Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The Winds of Winter The Winds of Winter is the forthcoming sixth
novel in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.
The previous installment, A Dance with Dragons, covered less story than Martin intended, omitting
at least one planned large battle sequence and leaving several character threads ending
in cliffhangers. Martin intends to resolve these cliffhangers "very early" in The Winds
of Winter, saying "I'm going to open with the two big battles that I was building up
to, the battle in the ice and the battle at Meereen—the battle of Slaver's Bay. And
then take it from there." A Victarion chapter will begin five minutes
after the end of A Dance with Dragons, taking place on the eve of the Iron Islanders' surprise
attack on the cities in Slaver's Bay. An Arianne sample chapter that Martin released on his
website shows her heading for Griffin's Roost to see the young boy who is calling himself
Aegon. Martin said in March 2012 that the final two
novels will take readers farther north than any of the previous books, and that the Others
will appear in the book. Viewpoint characters
George R. R. Martin confirmed the following characters to have POV chapters in The Winds
of Winter: Sansa Stark, one chapter was removed from
A Dance with Dragons in June 2010 Arya Stark, one chapter was removed from A
Dance with Dragons in June 2010 Arianne Martell, two chapters were removed
from A Dance with Dragons in June 2010, one sample chapter appeared on Martin's website
in January 2013 Aeron Greyjoy, one chapter was removed from
A Dance with Dragons in July 2010 Theon Greyjoy, one sample chapter appeared
on Martin's website in December 2011 It also appears in the UK paperback edition of A Dance
with Dragons (Part Two) Victarion Greyjoy, portions of one chapter
were first read at TIFF Bell Lightbox in March 2012
Tyrion Lannister, one chapter was read at Eastercon in April 2012, and one at Worldcon
in August 2013. Barristan Selmy, one chapter was released
in the U.S. paperback edition of A Dance With Dragons
Background and publication The Winds of Winter was originally intended,
in the very early stages of the series, to be the final installment of A Song of Ice
and Fire (then conceived as a trilogy). Following his expansion of the series, Martin eventually
concluded it would be succeeded by one final novel, A Dream of Spring. By June 2010, Martin
had finished four chapters for The Winds of Winter from the viewpoints of Sansa Stark,
Arya Stark, and Arianne Martell. In July 2010, he added an Aeron Greyjoy chapter that had
been moved from A Dance with Dragons to The Winds of Winter, accumulating around 100 completed
manuscript pages. Following the publication of A Dance with Dragons in the summer of 2011,
Martin announced his return to writing the series in January 2012, having spent the intervening
time on his U.S. and overseas book publicity tours and attending various conventions. He
continued to work, with his two co-authors Elio Garcia and Linda Antonnsen on the planned
illustrated series companion guide The World of Ice and Fire concordance and Westeros history,
which at one time he wanted to have completed by the end of 2011. He also worked on a Westeros
story, the fourth Tales of Dunk and Egg novella, (working title: "The She-Wolves of Winterfell")
that will eventually find anthology publication elsewhere. A year after that eventual publication,
the story and the three previously published Dunk and Egg tales will be collected and published
in the U. S. by Bantam Spectra as a stand-alone fix-up novel.
In December 2011 Martin posted a Theon Greyjoy viewpoint chapter from The Winds of Winter;
he also announced that another sample chapter would be included at the end of the North-American
paperback version of A Dance with Dragons, released on October 29, 2013. (International
paperback editions of A Dance with Dragons published a year earlier did not include a
new, as yet unpublished sample chapter.) In the first quarter of 2012, Martin read new
chapters of other characters at public events, including the chapters of Victarion Greyjoy
and Tyrion Lannister. Martin continued work editing anthologies and completing a large,
highly-detailed series atlas The Lands of Ice and Fire, which was published in October
2012. Martin published another sample chapter from Arianne Martell's POV on his website
in January 2013. Martin believes the two last volumes of the
series will be big books of 1500+ manuscript pages each. By October 2012, 400 pages of
the sixth novel had been written, although Martin considers only the first 200 as "really
finished", the rest still needing revisions. Martin hopes to finish The Winds of Winter
much faster than his troublesome fifth Ice and Fire novel. In the past, Martin has angered
some of his fan base for repeatedly estimating his publication dates too optimistically;
therefore, he has refrained from making hard estimates for The Winds of Winter's final
release date. A realistic estimate for him for completing the sixth novel might be expected
at three years, at a good writing pace, but ultimately the book "will be done when it's
done". Martin has acknowledged his concerns about the final novel not being completed
by the time the HBO series Game of Thrones finally catches up in its story line to the
novels. He does not intend to separate characters by geography again, as he was forced to do
because of the unpublishable length of A Feast for Crows' original manuscript. But, as Martin
stated in a 2011 interview, "Three years from now when I'm sitting on 1,800 pages of manuscript
with no end in sight, who the hell knows". In January 2014, Martin’s UK publisher,
Jane Johnson, declared on Twitter that the book would “certainly” not be published
before 2015.