Not really a big surprise. But still, a sobering reminder of the current state of the book series.
My theory is that the botched GoT series took the wind out of his sails. He just doesn’t have the drive anymore to complete it.
“…oh shit, they hated my ending.”
I believe the ending could’ve been more or less fine if the showrunners gave it time. If we got there in 3 or so seasons instead of one, there could be character development to support it and they would have time to do justice to other things they rushed as well.
They used his ending without getting there properly.
I’m not sure about 3 seasons, but yeah, it needed more time to cook. I think the acceleration was twofold. The obvious is that they ran out of source material to lean on and just didn’t have the chops to keep up. The other is something I picked up on I think my second watch through, and then specifically looked for it on the next watch: in early seasons, a lot of the cuts to different locales are also jumps forward in time as well. By the time season 7 happens the list of locales is greatly truncated, and the cuts become more and more jarring. I think my least favorite sequence in the entire series is the wight hunt beyond the wall. We gets lots of leisurely walking and talking scenes. Then shit goes down, Gendry runs back to Eastwatch (covering who knows how much ground before collapsing), then the raven to Dragonstone, then the winged cavalry arrives… days’ worth of (in)action all in the space of like 20 minutes. It feels like it was on fast forward, and I think that’s due in part to the lack of available locations to help mask the jump cuts.
And then season 8 did season 8 things.
Yeah during the last 2-3 seasons I was joking to my SO that they unlocked fast travel lol.
I mean to be fair, the foreshadowing was there and GRRM would have done an infinitely better job at writing it than D&D did.
It’s also not clear which parts D&D added, and which parts they took out. It could also very well be that Cersei was supposed to fill the “Mad Queen” arc, and not necessarily Daenerys.
Ultimately though, the show was just so, so rushed towards the end. That is what ruined it. If GRRM ever finishes ASOIAF (a big if lol) it will be much better done, not rushed, and actually make sense.
I would agree, except that he had already let quite a long time go before writing the last book. It didn’t seem like there was much wind in his sales left to begin with. I suspect that plus how much everybody hated the TV show’s final season turned him off it completely.
Could you imagine having that on your conscience as a showrunner? “I treated your work with so little respect you don’t love it anymore”
I’m sure they’re crying all the way to the bank…
Well, they lost their Disney gig as a response to that ending.
I’ve come to the same conclusion.
I gave up on ASOIAF a long time ago. Even if he finishes WoW by accident, we won’t get a ADoS. At least not from him.
So I adjusted my hopes accordingly. Fire and Blood part 2 would be nice. Or one more Dunk and Egg story.
He loves writing worlds more than characters.
The reason got sucked aside from dnd is he wrote himself in a corner. “Mereneese knot” forget where I heard that describes this issue of getting all the characters together and across the sea in a way that made sense.
It couldn’t, then all the hype and everything else and fuck all I wouldn’t want to write it either.
He captured lightning in a bottle for a short period then it grew beyond control.
Good article on the Meereenese Knot: https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/untangling-the-meereenese-knot-part-i-who-poisoned-the-locusts/
Fun read, thanks for sharing!
Will give it a read! Looks interesting.
The show ended is such a fucking stupid way, it left a sour taste is my mouth, and I felt I wasted years being so invested in such a dogshit ending. Fuck GRRM and fuck D&D for both killing such an amazing story with such a fucking stupid ending.
I’m reading on Reddit even, that most of the internet refuse to rewatch that show becuase of how dumb it ends. No other show has left the zeitgeist so quickly
most of the internet refuse to rewatch that show becuase of how dumb it ends.
I’m in this boat. I tried to rewatch it and I got to the second season before I started to remember all the dumb, stupid, and uncaring endings for the characters. I couldn’t finish it. I would just be reminded on how much they dropped the ball. I bought shirts, bottles of liquor, and who knows how much more Game of Thrones swag. Now I can’t even have a rewatch event or nothing.
There was even a few YouTubers that I got into because of Game of Thrones. That show has burned so many fans goodwill by rushing to finish the show, so d&d could get on Star Wars. It makes me happy that Disney cancelled their project since they messed up Game of Thrones so much.
This is one of those times that you acknowledge you’re out of gas, and hand off the writing to a team of younger, competent, creatives. Sweeten the pot by offering proportional revenue-share.
It’s been done before.
I’m surprised it was that recent. I’ve basically given up on ever getting to read Winds of Winter, let alone the rest of the series. He’s what, 75ish? And he was 63ish when this came out.
sigh
Edit: I swear I did not see the post in [email protected] until after making this comment lol.
Not sure if the website changed its headline but linked in this article is a link to https://www.gamesradar.com/george-r-r-martin-game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-update/ from Nov 2023 when he first said this.
So we’ve know this for the better part of a year. His more recent interview from a few weeks ago is that he wishes he was finished. Specifically that he could have written it all first, then publish each book.
(Although if I recall originally the story was meant to be just three books, but as he wrote it expanded to eventually become the current/planned seven. Although the length of these books has increased so what is “a book” really?)
No, they didn’t change the article title. I just picked out one specific detail from the article for this title because the main title was stuff we already knew. I didn’t know he hadn’t written any ASOIAF content in over a year and a half.
