Monday, October 11, 2010

Heading Towards Dragons

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Having just gotten into George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series in the past several months, I'm new to the game when it comes to the constant semi-announcements instantly forgotten with regards to the fifth book in the series, A Dance with Dragons. The fourth book in the series, A Feast For Crows, came out in the Autumn of 2005, and apparently Martin's been promising the next book ever since with empty promise after empty promise and his fans have gone a little berserker over it.

I myself am only a little over halfway through the third book, A Storm of Swords, and having read them back to back to back I'm feeling a little blown out to be honest, so I'm not in a big rush to even hurry to the fourth book yet, much less a fifth, right now. I'm going to need a little bit of a break. (The fact that Michael Cunningham's new book is out helps. Must get to it!) It's not that I'm not thoroughly enjoying the world Martin's created and the stories he's telling and am not entirely wrapped up in the fates of all these awesome characters. I am. It's just been several months of dragon eggs and heads on sticks and boy kings and more dwarf-on-whore action than you can shake a stick at and I need to think upon something else for a wee while.

But still, it'd be nice to know there's forward momentum with the books so when I inevitably catch up I can have a little bit of faith that the story's actually heading towards something and not rotting on the vine. Hence this news making me happy:

"Good news from New York Comic Con's Del Rey / Spectra panel: George R.R. Martin is just 5 chapters away from the end of A Dance with Dragons!

... One of the first questions was, of course, "What's the deal with Dance with Dragons?" Here's what [Spectra senior editor Anne Groell] had to say:

We're hoping to have a finished manuscript by Christmas. He's told me he has five chapters left and bits of each chapter are done. He really wants it done by the end of the year. We really—I mean really—want to announce the pub date in January."
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The fact that the HBO series starts up next year probably has a lot to do with this - if they can cross-promote a new book alongside the series then there will probably be a lot of happy executives co-mingling with the happy fans. Everybody's happy! Except for Catelyn. Nothing but suffering for her!
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