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Finally! the GRR Martin 4th volume is ready

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sh_wulff
Post subject: Finally! the GRR Martin 4th volume is ready
Posted: Wed 08 Jun , 2005 4:49 am
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and as I was unable to find a thread for GRRmartin fans here it is

I will post no spoilers

and if people want to do a group reading why not join me?

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Posted: Wed 08 Jun , 2005 8:21 am
of Vinyamar
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Unfortunately, it looks like a total of seven books for this series. I have the first three but had decided not to read them until the fourth (and final!) book came out. Now it looks like we'll be waiting a few more years yet. Not sure if I can handle reading half a series. I'd rather wait till they're all out and read them as a complete set.

Here's the letter in its entirety from his website:
Quote:
No, I haven't finished writing everything I wanted to include in A FEAST FOR CROWS. I have wrapped up a whole bunch of characters and storylines since the last update in January, but "a whole bunch" does not equate to "all."

And I was facing another problem as well: the sheer size of the book.

All of the books in this series have been big, mind you. A GAME OF THRONES weighed in at 1088 pages in manuscript, not counting the appendices. A CLASH OF KINGS was even longer at 1184 pages, not
counting the appendices. And A STORM OF SWORDS measured a gargantuan 1521 pages in manuscript, not counting the (etc).

Any publisher will tell you that a book as big as A STORM OF SWORDS is a production nightmare, and STORM did indeed cause problems for many of my publishers around the world. In some languages it was divided into two, three, or even four volumes. Bantam published STORM in a single volume in the United States, but not without difficulty. Pretty much everyone agreed that it would be a really good thing if the fourth volume in the series came in somewhat shorter than STORM, so I set out with the idea of delivering a FEAST closer in length to A CLASH OF KINGS.

Alas for good intentions. In hindsight, I should have known better. The story makes its own demands, as Tolkien once said, and my story kept demanding to get bigger and more complicated.

I passed A CLASH OF KINGS last year, and still had plenty more to write. By January, I had more than 1300 pages, and still had storylines unfinished. About three weeks ago I hit 1527 pages of final draft, surpassing A STORM OF SWORDS... but I also had another hundred or so pages of roughs and incomplete chapters, as well as other chapters sketched out but entirely unwritten. That was when I realized that the light I'd seen at the end of the tunnel was actually the headlight of an onrushing locomotive.

And that's why my publishers and I, after much discussion and weighing of alternatives, have decided to split the narrative into two books (printing in microtype on onion skin paper and giving each reader a magnifying glass was not considered feasible, and I was reluctant to make the sort of deep cuts that would have been necessary to get the book down to a more publishable length, which I felt would have compromised the story).

The first plan was simply to lop the text in half. In that scenario, I would finish the last few chapters in as short a length (and time) as possible. That would have produced a story of maybe 1650 to 1700 pages in manuscript, which we would simply have broken into two chunks of roughly equal length and published as A FEAST FOR CROWS, Part One and A FEAST FOR CROWS, Part Two.

We decided not to do that. It was my feeling -- and I pushed hard for this, so if you don't like the solution, blame me, not my publishers -- that we were better off telling all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters. Cutting the novel in half would have produced two half-novels; our approach will produce two novels taking place simultaneously, but set hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, and involving different casts of characters (with some overlap).

The division has been done, and it think it works quite well. The upshot is, A FEAST FOR CROWS is now moving into production. It is still a long book, but not too long; about the same size as A GAME OF THRONES. The focus in FEAST will be on Westeros, King's Landing, the riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. More than that I won't say.

Meanwhile, all the characters and stories removed from FEAST are moving right into A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, which will focus on events in the east and north. All the chapters I have not yet finished and/or begun are moving into DANCE. I think this is very good, if truth be told, since it will give me the room to complete those arcs as I had originally intended, rather than trying to tie them up quickly in a chapter or two so I could deliver the massively late Big FEAST.

So there it is. I know some of you may be disappointed, especially when you buy A FEAST FOR CROWS and discover that your favorite character does not appear, but given the realities I think this was the best solution... and the more I look at it, the more convinced I am that these two parallel novels, when taken together, will actually tell the story better than one big book.

And if there are those who don't agree, and still want their Big FEAST with all the trimmings set out on one huge table... well, there's an easy fix. Get both books, razor the pages out with an Exacto knife, interleave the chapters as you think best, and bring the towering stack of text that results to your favorite bookbinder... and presto, chango the Big FEAST will live again.

As for me, I am getting back to work. There's good news on that front too -- A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is half-done!!!

(And before anyone asks, yes indeed, this development means that Parris was right all along. It will now probably require seven books to complete the story).

—George R.R. Martin, May 29, 2005

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Sassafras
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Posted: Wed 08 Jun , 2005 6:02 pm
through the looking glass
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:rage:

Let's see. I've been waiting for A Feast for Crows to arrive for four bloody years. Since February 2001!!

He wants me to wait another four or more years to find out what happens with the Daenerys plot line!

At this rate I will be in my dotage before the series is finished!

:Q :D :Q


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Griffon64
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Posted: Sat 11 Jun , 2005 5:50 pm
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Reminds me of waiting for the latest Jean M Auel novel with some trepidation, since the series got increasingly tepid after hooking me in with its vivid descriptions of prehistoric life ( there is somelike like too much description, of all different kinds of thing :Q :D ) ... and when it came out after about 10 million years, it stank. Sucked. Was horrible.

That long wait.

For such drivel.

:rage:

Authors shouldn't be allowed to let readers wait :P

Or write drivel :D

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Sassafras
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Posted: Sat 11 Jun , 2005 6:44 pm
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The first one, 'Clan of the Cave Bear" was a good read. I really liked her speculation on Neanderthal culture.

The second one, 'Valley of the Horses' started to get a wee bit tedious as Ayla became less multi-dimensional and more your standard female-heroine-in-cro-magnon-adventureland.

The third one, 'The Mammoth Hunters" was awful drivel. I stopped reading it half-way through. I don't remember much expect that she had lots of boring sex with her homo sapiens mate.

I've never bothered to pick up any of the sequels. She had one well-executed idea and then proceeded to beat it into the ground until nothing but detritus remained.

A similar fate has befallen Terry Goodkind, Anne Rice and the unmentionable Robert Jordan.

:D


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sh_wulff
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Posted: Tue 14 Jun , 2005 12:36 pm
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well perhaps I am an optimist.... :D

and who knows...it may fimish within the next 10 years

as I only discovered this series this year the waiting has not been thayt long for me

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TreeMos
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Posted: Thu 20 Oct , 2005 2:21 pm
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Any one in England get the 4th book yet? It was susposed to come out on the 17th over there. We poor Americans are stuck until the 2nd week of November (unless you ordered overseas ofcourse). I'd love to see some impressions and un-spoilerish reviews. Been waiting for this book way too long....


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Estel
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Posted: Thu 20 Oct , 2005 5:32 pm
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I'm not going to bother until all seven are published. I love these books, and don't want that feeling of "aww shit, I have to wait?" again.

One thing I will say - I'd rather he take a long time and put out some more fantastic books than go the way of Jordan and just keep going like a machine with the books getting more and more boring and less well written. Jordan just did it for the money in the end. At least we know that Martin actually cares about his characters. I love the fact that he's not willing to sacrifice the story with a quick ending. It gives me hope that the last books in his series will be as good, if not better, than the first.

:cheers: to Martin for caring more about the stories than the money.


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sh_wulff
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Posted: Mon 24 Oct , 2005 12:47 am
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*****spoiler free review******


the scope has cahged...it is samller , more character driven

still an excellent read though darker even than previous

see more of Locales such as Dorne and Oldtown closer

I could not put the book down from when I got it and finished reading it as the sun came up

anyways will be back in a week or so so I can talk things over

and yes I want my ADWD now ( on my re-read of ASOIF now...lots of details and theories)

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