Chinese A Song of Ice and Fire translator: The Winds of Winter will very likely come out in 2019

As we inch towards the conclusion of Game of Thrones, which will air sometime in the first half of 2019, fans of the Song of Ice and Fire novels remain in the dark as to the release date of the next book in the series, The Winds of Winter. A Dance with Dragons, the last book, came out in July of 2011, meaning we’ve been waiting for over seven years. When will it end?

Writing on Chinese social media site Weibo, the Chinese translator for the Song of Ice and Fire novels may give us some hope. Here’s the translator’s message as translated by Redditor SailfromHere:

"There is 0 chance that [The Winds of Winter] comes out this year, but Fire and Blood is definitely coming out this November, page count on par with A Game of Thrones. It is very likely that TWOW will come out next year. More specific info may be updated mid-August in Worldcon."

We never expected Winds to come out this year, and we already knew that Fire & Blood, Martin’s extensive history of the Targaryen family dynasty, is coming out in November. But the bit about Winds hitting store shelves in 2019 is new. Can we trust it?

Before you jump aboard the hype train, we should qualify a few things. First, just because someone thinks a book is likely to come out next year doesn’t make it true, even if that someone is involved in publishing the book. Moreover, this particular translator has a history of jumping the gun on news — he fell for a fake Spanish-language interview with Martin, for example — and that’s before we account for the difficulties of translating Chinese. Even in this Weibo post, which went up early this month, he was hopeful we’d get news about The Winds of Winter at Worldcon 2018, which came and went without new information.

However, Martin did make a rare onstage appearance before Worldcon proper where he talked about A Song of Ice and Fire at length, not something he really does anymore. He seemed in excellent spirits, a good sign. And while the translator isn’t an ironclad source, he’s closer to this than any of us, and a 2019 release date certainly seems possible. If it comes to pass, 2019 could be the biggest year for the story yet, with the final season of Game of Thrones coming in the first half of the year and The Winds of Winter in the second.

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h/t Los Siete Reinos