If you were one of the many hoping that maybe, just maybe, George R.R. Martin has been ripping through page after page writing the sixth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series and is almost ready to share it with the world, you’re about to be very sad.
The book—entitled The Winds of Winter—was possibly going to be published in 2015, but Harper Collins has put the kibosh on that already. “I have no information on likely delivery,” said Jane Johnson, Martin’s publisher at Harper Collins. “These are increasingly complex books and require immense amounts of concentration to write. Fans really ought to appreciate that the length of these monsters is equivalent to two or three novels by other writers.”
But, like…come on. We’ve been waiting so patiently. Just hurry up and finish the book already.
According to The Guardian, a different book series will take its place:
“Instead, readers will have to comfort themselves with an illustrated edition of three previously anthologised novellas set in the world of Westeros.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place nearly a century before the bloody events of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, when the Iron Throne was still held by the Targaryens. Out in October, it is a compilation of the first three official prequel novellas to the series, The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight, never before collected, and now set for release in a new illustrated edition.”
The delay in publication seems to be making it ever more likely that the Game of Thrones TV series is going to pass where Martin is in writing the books, which will flip the whole spoiler culture of the series right on its head. Honestly, though, it’s kind of nice Martin isn’t just blitzing through these final books. If you’re going to write an 800 page book, you might as well do it right.
[via EW]
