[BOOKS] Game of Thrones for the Literate

RealGunner wrote:Good thing then I guess. Honestly it's really putting me off to watch GOT any longer because of how they are treating it compared to the books. No Victarion is a travesty alone but no fAegon either.

I think you just need to have the outlook of "the show is it's own animal now, it's not the books and won't be the same".

I was considering refusing to watch the show until the books moved ahead of it again, however as you've said, it might just becoming so different that you can watch the show without ruining the experience of the books. I still feel though that they'll head towards largely the same conclusion so I'm still reluctant to watch Season 6 if TWOW hasn't been released by then.

dostoevsky wrote:I can't wait another year and a half for TWOW, hurry it up Martin. As BC said though, if it was coming any time soon we'd surely have heard some rumours lately.

Just cut it short and release what you've got, write eight books if need be, but feed me Martin.

3 books spread apart over 8 years is better than 2 books over 8 years agreed. That being said I think we're going towards 3 books in 12 years.

Can anyone really avoid major spoilers until like 2022 seeing how popular the show is? One would have to stop using internet, I would rather be spoiled on TV than some asshole intentionally spoiling that Jon Snow is actually Ned's son after all

The ending will be the same but the road will be different, I don't mind being spoiled from the TV show... as a former-Unsullied I've still enjoyed the books more than the TV show, even if I knew who would die and who not while reading. However I can understand those who have read the books before GoT started, they would rather hear GRRM's story first.

I'm going to be more optimistic and say summer 2015 for TWOW because GRRM is not occupying himself too much with GoT atm, he's writing no episode for Season 5, and will not commit any travels or appearances until TWOW is done. Most likely 2016 though knowing GRRM's writing pace.

As for Season 5, it looks a real mess even though hard to say without seeing it first. I'll probably still enjoy Cersei, Arya and Jon/The Mannis.

Properly disappointed at the lack of Stark vengeance: No Manderly or any other Stark loyalist, No Lady Stoneheart (still has a chance to happen) and no Stark banner in the walls of Riverrun. I also hate D&D for cutting Aegon. Varys basically has no plan at all, or Daenerys has been his master plan all along

Also I fear there's too much focus in Dorne, unless Doran means to put Trystane on the IT (through Myrcella, a more expanded Queenmaker plot) I don't see the necessity for so much Dorne, in contrast to Greyjoys/Griffs.

I expect TWOW to be out late Christmas 2015 , maybe Spring 2016 . Not too long ago i though it would come out just before s5 did , but no . It's almost certain there's no chance of that. I think Martin made that 'obvious' on his Not a Blog , sometime ago in one of his posts. He said he will work fully on Westeros again untill spring 2015 . It's a positive note , carefully written by Martin not to raise hopes and on the same time , not to dissapoint either .

As for the show , lol i will keep watching anyway . We should be thankfull for the show , if you ask me. I would also like the books to finish the story first , but tbh , i know i will enjoy these books no matter what and i do know the show will change and exclude so much material , i won't even care about the definite spoilers .

As i see it , Martin will take too long with his books , he wants to leave an epic fantasy behind him that will be as good as he can make it. He won't rush to please this set of readers , he wants to please all the readers that will come after us. And these are evidently going to be MUCH more than us . He simply looks to the future and it's the same i would have done .

An example with LOTR . Tolkien took , i think , 18 years to finish it? I am sure people complained too ! How many millions more have read and enjoyed his world , however? And ADWD alone is bigger than both 3 LOTR books ... Martin cares about quality and i am with him about that and i fully agree when he talks about this .

Sure people who wait all these years won't like that.. i don't like that and i have just a couple of years waiting lol . But on the long term , quality is more important and we should be thankfull that not only he tries to make sure the last two books should be quality , but also be gratefull for the show , which will ease our appetite whatever does , or happens.. with Martin .

In season 1 episode 4 when Jon tells Sam he does not know who his mother is...

Spoiler:

Gonna go rewatch the backgrounds of all Sandor scenes for secret confirmation of Cleganebowl. Prepare to get hype.

Dante wrote:
An example with LOTR . Tolkien took , i think , 18 years to finish it? I am sure people complained too ! How many millions more have read and enjoyed his world , however? And ADWD alone is bigger than both 3 LOTR books ... Martin cares about quality and i am with him about that and i fully agree when he talks about this .

Yeah but then you have have Erikson who wrote a 3.5M 10 part series of extremely dense writing in around 12 years.

M99 wrote:In season 1 episode 4 when Jon tells Sam he does not know who his mother is...

Spoiler:

confirmed

I am actually surprised it took till the end of 2014 for someone to notice and spread the word to the rest . I must have seen the first season at least 3 times , never noticed that. I wonder what else 'we' may have missed .

Phritz wrote:

Dante wrote:
An example with LOTR . Tolkien took , i think , 18 years to finish it? I am sure people complained too ! How many millions more have read and enjoyed his world , however? And ADWD alone is bigger than both 3 LOTR books ... Martin cares about quality and i am with him about that and i fully agree when he talks about this .

Yeah but then you have have Erikson who wrote a 3.5M 10 part series of extremely dense writing in around 12 years.

Certainly.. But Erikson is Erikson and Martin is Martin . A writer works like he wants , how he wants , as much as he wants e.t.c . Having said that , i kinda agree with what you said . Obviously he should have written at the very least one more book by now .. I get it how you use Erikson's example , but it's not so simple after all. Even Tolkien ,being a full time professor was the reason it took him so much. Otherwise he would have probably finished it a lot sooner than that.

Martin is a full time writer and has already exceeded that amount of time and he still isn't done with it. Strictly speaking , Tolkien during WWII and not even being a full time writer in those 18 years , created LOTR which is considered something more than a classic  . Martin took 6 years to create ADWD which is bigger than the entire Lord of the Rings . I actually take it back , this deserves to be criticized after all. For it's length , the story progress isn't enough . I may have enjoyed it too much , in fact i remember i was glad it was so big , but being objective , LOTR has a beginning and an end and thrice the things that happen in ADWD , character progression , plot , world building , wars , you name it e.t.c. and even in Tolkien's mediocre prose , it reads great because it manages to make you immersed and invested nonetheless , the story and characters and the world is alive and unique .

And there's ADWD being bigger , describing how grease drops from fat mouths and what there's left to devour on each and every fkn table in Westeros in 10 sentences or something..The emphasis on food has it's purpose , for when Winter comes it will become evident how important it was .Nevertheless.. i can't read about grease anylonger. The story of said book may hook you in but , individually speaking , could have had in it almost as much as AGOT and ACOK had in it. It had less story progression in comparison than any of it separately and it certainly took more effort to read . It had a lot of world building , a lot of character development , a lot of detail and talk.. it's not a coincedence there wasn't much room left for story progress.

I am glad he wants to make sure he gives his best regardless , i am also glad these books are big despite my few complains here and there , they are incredibly well detailed , but in the end , he should have done better with his last two books and certainly have a book more out by now . Stranger things have happened.

R+L=J has been confirmed so much the real shocker would be if it's not true. Sean Bean alone spoiled it three times

Hope GRRM doesn't change it for the sake of it now.

Good guy Sean Bean

Yeah , it's pretty much canon in 99% people's heads by now . Tbh , it's so canon i don't even need confirmation

RealGunner wrote:Hope GRRM doesn't change it for the sake of it now.

nah he said he wouldn't . Even himself confirmed it basically

He said he had placed clues as to "the butler did it!" , changing the outcome would be wrong on many levels and he would never do that , despite how many people have figured it out .

"There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man" - Varys (AGoT)

"I'm not without mercy" said he who was notoriously without mercy - Catelyn (ACoK)
also,
"Bring on your storm, my lord, and recall, if you do, the name of this castle" - Ser Badass Penrose (ACoK)

"Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." - Stannis (ASoS)

“It was the easiest thing in the world for Arya to step up behind him and stab him. “Is there gold hidden in the village?” she shouted as she drove the blade up through his back. “Is there silver? Gems?” She stabbed twice more. “Is there food? Where is Lord Beric?” She was on top of him by then, still stabbing. “Where did he go? How many men were with him? How many knights? How many bowmen? How many, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many? is there gold in the village?” - Arya (ASoS)

"You'll want your child, I expect. I'll send him to you when he's born. With a trebuchet." Jaime (AFfC)
Also
"Do you know what even honor is?" A horse - Jaime (AFfC)

"So young," said Wyman Manderly, "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived he would've grown up to be a Frey." (ADwD)

Some of my favourite quotes/passages

"I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice deep pool of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?"

"Was it a long fall?" Grenn wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?"

"No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks."


We’ll defend the Wall to the last man,” said Cotter Pyke.
“Probably me,” said Dolorous Edd, in a resigned tone.


Dolorous Edd: “I could do with a bit of boiling about now. If the kettle were larger, I might jump in. Though I would sooner it were wine than water. There are worse ways to die than warm and drunk. i knew a brother drowned himself in wine once. It was poor vintage, though, and his corpse did not improve it.”

Jon Snow: “You drank the wine?”

Dolorous Edd: “it’s an awful thing to find a brother dead. You’d have need of a drink as well, Lord Snow.”


"Your boat’s not like to sink, I don’t think. Boats only sink when I’m aboard."


"Did Sam sleep in the hall last night?" Jon asked him.

"I'd not call it sleeping. the ground was hard, the rushes ill-smelling, and my brothers snore frightfully. Speak of bears if you will, none ever growled so fierce as Brown Bernarr. I was warm, though. Some dogs crawled atop me during the night. My cloak was almost dry when one of them pissed in it. Or perhaps it was Brown Bernarr. Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I'm back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me."

"I'd best go see Lord Mormont," said Jon.


The fat boy was shaking. Dolorous Edd put a hand on his shoulder. "Brother," he said solemnly, "just because it happened that way for you doesn't mean Samwell will suffer the same."

"What are you talking about, Tollett?"

"The axe that split your skull. Is it true that half your wits leaked out on the ground and your dogs ate them?"


"Place was overrun with rats when we moved in. The spearwives killed the nasty buggers. Now the place is overrun with spearwives. There’s days I want the rats back. "


Tollett shrugged. "Might have punctured a lung, if he had a lung. Most trees don't, as a rule."


What is Edd may never die

"I'm still in the middle of the book, so it'll be some time before I write the scenes in which they die."

http://mashable.com/2014/11/16/george-rr-martin-charity-event/

Dante you can start reading Malazan.

Alright from the informations we have:

1. 1500 MS pages expected, similar as ASoS and ADwD
2. GRRM has finished 1/4 of TWoW as of June 2013 (350-400 MS pages)
3. Around 100-150 MS pages where already written, supposed to be published in ADwD (BoM, BoW)
4. GRRM has finished 1/2 of TWoW as of November 2014 (700-800 MS pages)

So... it has taken GRRM 1 year and 5 months to write 250 MS pages and if we assume he'll continue with a similar writing pace, he won't finish until December 2017-March 2018 somewhere in between.

Again this is assuming he'll continues with a similar writing pace which we hope he won't and will likely speed up (though you never know, he did say ADwD would publish 5 years earlier than it did ) and the book is actually ASoS/ADwD big (which we hope it is and very likely is).

^^oh and Edd that guy's humor

There's some vagueness in the language. "in the middle of the book" could easily mean "still working on the book" rather than indicating a progress report. That being said... yeah it's discouraging.

M99 wrote:"I'm still in the middle of the book, so it'll be some time before I write the scenes in which they die."

http://mashable.com/2014/11/16/george-rr-martin-charity-event/

Dante you can start reading Malazan.

And what am i going to do in the decade between TWOW and ADOS

urbaNRoots wrote:Alright from the informations we have:

1. 1500 MS pages expected, similar as ASoS and ADwD
2. GRRM has finished 1/4 of TWoW as of June 2013 (350-400 MS pages)
3. Around 100-150 MS pages where already written, supposed to be published in ADwD (BoM, BoW)
4. GRRM has finished 1/2 of TWoW as of November 2014 (700-800 MS pages)

We know from info we were given on previous books , that he always had written significantly more in manuscript than any book required to be published. A big part of ACOC existed when AGOT came out . ASOS was almost 'finished' when ACOC came out . AFFC had 1.527 or so manuscript pages with another hundred which went into ADWD and ADWD exceeded 1.600 manuscript pages.

Put together makes 3.127 pages . Of that , 976 pages was AFFC and 1,510 pages was ADWD . So , 2.486 pages were used for AFFC and ADWD respectively . So.. what about the 641 pages left? The only known , absolutely confirmed amount of pages done and dusted so far are these 100-150 pages or so that he had to hand over to get some money. As you can see , there's a big chunk of pages he didn't submit , why really ? He simply gave what he absolutely had to , it doesn't mean that's what he had only written , FAR FROM THAT actually.

Look at Arya's Mercy chapter which is going to be in TWOW , he wrote that a decade ago . Although he has rewritten it several times ever since , it was actually WRITTEN A DECADE AGO . There are many more similar things to be said , like how himself once confirmed he had given away thousands of ASOIAF manuscript pages to a university or something , for students to study and all . Finally , my point is that , i firmly believe he has written countless pages of the ASOIAF series in manuscript form , enough not only for TWOW , but some of ADOS too.

His huge issue isn't how much he can write , or how quickly in a certain period of time . Look at what he did with TWOIAF , he was asked to check and maybe add a few things here and there and he wrote like 200.000 words in an incredibly short amount of time , thrice as much than what he was asked by Elio and Linda... he wife said he was writting as a man possesed . They couldn't even use all of it , lol , the same thing with every ASOIAF book . His US editor knows Bran's entire story and another dude had to know the entire story of Tyrion , to create some comics / illustrated version or something e.t.c . He has stuff from even ADOS written down , that's how he writes. He goes with a character untill he finds obstacles , or when they are dead . He then goes back again to another character and e.t.c . This proccess allows for all kind of continuity mistakes , "Knots" he has to untie , e.t.c , it takes him long to finalise and make his own edit , not to produce. He always had written wayyy more than any of these books actually needed to see publication. It's the polishing , that's what it takes him so long.

He has serious , huge problems going from manuscript , to publication , for various reasons . Those things about how much he writes in a certain amount of time is bollocks . I am pretty sure almost all of TWOW is done in manuscript , he just has to rewrite and rewrite again and add foreshadowings.. he has to decide what to drop and what to keep , what to rewrite and what not to rewrite , when you have thousands of manuscript pages things are complicated , never mention the editing and all that .e.t.c .

All in all , it's no secret that , a big problem with vast amount of knowledge and intelligence , is indecision . When you sit on a desk with thousands of manuscript pages and your end result is a quality book of 1.500 pages .. It's a freaking big task to see through , especially when most if it is first draft. What we know about pages submited , or this last information on TWOW , mean little . Given what we know from all his years for all his ASOIAF books , it's quite possible he has most if done by now , but needs that 'polishing' , which will make it complete , that's what we really wait of him to 'finish'. I am pretty sure he's almost done in manuscript form by now , it's simply still far from publication as of now.

IMO , that's what he means by , "i am in the middle of the book" . Not literally meaning he had written half of the book , or linear writting whilst being in the middle of it. He never talked like that for any of his previous books , why would he start now . It's more like , "In the entire proccess that is required to see publication , i am in the middle of it". From first draft , untill it goes to the editor , he's in the middle of the book . Something last , we also know he doesn't require nearly the same rewriting and all the issues that plagued ADWD e.t.c.

I can't say if it's encouraging or discouraging news , because i really cannot know what Martin will be doing . It certainly doesn't let me get my hopes up , though . If production of mere words were his only problem.. he would have written 2 asoiafs by now.

What makes you think he has "knots"? We know of the meerenese knot but he's never spoken about other knots to my knowledge. I agree that it's not his writing speed that is to blame but rather the logistics of getting all the POVs to intertwine and fact checking all the little details. If he gets someone's eye color wrong you know people will notice it and start a theory because of it

Yes , even just one little mistake is cause for tinfoil lol . A book of 1500 pages preceded by another 5 books of thousands of pages put together is very hard to fact-check , especially in such a rich world . Forgot to say , there's a book which explains this process very well and many authors take a part in it . Even Sanderson , it has some great basic info on such things. I will try to find it and link it here .

By knots i meant to describe his infamous knot , the meerenese one. I was trying to convey what has happened in the past with his process. Thankfully he hasn't said anything about such things about Twow , on the contrary , he said it goes a lot better in this regard.

But you never know where , or how , he will stumble really . He didn't exactly plan the Meerenese Knot either

How would everyone feel if the Dornish storyline on the show goes like this in season 5?

I see the Dorne plotline for this season playing out like this:

We are introduced to Doran and Trystanne.  Trystanne is trying to convince his father to crown Myrcella and go to war now that Tywin is dead.  Doran obviously refuses.
Jaime arrives in Dorne to bring Myrcella back to Kings Landing. Doran appearing weak agrees to let her go home for a period of time.
Trystanne, furious at his fathers weakness by giving into Lannisters demands, decides to take action.  He rallies the Sand Snakes and decides to crown Myrcella himself.
Trystanne and the Sand Snake's queenmaking plot is stopped by Aero Hotah.
Trystanne and the Sand Snake's are all imprisoned.
Doran eventually comes to speak to Trystanne.  He gives his epic "Fire and Blood" speech only this time it is also revealed that Trystanne isn't actually his son and is actually Prince Aegon and he is meant to marry Dany.
Jaime is allowed to return to Kings Landing with Myrcella. Accompanied by at least one Sand Snake.
Plans are made for Aegon to travel with the Golden Company to Mereen to present himself to Dany and ask her to marry him.
Before Aegon departs word reaches Dorne of Dany's marriage to Hizdhar zo Loraq.
Aegon decides that they don't need Dany to conqueor Westeros since the Seven Kingdoms are in complete disarray and he has the strength of Dorne as well as the Golden Company at his back.
The season ends with the combined forces of Dorne and the Golden Company marching north led by Aegon

(Source: asoiaf.westeros.org user)

Certainly not the worst idea for me, it's a good way to have Aegon in without having to cast Arianne, JonCon, Quentyn, Septa Lemore, The Halfmaester etc...

A couple of questions and problems could arise as: Why Doran doesn't have any children, or if Oberyn knew of all this or how Doran got baby-Aegon out of KL and how he hid him like this the whole time but it's a TV Show, most of the stuff isn't explained after all (and some of these "problems" can also be explained to be fair)

I know it's a bit crackpot but for me having Aegon is essential, not that I like him (he's a bit of a jerk from what we know), but because Varys needs a better plan, Littlefinger has been bossing him around for too long and because Daenerys needs a better contender to fight with when she eventually sails in Westeros and that's just not Cersei. I wouldn't even mind if Trystane is not Aegon but will try to become king through Myrcella (a more expanded Queenmaker plot). ANYTHING BUT DANY FIGHTING CERSEI/TOMMEN.

I dont like it. Trystanne isnt a big character in the books.
The Griff/Tyrion/Connington and Quentyn parts are a must imo.

although i do think that a lot of things that happen outside of westeros are complex and might be tough to put in TV...

I feel like it would be inconsistent with Oberyn 's speech if aegon were actually in Dorne

If it's well done , why not ? Obviously staying loyal to the books would be gladly appreciated before anything else , however , i don't think it would bother me if they did it well.