What Happened to 'A Dance with Dragons'?
Posted on 24 February 2008 by James Cormier at 3:21 PM | Comments (3)
Tags: A Dance with Dragons, A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin, News
As any good reader of the genre knows, George R. R. Martin is one of the biggest names in fantasy. His A Song of Ice and Fire series has pretty much set the standard for mature, well-written epic fantasy in recent years. The first three books in the series, A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords, respectively, were published precisely two years apart starting in 1996. Following the 2000 publication of Swords, however, everything slowed down. The fourth volume, A Feast for Crows, did not appear until 2005. Now, in 2008, the prospective publication date of A Dance with Dragons, the series' fifth book, remains tentative at best. So the question remains: what happened to Dragons and, perhaps more importantly, what is going on with Martin's writing process? More after the break.
Martin regularly updates his own website with news of his other, non-Ice and Fire books and writes frequently on his blog about his life and interests. News about his most popular series, however, has been few and far between. The "Ice and Fire Update" page was updated in February, 2007 and then again, most recently, in January 2008. Both of these updates by Martin seemed to say approximately the same thing: that he was working on it, that there had been problems, that it was not finished yet but when it was the fans would know as soon as possible. Wikipedia has a useful summary of the problems with A Feast for Crows, explaining that the delay in publication was due to
The fact that Martin is still writing obviously means that no final manuscript has been sent to his publisher for printing. Martin's publisher, the Bantam Dell Publishing Group's Spectra label, has no current news on when fans can expect the newest book. Given that final editing and publication takes at least a few months when rushed (as books as anticipated as this often are), Martin has only a matter of months to submit a manuscript to Bantam if he wants Dragons published any time this year.
a series of problems that arose during the writing of the novel. George R. R. Martin originally planned for the fourth book to be called A Dance with Dragons with the story picking up five years after the events of A Storm of Swords (primarily to advance the ages of the younger characters). However, during the writing process it was discovered that this was leading to an overreliance on flashbacks to fill in the gap. After twelve months or so of working on the book, Martin decided to abandon much of what had previously been written and start again, this time picking up immediately after the end of A Storm of Swords. He announced this decision, along with the new title A Feast for Crows, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia on 1 September 2001 [1]. He also announced that A Dance with Dragons would now be the fifth book in the sequence.Martin has also explained publicly that much of the material that he intended to make part of Crows will now be part of Dragons, albeit in a much-rewritten form. The increasing length of the fourth book spurred Martin to divide it in half. Wikipedia goes on:
[W]hen the novel was nearing completion his publishers realized it was significantly longer than A Storm of Swords and requested it be split in half for publication. After initially considering publishing it as 'Part 1' and 'Part 2', Martin's friend and fellow author Daniel Abraham suggested splitting it by POV and location instead, which Martin agreed with. Thus A Feast for Crows only contains the POV characters from the South of the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Islands. The characters in the North, in the Free Cities and in Meereen (including fan-favourites Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen) will return in the fifth book. The split of the novel also meant that the series would be seven rather than six books long. A Dance with Dragons remains the title of the fifth book.Amazon.com lists September 30, 2008 as the expected release date for Dragons, but Amazon dates for as-yet unpublished books change frequently and should be considered unreliable at best. The September date is consistent with Martin's current estimated time of completion of late 2008.
The fact that Martin is still writing obviously means that no final manuscript has been sent to his publisher for printing. Martin's publisher, the Bantam Dell Publishing Group's Spectra label, has no current news on when fans can expect the newest book. Given that final editing and publication takes at least a few months when rushed (as books as anticipated as this often are), Martin has only a matter of months to submit a manuscript to Bantam if he wants Dragons published any time this year.
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3 Comments
I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement: "Martin regularly updates his own website with news of his other, non-Ice and Fire books and writes frequently on his blog about his life and interests. News about his most popular series, however, has been few and far between." The fact that he doesn't write much about Dance leads many to believe he is not working on it. Also, with all the time he is spending on his other projects, Dance just doesn't seem to be a concern to him. Dance not being a concern turns into his fans of Dance not being a concern to him. The more I read about Wild Cards and the Jets and the Giants, the more upset I become because he COULD be, and more importantly SHOULD be, finishing Dance.
My resolve is to read the library's copy of Dance. GRRM has alienated me as a fan by showing no regard or appreciation. He is showing me that he only cares about achieving an even larger market share with his other projects, and he expects me to lie around an take it.
There are plenty of other fantasy authors with just as high quality of books; and I think I will be reading those in the near future - not only because I am frustrated, but also because GRRM will not give me the option to read his book because it will not be ready anytime soon.
Many fans are indeed becoming frustrated with what seems to be a certain amount of daily digression and even procrastination on Martin's part. Granted, we don't know precisely how hard he's working on the next book, but the danger of having a high profile on the internet is just that: when you blog constantly about football and cons and collectible miniatures, your fans see it, and worry that maybe you're not staying on track.
I think this is precisely the reason that so few popular authors have blogs or active websites. I'm sure GRRM feels that his livejournal is a personal space and not one intended to chronicle his writing, but fans can't help but hope.
I can see both sides.
Alternatively, I also have a sort of pet theory that he doesn't know exactly where he's going with the story at the moment. He's never been an author that has said he had everything planned out in advance, and he's been open about the trouble he's had getting this book into readable shape. Ultimately, we can only wait and see.
Finally, someone who will listen to me. Everytime I try to post my frustrations about this subject, I just get banned or my posts become deleted. How I wish I could make all the malcontents in my life (i.e. bill collectors, bosses, etc...) just go away.
Since I do not plan on waiting for this book, are there any other series in which you can recommend to me? I love a good fantasy fiction read!
Thanks for taking the time to listen.