The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. Everything has its time, and everything dies. These are constants in life on the planet Earth. Another constant: The next chapter in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga, The Winds of Winter, has been delayed.
One day, the horn on the cover of Winds of Winter will get to blow. Image: The Winds of Winter (Bantam Spectra)
While it was always a bit of a stretch, despite George R. R. Martin’s previous optimism, a new blog post on the writer’s newly-moved-from-LiveJournal version of Not a Blog has officially confirmed that The Winds of Winter will not release this year.
Martin delivered the news before detailing release information for at least one other Westeros-bound book coming out in 2018 – his history of House Targaryen, Fire and Blood, due later this year:
No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least. You’re going to have to keep waiting for The Winds of Winter.
You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year, as I suggested back over on Live Journal.
Archmaester Gyldayn has at last completed and delivered the first half of his monumental history of the Targaryen kings of Westeros, Fire & Blood, and Bantam Spectra and HarperCollins Voyager will be releasing the hardcover on November 20, I am thrilled to say.
I’ve seen the archmaester’s manuscript. Since it was handwritten on vellum with a quill pen, he required my help in transcribing the text to a more modern format: WordStar 4.0, on a DOS computer. Took a while, but a few weeks ago I was able to ship it off to my editors on both sides of the Atlantic, and to my foreign representatives for all my publishers around the world. Some of my foreign publishers will be releasing their editions simultaneously with the US and UK hardbacks; others may need to wait for translation from the Common Tongue.
Expanding on the already pretty extensive notes and details Martin penned for the wonderful A World of Ice and Fire a few years ago, Fire and Blood, the first volume in what Martin has previously described as a two-part history, covers the lives and times of the first seven Targaryen rulers of Westeros 300 years before the events of A Game of Thrones, from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III the Dragonbane.
The rest will be told in a future volume, but according to Martin, that will be “a few years down the pike”, so please look forward to it still arriving before The Winds of Winter does.
Fire and Blood hits shelves 20 November 2018. The Winds of Winter? Well… we’ll see.