Season three is out as a boxed set ten days from now.
Ten days? Monday in the UK, Tuesday in the USA.
Sweet trailer** spoiler omitted **
Siouxsie. Cities in Dust. Nice choice in music.
I just got the dvd, so pardon if i'm late but... what exactly did Poddrick DO to those ladies of the evening...?!?!?
I fell of my chair laughing.
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Sean Bean 'heads' cast - I lolled :)
I'm still waiting for Winds of Winter...
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As are we all, Icy.
Actually, I'm waiting for Elizabeth Bear's Steles of the Sky. Which has been edited, laid out, and quite possibly even printed. So yay for that!
I am 99.99% sure that GRRM created the names because he thought they sounded right, not because of a knowledge of "protoindoeuropean" language
STELES OF THE SKY hits on 8 April. The first two books were VERY good.
THE WINDS OF WINTER is currently expected by the publishers in the latter part of 2015. Hopefully GRRM should give us a more robust progress update in the next few weeks.
Ugh..another year to go ..maybe..ah well
And yes, you saw what you think you saw.
Whazzat?
Whazzat?
Nevermind... shoulda looked at the link...
HBO confirms that GAME OF THRONES will last 7 seasons in total.
And yes, that means the TV show overtaking the books is almost inevitable.
Maybe we will have a trek liek divergence in reality
there is GRRM books cannon
and there is HBO cannon.
The divergence started when Ned Stark beheaded the wrong Black Watch deseter
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I'm glad that at least he told them how it should end. Worse case scenario and the tv show could give closure if he is not able to finish it
I guess that means by the end, those of us who only watch the shows will be the ones holding the spoilers!
Mwuahahaha!
I guess I have mixed feelings about this. I have been reading the books since book one, and would have preferred the book series to conclude before the TV.
On the other hand, I really like the TV series. And it would be a lot of work to adapt Book 4 and 5 into two seasons...There just isn't enough material for Sansa, Jon, and Bran for more than one season.
The EW article did float the idea of a possible 8th season, Wert. :)
HBO and the producers have already said that won't happen, although I suppose a half season delay (moving GOT to September versus April) is probably not outside the realm of possibility
The EW article did float the idea of a possible 8th season, Wert. :)
The head of HBO said that the longest they've ever gone on a show before is 7 or 8 seasons, but he didn't mention that the only shows they've done for 8 seasons have been comedies on a relatively low budget (ENTOURAGE, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM). Of their long-form dramas, only TRUE BLOOD has gone 7 seasons. Even the mighty SOPRANOS only managed 6 (though they fudged it a bit with a double-length final season stripped over two years).
Note that after he said that, he again says that 7 seasons is the plan for GoT ("It's a long run for us,") and that throughout the rest of the article everyone keeps saying 7.
And yes, GRRM has told them how it ends. Benioff, Weiss and Cogman flew to Santa Fe and spent a whole week at GRRM's house, discussing how the rest of the story will unfold:
"Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character."
Yeah, I know. I was mostly agreeing with you, Wert; just throwing it out for conversational purposes. True Blood has really dipped in quality the last couple of seasons, anyway. I think as someone mentioned above, book 4 and 5 really could be one season. I try not to be "that guy" when it comes to being an entitled reader, but his pace is getting really frustrating to me.
I am still hopeful Winds of Winter will be released before the main season that covers that. I think I read elsewhere from Wert that a 2015 release has been predicted?
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Yeah, end of 2015 -- in a year and a half. In the meantime, if it follows true to form, it will be pushed back another six months, and then another year, and then two... I've stopped reading because, honestly, I'm pretty sure he's not going to finish the series. But that's up to GRRM; his books, his pace; no one can reasonably tell him otherwise.
Mrs Gersen LOVES the show (like, LOVES it), but she doesn't really care about the books -- she told me she'll be just as happy if not more so if HBO goes ahead and writes the rest of the storyline.
Well, I still enjoy reading the books and I hope that the TV series will actually force Martin to pick up the pace again.
Feast and Dance are weaker books than A Storm of Swords, certainly. But given how good the latter book is, that is pretty faint damning. I really enjoyed Feast on the last reread of the series. I haven't reread Dance and probably won't until Winds of Winter has a release date, but I also didn't think it was so bad.
I think Winds of Winter will be a great book, and I feel optimistic about a 2015 release date (which would be 4 years). Feast and Dance were problematic in that the author basically had to scrap all his plans (and a lot of writing) which led to a huge delay with that volume. In contrast, Winds of Winter is basically back on schedule, and as he nears the conclusion, characters should start doubling up in places allowing faster narration of events, not to mention we should be seeing a lot of attrition on side plots and less important characters.
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ADWD is an interesting book. It does, contrary to hyperbole, push forwards quite a few storylines substantially. However, because of the timeline issues this is not constant for all characters, and some characters only get 2-3 chapters whilst others get 9-12, but they almost seem to get the same amount of development (i.e. the lesser-appearing characters get very busy chapters and the more frequently-appearing ones get slower or even 'filler' chapters). There's definitely a weakness to ADWD stemming from the split, and that's even more pronounced in AFFC which feels weirdly claustraphobic as a result, as if it's happening in a bubble unconnected to the wider world. ADWD is also odd in that it's very focused on past events and revelations about them. Whilst all the books have expanded on the series backstory, none of them come close to what ADWD does. I did some research for the publishers recently which required rereading all five books and counting statistics, and ADWD has four times as many major backstory/mystery revelations as any other book in the series, a lot of which is important to the present-day storyline as well.
However, almost none of that material is present in the TV series (or, if it is, it's fairly trivial), which gives them quite a lot of material they can shave off.
The best solution is to read AFFC and ADWD as one super-book (there's some great lists online showing how to do this), at which point they both improve immeasurably.
It's the timeline not being constant that I'm curious about. Going by the most recent preview, season 4 is going to contain material from books 4, 5 and 6. That said, I always expected them to integrate books 4 and 5, if only because I couldn't imagine "Dani, Jon Snow and Tyrion are your favorite characters? Well, you can just ignore season 4, but you'll love season 5, we promise!" as an even slightly sane adaptation plan.
Kirth, I think you could well be right about GRRM finishing the series, I just don't see reading 6 (or however many) books in an unfinished series as a waste of time if I enjoyed them.
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ADWD is an interesting book. It does, contrary to hyperbole, push forwards quite a few storylines substantially. However, because of the timeline issues this is not constant for all characters, and some characters only get 2-3 chapters whilst others get 9-12, but they almost seem to get the same amount of development (i.e. the lesser-appearing characters get very busy chapters and the more frequently-appearing ones get slower or even 'filler' chapters). There's definitely a weakness to ADWD stemming from the split, and that's even more pronounced in AFFC which feels weirdly claustraphobic as a result, as if it's happening in a bubble unconnected to the wider world. ADWD is also odd in that it's very focused on past events and revelations about them. Whilst all the books have expanded on the series backstory, none of them come close to what ADWD does. I did some research for the publishers recently which required rereading all five books and counting statistics, and ADWD has four times as many major backstory/mystery revelations as any other book in the series, a lot of which is important to the present-day storyline as well.
However, almost none of that material is present in the TV series (or, if it is, it's fairly trivial), which gives them quite a lot of material they can shave off.
The best solution is to read AFFC and ADWD as one super-book (there's some great lists online showing how to do this), at which point they both improve immeasurably.
If I remember correctly, there was a character with just one episode in ADWD -
Which was annoying. But yes, I do think reading ADWD and AFFC will be much better if they are read chronologically. I wonder if, after the series is done, someone will publish those two books again with a different distributions of chapters. I'll almost certainly buy something like that.
Now G.R.R. Martin is saying in a Vanity Fair article that following his time with the producers he sees 8 seasons, or at least a split 7th like they did with Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.
Someone isn't on message...
The EW article is brand new, the interview happened the day before it was posted. The Vanity Fair interview is about a month old, maybe more. It's clearly a decision HBO and Weiss and Benioff have reached just in the last week or so. GRRM hasn't commented on that story since it broke.
To be clear, I was saying George was off message, not you. It DOES seem he came from that meeting with different expectations from that of HBO.
GRRM worked in Hollywood for quite a spell. I think he knew going in that if the show would be sucessful, he couldn't necessarily expect unlimited time to finish the books.
As for changing the endings of the books, I would imagine that would be quite hard. No doubt scripts for Season 5 already exist in an advanced state, and after 4 seasons of being relatively faithful to the books, making the tv show and books have completely different endings would be perhaps tough. Although certainly I am expecting differences, if only because a lot of minor stuff has been reworked.
In the article he admits that the existence of the show adds quite a bit of pressure. He mentions the idea of a prequel season as an idea, based on Dunk and Egg or his newest short story in Dangerous Women.
Realistically, I'm with Wert. I think the chances of HBO being willing to stretch 8 seasons, or split the 7th is unlikely, and doing a prequel is even less likely.
Maisie Williams started the same age as Arya, but she gets older every year, and a lot less time is taking place in Westeros. They can't make her look a kid forever...
I'm glad they have the ending and i doubt it will be much different than the books. GRRM Martin just needs to finish it. Based on his Blog it seems he always has some new project or is traveling somewhere or has a giant Ape for an excuse for not finishing. Maybe this will light a fire under him and that way we get very similiar plotlines/added characters.
Patrick Rothfuss needs to do the same thing. Publishers in the future really need to put more pressure on authors to finish series in a timely manner.
Keep in mind he had to spend a good chunk of that first year after Dance on book signing and other press tours. It's not like the publishers haven't also been making him do stuff that's not writing.
While I agree that GRRM has taken a long time between books it is a process to craft a well written tale so while rushing it may get it done faster that will not guarantee that we will like the finished product.
Yes -- witness Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, and how good it could have been. Then again, we have to consider Robert Jordan as well -- in which case there is no finished product.