George R R Martinhas again poured cold water on hopes for a near‑term release date forThe Winds of Winter, telling a podcast in November 2023 that he has made no 'substantial' progress on the long‑awaited novel since earlier updates in 2022, despiterumoursit could arrive in 2026.
The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in hisA Song of Ice and Firesaga and the first since 2011'sA Dance with Dragons, still has 'several hundred pages left' to be written, according to Martin and his publishers.
Readers have been here before. The last mainline instalment landed on 12 July 2011, just months after HBO'sGame of Thronespremiered. At that point, much ofThe Winds of Winteralready existed in some form.
Martin has said that numerous chapters, including parts of the original ending ofA Dance with Dragons, were cut and held back for the next book. Since then, he has released sample chapters at readings and online, but not the completed manuscript, and the gap between novels has stretched from his early two‑year rhythm to nearly 16 years.
George RR Martin last year said he only had hundreds of pages to go on The Winds of Winter:"I have like 1,100 pages written but I still have hundreds more pages to go. It’s a big mother of a book for whatever reason. Maybe I should’ve started writing smaller books when I began…pic.twitter.com/IEIKy3bsIX
Meanwhile, the world built aroundThe Winds of Winterhas only grown larger and noisier. The entire eight‑season television adaptation has aired and ended, its final episodes provoking widespread disappointment among viewers who had once treated the show as a cultural event. For many of those readers, the unwritten book has taken on an almost talismanic role, a chance, however unfair that expectation may be, to 'fix' what they disliked on screen by returning to the source material.
The publication history helps explain the tension. There were two‑year gaps betweenA Game of ThronesandA Clash of Kings, and again beforeA Storm of Swords. That cadence broke withA Feast for Crows, which took five years, andA Dance with Dragons, which took roughly six. Now, the delay toThe Winds of Winterhas ballooned to well over a decade, with Martin himself acknowledging that, whatever the final date, it will be later than anyone initially imagined.
It would be easy to put the delay down to distraction, and there is certainly no shortage of other work on Martin's desk.Since 2011, he has written or overseen three Targaryen novellas,The Princess and the Queen,The Rogue Prince,andThe Sons of the Dragon,compiled the Dunk and Egg tales intoA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and co‑authored companion volumesThe World of Ice & FireandFire & Blood.He is currently working on a follow‑up volume, tentatively titledBlood & Fire, which revisits the same dynasty.
Each of those projects, by Martin's own admission in various updates on his 'Not a Blog' website, has carved time away from the main series. So have his long‑running duties as co‑editor of theWild Cardsanthologies, a shared‑universe saga about humans altered by an alien virus, where he works closely with other writers and editor Melinda M. Snodgrass to keep continuity straight.
Then there are the forays outside publishing. FromSoftware's hit gameElden Ringcredits Martin with helping devise its mythic backstory, a role that did not require full‑time scripting but did demand sustained attention to the world's history and lore.
Source: International Business Times UK
