It’s probably the most eagerly anticipated fantasy book in the genre at the moment: George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, which the author has been writing for at least five years since 2005, when he last published a book in his epic series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Although there is currently no hard completion date for the book, GRRM recently gave an update on how it’s not just the fans and his publishers that are angsty about getting the book out. As summarised by Winter is Coming:

“You know, it’s no secret that this last book [A Dance with Dragons] has taken much, much longer than I thought it would and much, much longer than anyone wanted it to. My editors and publishers are not happy with that, there’s an element of my fans that are vociferously angry about that, and most of all, I’m unhappy about it. But my goal has always been to make it the story I want to tell and to make it as good as I can.”

Martin reportedly said that at a certain point, “when the stress really got to me”, he had to stop thinking about how long it takes the author to write a book and just write “one page at a time, one sentence at a time, one word at a time” — without worrying about the fact that he had “40 chapters left to do”.

Frankly, I do feel sorry for GRRM.

Not every writer can be as workmanlike as current boy wunderkind Brandon Sanderson, who is currently reliably churning out a major novel each year, and in some ways seems to regard writing as more of a manufacturing process than an art.

No, GRRM is more case in the mould of a writer like Patrick Rothfuss; a writer that must struggle — at times desperately — with their art in an attempt to achieve not only sublimity in their writing, but also the organisation of a complex plot.

And yet, if there is one thing that you can say about GRRM, it is that he has achieved that sublimity in his writing. A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the great modern fantasy epics. Am I impatient for GRRM to finish it? Of course I am. But I’m content to wait for him to finish it in his own time. We’re rooting for you, Mr Martin :)

Fantasy author George R. R. Martin has told his UK publisher he might hand over A Dance with Dragons, the long-awaited next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, “soon”.

Writing on her own site, Jane Johnson, fiction publishing director for the HarperCollins Voyager imprint in the UK, said:

“And finally, yesterday I got to spend some time with the legendary George RR Martin, over in the UK to visit the sets where HBO are filming the pilot episode of A GAME OF THRONES, which could be the finest ever tv fantasy epic.

We have his superb anthology tribute to Jack Vance out this month: the signing queues went round and round the block in Belfast, Dublin and London’s Forbidden Planet. Oddly, in that strange synchronicity which happens so frequently in my life, George flew out of London for Marrakech this morning, to see the desert and Dothraki scenes being filmed in and around Ouarzazate.

The really exciting news, other than the potential HBO series, is that we might get the long-awaited DANCE OF DRAGONS soon. I cannot wait.”

It is common for fans of the series, one of the major fantasy works currently ongoing, to complain about the length of time taken by Martin to write each new book. Although the first three in the series were published after intervals of about two years each, according to Wikipedia, the fourth book took a little longer; A Feast for Crows came out in 2005 after a five-year writing stint by Martin.

In October Martin revealed he had written more than 1,100 pages in the book. It was previously expected the book would be ready for editing by October or November this year.

Commentary
I have pretty much given up waiting for this one :) A Dance with Dragons will be ready when it is ready, and that’s about all I’m expecting.

(via Westeros.org and Tower of the Hand)

George R. R. Martin has written more than 1,100 pages in A Dance with Dragons, the long-awaited next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire Series.

He had previously hit 1,000 pages in late July, according to his editor, when it was expected the book would be ready for editing by October of November this year. Martin wrote on his blog this week:

“Finished a Jon Snow chapter, and have just passed the 1100 page (manuscript pages, the page count in the final printed book will be different) mark on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. That’s counting only finished chapters in something close to final form. I have considerably more in partials, fragments, and roughs.

Even with just the finished portions, DANCE is now longer than A FEAST FOR CROWS and A GAME OF THRONES, and I’m closing in on A CLASH OF KINGS. I do hope I can wrap things up before I approach the 1521 page length of A STORM OF SWORDS.”

It is common for fans of the series, one of the major fantasy works currently ongoing, to complain about the length of time taken by Martin to write each new book. Although the first three in the series were published after intervals of about two years each, according to Wikipedia, the fourth book took a little longer; A Feast for Crows came out in 2005 after a five-year writing stint by Martin.

Note: If you haven’t read our satirical letter to Joe Abercrombie accusing him of being a “pansy boy”, you can find it here.

Joe Abercrombie‘s new stand-alone novel Best Served Cold is a light-on-magic and heavy-on-swords blood-soaked revenge quest that will highly satisfy fantasy fans with a black sense of humour and a taste for gritty and violent prose.

The book’s clever pacing, frequent plot twists and likeable (or hilariously despicable) characters will leave many readers unable to put it down. It’s especially recommended to George R. R. Martin fans, who will find the cruel hoops that Abercrombie’s characters are forced through, and the chapter by chapter pacing, reminiscent of the fantasy master’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire.

Set in the world of Abercrombie’s previous The First Law Trilogy, and with links here and there to it, Best Served Cold can nevertheless be read as a pure stand-alone novel.

There are two lead characters in Best Served Cold, although at various times the reader follows the viewpoint of a minor lead. The first, Monzcarro Murcatto, is one of those rare beasts; a female mercenary, and a good one. Along with her brother, General Murcatto has risen to the top of the mercenary world; she leads the Thousand Swords and has led the mercenary band’s employer, Grand Duke Orso of Talins, to the brink of taking over most of the country the book is set in, Styria.

Styria is a country not unlike Machiavelli’s 15th and 16th century Italy, dominated by warring city-states. Plagued by several decades of conflict, everyone has their price in Styria, and there’s plenty of buying and selling going on. In this bloody world Murcatto is a master of making war for profit — sometimes at the expense of her friends and mentors.

Then one day, the reign of ‘the Snake of Talins’ over Styria’s battlefields comes to an end as she is betrayed in the most cruel fashion by her employers. Broken, left for dead and thrown down a mountain into a pile of trash … it’s the perfect set-up for Murcatto to spend the rest of the book’s 534 pages getting a little of her own back … in style.

Enter Caul Shivers, a warrior from the northern climes. Down on his luck in Styria, Shivers is nevertheless a fighter of honour, trying to be a better man after his crimes of the past. Sadly enough, Murcatto recruits him to assist with her vengeance.

The Northlander initially makes a perfect foil for Murcatto, as we view her revenge quest — and the rogue’s gallery of character she recruits to pursue it — through his more rational eyes. But of course Abercrombie is not naïive, and neither Murcatto or Shivers are one dimensional characters. Revenge is often not as simple as it seems just after we’ve been betrayed, and so the plot and characters of Best Served Cold are not that simple either. Murcatto is not black, and Shivers is not her white opposite.

Best Served Cold is a novel of the grey areas of morality.

One of the best things about Best Served Cold is the pacing. Like GRRM, Abercrombie often throws the reader a curveball at the end of his chapters, using a small plot twist and repetitive phrasing to create irony after reading the earlier portion of the chapter.

Bigger curveballs come at the end of each major, labelled, sub-section of the book. At these points characters’ loyalties often change, and major plot twists are revealed that drive character development and reveal character history.

Because of this structure, the whole book works very well as a stand-alone novel. Just as you’re getting tired of the character and plot setup that Abercrombie has devised, it changes, generally in a most unexpected way (although there are clues, and I successfully predicted several twists). Just as you’ve been sucked into believing you can predict what is going to happen next, you’ll likely get sucked-punched by this extremely intelligent author.

In many ways, the decision to pursue Best Served Cold as a stand-alone novel rather than the series it could easily have been was a very smart one for Abercrombie, although it also has its disadvantages. The author’s previous work was split into three in The First Law trilogy.

The advantage to this approach, and Abercrombie’s stand-alone format, is that it allows him to reel in the reader quicker and provide them with a heightened level of entertainment that doesn’t get stale easily. Best Served Cold is chock-full of action, like a good heist movie.

It also means the reader is not left hanging at the end of the book, waiting for a sequel that could be years away. Best Served Cold gives readers more of what they want, quicker.

However it also means Abercrombie is forced to eschew the sort of deep, underlying plot arcs that are very gradually revealed in series like Janny Wurts’ The Wars of Light and Shadow and Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings. These are the sort of plot arcs that drive long-term, reader addiction and create a huge fan base.

I’d like to see Abercrombie pursue a much longer series now that he’s been “blooded” in the publishing world with a few hits. Something with deeper, more ineffable characters than are contained in Best Served Cold. In other words, taking a page out of his compatriot Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. But keep all the black humour in — and even intensify it.

Ultimately, Best Served Cold is not a masterwork. By the end of the book, the potential of its characters for further development has more or less been played out, and at times they can be a little transparent. However, the book represents one of the best stand-alone fantasy novels to have been released over the past several years, and leads us to believe Abercrombie has that masterwork in him that will arrive some day soon.

The next book in George R. R. Martin‘s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is almost finished, according to Suvudu blogger and Terry Brooks webmaster Shawn Speakman.

On the Terry Brooks forum, Speakman this week reported comments made by Martin’s editor Anne Groell at the recent Comic-Con conference in the United States to the effect that she expected to get the book by October or November this year. Groell reportedly said she had to answer the same question “over and over and over again”.

Writes Speakman:

“George has indeed passed the 1000 page mark as of last week and those are, to him according to Anne, finished pages that will not be returned to. He also has several hundred more pages of not completed chapters that every week he makes progress on.

Some of those will be in Dance; others will be in the next book. Anne also thinks she’ll be getting the book by October or November, which to her would probably make it a February or March 2010 release, although the progress he is making is quickly happening and she could receive it sooner if those incomplete or mostly complete chapters come together faster. I say don’t get your hopes up.”

Martin has several times stated he hopes to finish the book by September or October this year, although he has missed a previous self-allocated deadline of June.

It is common for fans of the series, one of the major fantasy works currently ongoing, to complain about the length of time taken by Martin to write each new book. Although the first three in the series were published after intervals of about two years each, according to Wikipedia, the fourth booko took a little longer; A Feast for Crows came out in 2005 after a five-year writing stint by Martin.

On his own site, the author offers a defence for not updating fans more often on his progress:

My last formal update on A Dance with Dragons was dated February 15, 2007. If that seems like a long time ago to you, join the queue. It seems like forever and a day to me. When I wrote that update, I was sick of writing updates. So I tried to make that last update the final update, and ended it by saying, “The next update will be the one that announces that the Dance is done.”

…

It is now 2008. I’m still working. There are no short cuts. It’s a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a word at a time. I’m further along than I was, but not as far as I would like. During the last year, I had some good days (and months), some bad days (and months), and some days (and months) that I thought were good that turned out to be bad.

The book is getting longer, and more importantly, the book is getting better. I’ve changed my mind about some of the things I said in earlier updates and on my Live Journal, and I reserve the right to change my mind again, though I am hoping I won’t have to. Believe me, no one wants to finish this book more than me.

Commentary
You can’t blame GRRM for taking his time with A Dance With Dragons. The entire A Song of Ice and Fire series was initially planned to be a trilogy. However, like many fantasy authors before him, as the story grew, so did its scope, and the author’s masterwork has ballooned out into a much bigger tale than he probably initially intended.

It would be criminal to cut that tale short for the sake of pleasing a few impatient fans :)

There’s plenty of precedent in the science fiction and fantasy book world for this sort of expansion. For example, Robert Jordan initially planned The Wheel of Time to be a six book series: a massive epic even at that stage! Now, the series stands at eleven, with the author having passed away and a further three books planned by Brandon Sanderson to finish it off.

Like Jordan during the latter part of The Wheel of Time, Martin appears to be struggling with how to wrap all the threads in his expanding world together so that The Song of Ice and Fire can be satisfactorily concluded. From what we know, there are just three more books planned; A Dance with Dragons (expected in early 2010), The Winds of Winter, and A Dream of Spring.

The optimistic working title of the final book would seem to suggest it will be the final book in the series, although no doubt achieving such a conclusion will prove hard for Martin. As recently as the last published book, A Feast for Crows, Martin was still introducing new characters. Of course, the author is known for killing off characters at need, in his gritty and realistic style, so we shouldn’t be too shocked if enough die off to make resolving the convoluted plot a little easier :)