At a Guadalajara International Book Fair Q&A, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin revealed where The Winds of Winter is headed, and admitted that some fans may not like his answer. The book in question is the long-awaited sixth installment of Martin's beloved fantasy series, which will continue his epic story from where A Dance with Dragons left off in 2011. The Winds of Winter is the penultimate ASOIAF book, to be followed by A Dream of Spring.
Martin had hoped to have The Winds of Winter completed in 2015, but the novel has yet to come to fruition. 2016 marks A Game of Thrones' 20th publishing anniversary. The book series has spawned a highly rated television interpretation on HBO, which outpaced the books' narrative at the end of its fifth season.
In Guadalajara, Martin was asked the following question:
"The Forsaken" is clearly the largest narrative in all the series. How long did you wait to reveal all this mystic horror, Lovecraftian part of the story? In consequence, we are all raising the Greyjoy banners.
To which he responded:
Yeah, that is a dark chapter, but there are a lot of dark chapters in the book I'm writing right now. You know, it is called The Winds of Winter, and I've been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. And winter is the time when things die, and ... cold and ice and darkness fills the world. So, this is not going to be the happy, feel-good book that people may be hoping for.
And some of the characters are in very dark places. Of course, that's what you want to do. I'm not writing a series in the traditional sense, I'm writing one really long, really long, novel with multiple points of view. And in any story, the classic structure is that things get worse before they get better, so things are getting worse for a lot of people.
Get ready, folks. The Winds of Winter is coming.
