1269 réponses à ce sujet

[TJPags]

KenKenpachi wrote...

Sounds nice, saddly it reminds me of the fact we have no idea how long it will be till the next book

I'm thinking somewhere around 2017 sounds about right. 

I'm torn on ordering aDwD.  I've refused to buy hardcovers since Clash, and have waited for the paperback edition as a protest to his glacial pace of writing.  I now have a Kindle, so I can get it whenever I want, and it won't be the hardcover.  But it is kind of dumb to refuse to buy the book until a certain date as a protest, since I will still buy it.

Ughh, why can't he just write consistently like a normal author?  Especially since he is quite good at it.

[naughty99]

TJPags wrote...

KenKenpachi wrote...

Sounds nice, saddly it reminds me of the fact we have no idea how long it will be till the next book

I'm thinking somewhere around 2017 sounds about right. 

I don't know about that.

I'm pretty sure that A Dream of Spring will take GRRM less time to write than Dance With Dragons.

The Winds of Winter, probably slightly less or the same.

The reason is because in any story it is always most challenging to write the second act. (what happens in the middle, after the beginning but before the end)

Once the "middle" is finished, if you did a good job, then the end is always much easier to write.

[TJPags]

naughty99 wrote...

TJPags wrote...

KenKenpachi wrote...

Sounds nice, saddly it reminds me of the fact we have no idea how long it will be till the next book

I'm thinking somewhere around 2017 sounds about right. 

I don't know about that.

I'm pretty sure that A Dream of Spring will take GRRM less time to write than Dance With Dragons.

The Winds of Winter, probably slightly less or the same.

The reason is because in any story it is always most challenging to write the second act. (what happens in the middle, after the beginning but before the end)

Once the "middle" is finished, if you did a good job, then the end is always much easier to write.

That's normally true.  But this is GRRM, the man who does not use notes to attempt to write a 7 book, 6000 page story.  And who rewrites chapters constantly.  And who's release times have increased consistently from book to book.  And who is now actively involved in the series, among his other side projects.  And who . .

Well, you get the point.  For the record, I have no problem with any author being involved in side projects, and I wish more fantasy series would be made into movies or tv series or whatever, with the author involved in some capacity.  I also have no problem with authors having private lives.  It's just that, IMO, GRRM takes his writing as a side job, almost.  At least, that's the impression I get.

I just have no confidence in his producing a timely product.  I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

[Addai]

ADWD Day is almost upon us!  I checked my Nook library this morning to see if, perchance, B & N had released it early- no such luck.  Amazon.com has started shipping, so I bet some of the hardcover buyers will get it before me.  *bitter*

This is a good interview with GRRM in The Atlantic.  Definitely spoilerific for the new book, so I'll pull out a couple quotes.  The author does a brief review of ADWD, then Martin talks about his writing process and theory on stories.

Atlantic on ADWD:

The aspects of Martin's work that have endeared him to fans are abundant here—rich world building, narrative twists and turns, and gritty depictions of the human struggle for power. Characters who were sorely missed in Feast—Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and Jon Snow—make up more than a third of the novel, and Martin is wise enough to give us at least a chapter from (almost) everyone else.
Weaknesses that have plagued Martin's previous books are also present: too much repetition, unexceptional prose, and characters who use the same idioms (and have sex in exactly the same manner) no matter their ethnicity, social class, or continent. But while A Dance with Dragons cries out for better editing, it remains entirely engrossing. Martin has hidden so many clues and red herrings throughout his previous volumes that it is a thrill to see certain pieces fall into place.

Martin on writing:

I've always agreed with William Faulkner—he said that the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about. I've always taken that as my guiding principle, and the rest is just set dressing. I mean, you can have a dragon, you can have a science fiction story set on a distant planet with aliens and starships, you can have a western about a gunslinger, or a mystery novel about a private eye, or even literary fiction—and ultimately you're still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself. So that's the way I try to approach this thing. And while I may work within a genre, I've never liked to be bound by them. I have a lot of fun in frustrating genre expectations, using a bit of this or a bit of that, and doing something that hasn't been done before.

On sex:

I have gotten letters over the years from readers who don't like the sex, they say it's "gratuitous." I think that word gets thrown around and what it seems to mean is "I didn't like it." This person didn't want to read it, so it's gratuitous to that person. And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things—whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous.

On book six:

I've been burned too much by that, so I'll just say... it will be done when it's done.

[Brockololly]

Addai67 wrote...
On book six:

I've been burned too much by that, so I'll just say... it will be done when it's done.

At least GRRM is admitting now that he's on Valve Time.

I'm still only about 1/2 through A Feast for Crows so I might hold off on getting ADwD tomorrow.  Then again, I might swing by Barnes and Noble and pick it up just to have...isn't there supposed to be a map of the Free Cities in it for the first time?

[TJPags]

Addai67 wrote...

On book six:

I've been burned too much by that, so I'll just say... it will be done when it's done.

He kind of burned himself.  I quote from my mass market paperback of FFC, published and purchased in October, 2006:

"Hey, wait a minute!" some of you may be saying about now.  "Wait a minute, wait a minute!  Where's Dany and the dragons?  Where's Tyrion?  We hardly saw Jon Snow.  That can't be all of it. . . ."
Well, no.  There's more to come.  Another book as big as this one.
I did not forget to write about the other characters.  Far from it.  I wrote lots about them.  Pages and pages and pages.  Chapters and more chapters.  I was still writing when it dawned on me that the book had become too big to publish in a single volume . . . and I wasn't close to finished yet.  To tell the story that I wanted to tell, I was going to have to cut the book in two.
The simplest way to do that would have been to take what I had, chop it in half around the middle, and end with "To Be Continued".  The more I thought about that, however, the more I felt that the readers would be better served by a book that told all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters.  So that's the route I chose to take.
Tyrion, Jon, Dany, Stannis and Melisandre, Davos Seaworth, and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year (I devoutly hope) in A Dance with Dragons, which will focus on events along the Wall and across the sea, just as the present book focused on King's Landing.

- George R. R. Martin
June, 2005

The original hardcover of FFC was released November, 2005, the paperback (which includes that part I quoted, btw) in October, 2006.  Essentially, therefore, the quoted part was already innaccurate when I read in, having been written more than a year earlier.  SoS was released, btw, in 2000.  CoK was 1998, and GoT was 1996.

Since that snippet was published in the paperback edition in 2006, there have been several release dates mentioned, several "I'm almost done"s by GRRM, and several deadlines that have come and gone.  There have also been several "leave me alone you whiners, I'll get to it when I get to it" type comments he's made.

So, to the extent he's been burned, I place the torch squarely in his own hand.  That said, my new kindle will likely DL this book in the next several weeks, once I finish reading House Name by Michelle West, and do a reread of CoK, SoS and FFC.  Probably, anyway.  I may just go get a library card instead. 

[mrmike_1949]

naughty99 wrote...

TJPags wrote...

KenKenpachi wrote...

Sounds nice, saddly it reminds me of the fact we have no idea how long it will be till the next book

I'm thinking somewhere around 2017 sounds about right. 

I don't know about that.

I'm pretty sure that A Dream of Spring will take GRRM less time to write than Dance With Dragons.

The Winds of Winter, probably slightly less or the same.

The reason is because in any story it is always most challenging to write the second act. (what happens in the middle, after the beginning but before the end)

Once the "middle" is finished, if you did a good job, then the end is always much easier to write.

DOn't get too optimistic about Martin ever finishing the series (if he even intends to) he's 63 years old, somewhat overweight,and has a sedentary life style. He writes slow, and ....... he is starting to remind me of Robert Jordan, and his books are starting to resemble Jordan's later books

[naughty99]

Are we going to be able to buy DWD on Kindle at midnight?

I was planning to go to the bookstore tomorrow AM, but if I can buy it now electronically, I'm inclined to do so.

[Addai]

Brockololly wrote...

Addai67 wrote...
On book six:

I've been burned too much by that, so I'll just say... it will be done when it's done.

At least GRRM is admitting now that he's on Valve Time.

I'm still only about 1/2 through A Feast for Crows so I might hold off on getting ADwD tomorrow.  Then again, I might swing by Barnes and Noble and pick it up just to have...isn't there supposed to be a map of the Free Cities in it for the first time?

Uh... I think so.  I got up early to blearily download my Nook version, and I sort of blew past the maps, but I think there was one of the Free Cities.  There was one of Valyria.

Awesome prologue and first chapter.  I so didn't want to come in to work today!!!  My Nook is waiting for me, beckoning...

[naughty99]

I'm gonna leave work early this afternoon to pick up a copy from Barnes & Noble.

I read all the previous books on Kindle for iPhone, but i'm feeling like a real book this time.

Modifié par naughty99, 12 juillet 2011 - 05:43 .

[BigEvil]

My copy is on the way from Amazon, should get it tomorrow. Very excited to read it and now I'm away until I've done so, don't want to run into any spoilers.

[Brockololly]

Just picked it up from Barnes and Noble even though I've got about 200 pages left in AFfC. The maps are lovely though!

[HoonDing]

I'll just wait two years for the translation.

[Addai]

Brockololly wrote...

Just picked it up from Barnes and Noble even though I've got about 200 pages left in AFfC. The maps are lovely though!

GRRM mentioned the maps in an interview.  He says they got a new map artist to do the several new ones, so they had the same person re-do the others so they'd be in the same style.

In the same interview he says he's made a deal with Bantam to publish a collection of four Dunk and Egg novellas- the three already published and another that's coming out in the anthology Dangerous Women.  He says he also plans to write more, maybe up to a dozen, though of course we know not to count our Dunk and Eggs before they hatch. 

Another little tidbit from that interview- he said that when he got to the Red Wedding, he skipped over it and wrote it last, because it was so hard to write.

I spent my lunch hour reading Dany's first chapter.  Sooo happy to have new GRRM.  Those of you who are waiting, I envy all the sleep you're going to get this week compared to me.

[Maria13]

Hubby gets up at around 5:50 so I woke up at around that time yesterday downloaded it, read the prologue and went back to sleep... Not because it was boring, you understand, it certainly wasn't.

[KenKenpachi]

Hmm my copy should be in tomorrow, but with in being 100 degree's outside I'll wait till Friday when its only 89. Still can't wait to get it. And he best write the next one before 2017 >> *sends a dead rabbit in the mail*

What do you mean that counts as a threat Mr FBI Agent? No no see I'm concerned for his health and rabbits are lean meat more healthy for an old fat man. << >>

[Addai]

I'm only about 20% in and not going to post spoilers, but I'll say in general that this one has felt more "high fantasy" than other books.

I had a few disconcerting bumps at the beginning, trying to get my bearings where the story was. Since he split AFfC and ADWD by character rather than timeline, you are going back a bit, seeing the same events in Crows from the perspective of the other characters. But he advances it pretty quickly so this was just a momentary "hey, wait..."

All in all, still very satisfying, with lots of GRRM moments! Whee!!!

[Maria13]

I agree Addai (I'm at around 55%) far more fantasy elements than any of the other books... The Boltons are thoroughly vile... I'll say no more... Yet.

[Addai]

I'm going to a book signing in two weeks, I'll say hello from fans of Dragon Age and Bioware. 

Modifié par Addai67, 15 juillet 2011 - 04:57 .

[Maria13]

Lucky, lucky you! Can you give him a kiss for me?

[Addai]

Maria13 wrote...

Lucky, lucky you! Can you give him a kiss for me?

Let's not give the man a heart attack, I'll not be responsible for him not finishing the series.  lol

[Brockololly]

So I just finished A Feast for Crows and despite how people seem to hate on it, I enjoyed it well enough. The whole angle with the Sparrows and the rise of more militant religious people is a pretty logical and welcome development. Certainly adds another wrinkle in things. Stupid on Cersei's part allowing that, but outside of making her actions driven by the stupid prophecy, I liked her part in the story.

And it did a good job to show just how crappy the war has made life for regular people. And I actually am starting to like Sansa, especially as she grows a brain, thanks to Littlefinger.

Modifié par Brockololly, 15 juillet 2011 - 06:35 .

[Addai]

I don't get the hate, either, Brock. I missed Jon, Tyrion and Arya but what was there was great as far as I'm concerned.

[Nerevar-as]

I didn´t hate the book, but it followed mostly the less interesting character. It felt as if more than half the book was to show Cersei was an idiot even through her POV.

Got ADwD today. Read the prologue and a bit through the ending. Waiting for book 6 is going to be painful.