A Song of Fire and Ice... on HBO?

[Occhidiangela]

I'm exceptionally annoyed by this.

There was a huge 5 year gap between A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, supposedly because the events in Crows were supposed to be covered by recollections of people during what would have been the 4th book. Then Crows got so bloated it had to be cut in half, leading to a further delay. But that _should_ have meant that the next book came out quickly, it should have just been a reediting of the material that got dropped from Crows. It's now been more then a year.

All this for a period in the fictional world where so little was happening he was planning on skipping it. Indeed, Crows featured very little action. The first two books I read multiple times, I'm pretty sure when I finished a Clash of Kings I immediately flipped open Game of Thrones and started over. As the books get more bloated and slow moving (both in terms of the pacing of the action and the time between them) I'm losing interest. He is turning into Robert Jordan. Strong start and characters, great world. The world and characters are so engrossing (and grossing well too) to the author, he can't bear to let us escape it by moving the plot to its conclusion. (Fun fact - the Wheel of Time was supposed to go for 3 books. The surprise "this smoking corpse isn't really the embodiment of evil" ending was a cop out to keep the gravytrain rolling).

Biting off another big project can't help either the quality or the speed of the writing. I understand Martin needs to strike while the iron is hot and can't pass up the opportunity to get his creation onto the small screen, but unless A Dance with Dragons is out by that point AND blows the doors off of A Feast for Crows, I woln't be tuning in or purchasing The Winds of Winter.

Has Jordan released anything lately in WoT? I have read them all, and the last two were 30 pages of story and 300 pages of filler. No plot advancement. Did he actually finish it?

Occhi