A Song of Fire & Ice Book Discussion Thread (Up To Dance With Dragons)

[Samwell Tarly]

Considering that (not trying to be rude) most of the possible boredom was sucked into AFFC, this might be the most exciting installment. I will have to wait some time until czech version, though. My father reads them as well and his english isn´t good enough.

[Werthead]

Anyway, marketing information on ADWD:

 

(courtesy from Jussi over on SFFWorld)

 

The wait is over! Years in the making, #1 bestelling author George R. R. Martin delivers the highly anticipated A Dance with Dragons—the fifth book in his critically-acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series, now a major new series coming soon from HBO. A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the most beloved and bestselling series in fantasy, and fans have been waiting for this book with rabid anticipation. A Dance With Dragons is more of the dark, epic fantasy that has led Time magazine to call Martin "The American Tolkien." Functioning hand-in-hand with its companion volume, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons picks up the tales of those both in the north of the kingdom and across the seas, both completing a picture, reuniting a narrative arc, and ushering in a whole new era for the history of the Seven Kingdoms.

 

 

Key Points

EAGERLY AWAITED: The anticipation for this book is palpable. Now we can finally give his devoted legion of fans an answer!

 

HE'S #1: Martin has entered the exclusive ranks of the #1 bestselling authors, a stand-out achievement for any author.

 

NUMBERS DON'T LIE: There are almost 4.3 million copies of A Song of Ice and Fire in print, plus more than 125K in eBook sales!

 

NOW A MAJOR SERIES COMING SOON TO HBO: HBO has wrapped production of the Game of Thrones television series, with an impressive cast including Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Lena Headey, and Peter Dinklage, set to release April 17, 2011. Early viewings have the critics buzzing about this highly anticipated show. View the HBO trailer at: MakingGameOfThrones.com

 

NEW FANS COMING TO THE SERIES: Since the HBO series has been announced, sales of the backlist titles have spiked, and A Game of Thrones recently hit the New York Times extended list in mass market—its first appearance on that list!

 

PAPERBACK BACKLIST REPACKAGES AVAILABLE MARCH 22: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows will all be beautifully repackaged in trade and mass. Game of Thrones is additionally available in trade and mass editions with HBO tie in art.

 

MASS MARKET BOX SET AVAILABLE MARCH 22: With a lavishly designed slipcase featuring HBO tie-in art (Contains 1 copy each of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows).

 

Redesigned author website: GeorgeRRMartin.com, grrm.livejournal.com

National review and feature attention

National media attention

National and local radio and TV interviews

NPR interviews<li>Radio phone interviews

Online review and feature attention<li>Online interviews with author

Author tour: markets tk

Author appearance at Comic Con (tt)

National TV advertising

Rich media banner campaign

Major targeted online ad campaign

Library marketing

Extensive pre-order campaign

Convention promotion at San Diego Comic-Con (7/11) and New York Comic Con (10/11)

Cross-promotion with HBO

Promotional consumer giveaway

 

Nice, a redesigned website! The current design is fairly old now, so cool to see if it gets updated to something stronger.

[Avalonjohn44]

Read this thread and immediately shared everyone's elation until I read the first sentences of the blog entry:

 

No. Sorry. Not done yet.

 

I'm close, though. Watch this space. When the book is done, you will read it here.

 

So yes, I am pleased, but guarded. I'll believe it when I read the phrase "Here ends Book 5" (or something like that).

[Arc]

Sorry, but I didn't had the stomac to read the twelve pages of hating Cersei and admiring all the other characters at this moment . Still I wanted to add something to the thread myself, so here it goes:

 

 

Sansa will kill littlefinger (good riddance). And by doing so she'll become the badass she was always ment to be, eventually becoming the third dragonrider next to Dany and Jon/tyrion?

[Hallow]

Sorry, but I didn't had the stomac to read the twelve pages of hating Cersei and admiring all the other characters at this moment . Still I wanted to add something to the thread myself, so here it goes:

 

 

Sansa will kill littlefinger (good riddance). And by doing so she'll become the badass she was always ment to be, eventually becoming the third dragonrider next to Dany and Jon/tyrion?

 

Not gonna happen. If anything, I think Littlefinger will be one of the few left standing when this series ends. Plus, Sansa is a silly little cow.

[Gythwyn]

^^ Agrees

 

 

And Varys. He'll make it I reckon

[Arc]

.. Hodor

[Vambram]

Has GRRM... or any other SoIaF expert given a reasonable prediction as to how many total books this series will have when it is completed?

[Kadere]

It should be 7 books all told. Book 6 will be titled "The Winds of Winter" and Book 7 "A Dream of Spring." Most of the work GRRM was doing with Dance was planning out the rest of it so he could actually fit it into two more books.

[Vambram]

It should be 7 books all told. Book 6 will be titled "The Winds of Winter" and Book 7 "A Dream of Spring." Most of the work GRRM was doing with Dance was planning out the rest of it so he could actually fit it into two more books.

 

Thank you for this informatin, Kadere.

Although, this answer by GRRM appears to me to be a relatively lame excuse for the long delay in writing and finishing A Dance with Dragons, IMO.

[Werthead]

That depends. In total, GRRM seems to have written something like 1700-2000 manuscript pages for the next book, which couldn't fit into one volume. So the last year or so of writing seems to have been about squeezing the material down into what could be accomodated in one volume, which has now been done, with some excess material (just a small amount) drained off to Book 6. The extra time take on ADWD has been annoying, but it could turn out for the best if it saves a lot more time later on, and especially if it keeps the series to 7 volumes rather than expanding to 8 or 9. Even if GRRM returns to his former writing pace, that's still 3 years per book, which is still a long time. If he completes the series in 2 more books at 3 years each (maybe optimistic but you never know) that's great, whilst 3 or 4 more books at 3 years each that's much more concerning, far moreso if he takes 4, 5 or more years per volume.

 

As usual, we'll see. ADWD seems to have gone through much more thorough rewrites and editing (amusingly, what people claim was lacking in the previous volume) to make it work as effectively as possible. In a couple more months we can judge whether that has been successful.

[redarm]

Placed my order for the next book with Borders. Should get it on release day. I'm excited.

[Werthead]

George's editor holding the MS for ADWD:

 

 

That's pretty big. And the hardcover should be about half as thick, considering the MS is single-paged. That's still massive.

[Vambram]

Wow, that is a massive amount of pages for a manuscript. What is the estimate for how many pages in a hardcover book for ADWD?

[Werthead]

Wow, that is a massive amount of pages for a manuscript. What is the estimate for how many pages in a hardcover book for ADWD?

 

The UK publishers are currently estimated 1,050 pages, the US about 1,010.

[Werthead]

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS passes 1,600 manuscript pages.

 

For comparison, A STORM OF SWORDS was 1,520 MS pages and 420,000 words. That must put ADWD well north of 430,000 words, making it one of the longest SFF novels ever written. The only ones that are longer that I know of are Peter F. Hamilton's THE NAKED GOD (470,000) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (460,000).

 

Better get some reinforced bookshelves in.

[The Fisher King]

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS passes 1,600 manuscript pages.

 

For comparison, A STORM OF SWORDS was 1,520 MS pages and 420,000 words. That must put ADWD well north of 430,000 words, making it one of the longest SFF novels ever written. The only ones that are longer that I know of are Peter F. Hamilton's THE NAKED GOD (470,000) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (460,000).

 

Better get some reinforced bookshelves in.

 

 

Wert. Two Questions:

 

1 What does 'Manuscript Pages' usually end up ''transferring'' to approximately? I'm thinking 1500 manuscript pages probably ends ub about 940-950 pages in standard hardback?

 

2 Do ''Naked God' be any good?

 

 

- Fish

[Suttree]

It's good to know old George has a sense of humor about these things. Reading the comments there were one or two people that actually bought it

 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/206442.html

[The Fisher King]

It's good to know old George has a sense of humor about these things. Reading the comments there were one or two people that actually bought it

 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/206442.html

 

IMO: Extremely funny. :)

 

 

- Fish

[Werthead]

Wert. Two Questions:

 

1 What does 'Manuscript Pages' usually end up ''transferring'' to approximately? I'm thinking 1500 manuscript pages probably ends ub about 940-950 pages in standard hardback?

 

2 Do ''Naked God' be any good?

 

 

- Fish

 

GRRM's manuscript pages work out at about 1.5 hardcover pages (so, very roughly, ASoS was 1500 MS pages and just short of 1000 hardcover pages), so ADWD is already at 1000-1050 hardcover pages. This isn't exact though, as font and margin size can vary immensely: both AFFC and ACoK are very large in mass-market paperback (over 1000 pages each I believe) but they're not much longer than AGoT (which was only 800).

 

THE NAKED GOD is reasonable, but it's the third volume in THE NIGHT'S DAWN TRILOGY (preceded by THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION and THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST) and probably the weakest of the three books in the series, as well as being somewhat overlong (there's a lot of faffing around as Hamilton shows off 27th Century Earth to us early in the novel) with a controversial ending. But the trilogy itself is excellent, one of the finest works of space opera ever written for my money.

[The Fisher King]

Wert. Two Questions:

 

1 What does 'Manuscript Pages' usually end up ''transferring'' to approximately? I'm thinking 1500 manuscript pages probably ends ub about 940-950 pages in standard hardback?

 

2 Do ''Naked God' be any good?

 

 

- Fish

 

GRRM's manuscript pages work out at about 1.5 hardcover pages (so, very roughly, ASoS was 1500 MS pages and just short of 1000 hardcover pages), so ADWD is already at 1000-1050 hardcover pages. This isn't exact though, as font and margin size can vary immensely: both AFFC and ACoK are very large in mass-market paperback (over 1000 pages each I believe) but they're not much longer than AGoT (which was only 800).

 

THE NAKED GOD is reasonable, but it's the third volume in THE NIGHT'S DAWN TRILOGY (preceded by THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION and THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST) and probably the weakest of the three bookstores in the series, as well as being somewhat overlong (there's a lot of faffing around as Hamilton shows off 27th Century Earth to us early in the novel) with a controversial ending. But the trilogy itself is excellent, one of the finest works of space opera ever written for my money.

 

Thanks, Wert!

 

Fish

[bobarose]

Jon Snow and Dany .

Both sent to different fates.Both may end up together.

[Suttree]

George R.R Martin on the HBO preview that aired tonight. Loved the contrast of light and dark in the forest beyond the wall!

 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/208119.html

[Red2111]

man i can't wait for April 17th!!! watched the promo last night and it looked great. though i can't believe they took 15 mins for the prolouge especially since the White Walkers don't play that much of an important role in the series until later ...

 

 

i loved it though!! seems like it will be a good show and the actors are great! loved Arya showing up Bran with the bow though *grins*

[Feral]

Just how much sex is in these books? They sound like the sort of thing I'd really like, but I can't be having with bucket loads of graphic sex. If it's just the odd scene every few chapter that's fine. But if it's like every single chapter and goes into excrutiating detail then it's not for me. Hmm I guess the book I've read with the most sex in it is Temple of Winds (well, I only got about half way through actually) so how would this series compare with that?