Recently, a number of outlets have reported on "good news" coming from author George R.R. Martin about The Winds of Winter, the long-in-coming sixth novel in his Song of Ice and Fire series. They quote Martin as saying that he's written about 1,200 pages of The Winds of Winter, with about 400 or 500 still to go.
“It’s a big, big book, I’ve said that before,” they say he said. “It’s a challenging book. It’s probably gonna be a larger book than any of the previous volumes in the series...Some of the point-of-view characters’ chapters are already finished, but I still need to interweave their narratives to create one cohesive plot."
The last book in Martin's series, A Dance With Dragons, came out back in 2011, meaning that Martin has been working on Winds for nearly 15 years. The outlets reporting on this story frame it as good news that "the finish line is in sight."
But there's an issue: while Martin did say all this stuff, he said it back in October 2022 during a live-streamed fan Q&A shared by publisher Penguin Random House. Why these outlets are writing about it as though it's breaking news, I have no idea. But the truth is that Martin has not shared anything new about The Winds of Winter.
That said, there are signs that something could be on the way. If Martin was talking openly about having about 400 or 500 pages of the book left to write in 2022, might he have rounded that corner by now? I can't help but notice that Martin has booked a number of high-profile public appearances this year; he'll participate in a panel on epic fantasy in August at Worldcon alongside other heavyweight authors like Brandon Sanderson. And in October he'll be at New York Comic Con, one of the biggest pop culture conventions of the year.
Martin has always liked to keep busy; in addition to writing The Winds of Winter, he's consulted on several Game of Thrones spinoff projects for HBO, among other things. But he's mostly eschewed major public appearances in the past several years as the wait for Winds has grown longer. Seeing him book two events has me hopeful despite myself. Heaven knows his fans have been here before.
While we wait for word, HBO continues to work on the third season of House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel based on Martin's book Fire & Blood. Look for that to premiere on HBO and HBO Max in the back half of 2026. And we have a new Game of Thrones prequel series called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, coming out early next year.
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