people eager to point out the latest URL where DANCE and I are being hashed over. I can do that, and I can screen the trollish comments here on LJ, but there's no avoiding the emails. Some of you are angry about the miniatures, the swords, the resin busts, the games. You don't want me "wasting time" on those, or talking about them here. Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall. You don't want me "wasting time" on the NFL, or talking about it here. Some of you hate my other projects. You don't want me co-editing WARRIORS or the Vance anthology or STAR-CROSSED LOVERS or any of the other projects I'm doing with my old friend Gardner Dozois, and you get angry when I post about them here. For reasons I don't quite comprehend, the people who hate those projects seem to hate WILD CARDS even more. You really don't want me working on that, "wasting time" on that, and posting about it here. Some of you don't want me attending conventions, teaching workshops, touring and doing promo, or visiting places like Spain and Portugal (last year) or Finland (this year). More wasting time, when I should be home working on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am sixty years old and fat, and you don't want me to "pull a Robert Jordan" on you and deny you your book. Okay, I've got the message. You don't want me doing anything except A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. Ever. (Well, maybe it's okay if I take a leak once in a while?)
https://grrumblers.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/quotes-of-the-week-grrm-brandon-sanderson/
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
All of you over sensitive clods whining about the phrase 'pulling a Jordan' need to just step back and look at it. Jordan had a good arc supposedly planned out. 3-4 books.
He started making good cash on his books.....and suddenly started writing by the pound. Spending an entire page describing a few blades of grass or a barmaids perfect breasts. He stretched the series either intentionally or because of a horribly inflated ego and the lack of a decent editor who would slap him around and cut his bullshit.
So he turned a 3 book series into a 13+ book series......or from another viewpoint....a guaranteed lifelong income. If you read his blog posts or his interviews as the series dragged on, he got progressively more full of himself and felt entitled to fan adoration. He was an ubergeek rockstar...and managed to milk it up until his death.
So yes, pulling a Jordan is a bit heartless in that it refers to not finishing before dying.....but it is as much if not more about the attitude that made that fact a reality.
It's not Jordan's fault he got amyloidosis, and he certainly never had any intention of creating an "interminable, never ending cash cow". It is true he got a bit lost around 7-8, but he pulled out of it quite nicely before he died - before he was even diagnosed, I believe. It was a mistake, or a series of them, that lead to problems in those books, not intent.
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